Oscillators

At its core Sylenth1 houses 4 alias-free unison oscillators, which generate analog shaped waveforms. Each oscillator is capable of producing 8 unison voices in full stereo, adding up to a total of 32 voices per note. With its 16 notes of polyphony this means you can play up to 512 voices simultaneously! The oscillators perform extremely well in both the very low (down to 0.01Hz and below!) and very high (all the way up to half the samplerate) frequency regions without losing their sharpness, liveliness or character. This makes them well suited for all kinds of sounds, from the deepest basses imaginable to the highest crystal clear bells.

Filters

On top of that there are 2 state of the art, pure analog sounding filter sections. Each of these consists of 4 filter stages with nonlinear saturation incorporated, in order to emulate the warmth and drive of a real analog filter. The resonance control can be turned up to a level way beyond self-oscillation and combined with the drive control this makes it possible to let the filters SCREAM! Where a lot of digital filters sound like they're made out of cheap plastic, these filters sound rock-solid, warm and raw.

Modulation

Sylenth offers many modulation options to sculpture the sound any way you like. There are 2 ADSR envelopes and 2 LFO's which can be used to modulate a whole set of different parameters. Next to that, it is possible to use the extra 2 amplitude envelopes, velocity, keyboard track or modulation wheel as a source for modulation.

Master FX

The final part of this synth is the master effects section. A set of 7 professional quality sound effects and an arpeggiator, conveniently grouped into an LCD panel structure.

• Arpeggiator – 10 different melodic modes, built-in step sequencer with adjustable pitch, velocity and hold settings. Outputs Step Velocity as a modulation source.
• Distortion - Five different types of distortion (overdrive, foldback, clip, decimator and bitcrusher) in full stereo, uses 4x oversampling to minimize aliasing artifacts.
• Phaser - 6-Stage stereo phaser, with 2x oversampling, an embedded LFO, feedback and frequency spread adjustment.
• Chorus/Flanger – 4-Stage stereo chorus, with 2x oversampling, adjustable delay time, depth, rate and feedback for flanging effects.
• Equalizer - Bass and treble adjustment by frequency and amplification.
• Delay - Delay module with low and high pass filters, unique echo smearing function, pingpong mode with stereo spreading, independent left and right delay time and adjustable stereo width.
• Reverb - Smooth reverb with adjustable pre-delay, damp, size and stereo width.
• Compressor - Stereo compressor with attack, release, threshold and ratio settings, which can be used to increase punch, drive, warmth and analog feel of your sounds.

Performance

With all the functionality and processing horsepower mentioned above, you might expect that this synth would max out even the fastest CPU in no-time, especially considering the high sound quality of each single voice and effect. Well, one of the many benefits of this synth is that it doesn't. It uses highly optimized code and SSE instructions in order to reduce the CPU usage to a minimum. It will also automatically turn off any parts that are not used, to save extra CPU time. This enables you to create pure quality sound using only minimal system resources.
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Specyfications:

• 4 Ultrahigh-quality bandlimited unison oscillators in full stereo, each of which can generate 8 voices per note.
• 2 State of the art analog-sounding 4-stage stereo filters per note. Selectable lowpass, bandpass and highpass modes with 12dB or 24dB attenuation. A filter drive knob controls the analog emulation of overdrive in each filter stage.
• 16 Notes of polyphony, which adds up to a total of 512 simultaneous oscillator voices and 32 filters in realtime.
• 4 ADSR envelope generators per note.
• 2 Low Frequency Oscillators with 11 different waveforms.
• 16 Modulation slots with 24 different selectable modulation parameters each.
• Easy to use built-in master effects section consisting of an arpeggiator and 7 professional-quality sound effects: distortion, phaser, chorus, equalizer, delay, reverb and compression.
• Arpeggiator with built-in step sequencer, 10 different melodic modes, adjustable pitch, velocity and hold settings. Outputs Step Velocity as a modulation source.
• 4-Stage stereo chorus, with 2x oversampling, adjustable delay time, depth, rate and feedback for flanging effects.
• Five different types of distortion (overdrive, foldback, clip, decimate, bitcrush) in full stereo, with 4x oversampling to minimize aliasing artifacts.
• Equalizer with bass and treble adjustment by frequency and amplification.
• 6-Stage stereo phaser, with 2x oversampling, an embedded LFO, feedback and frequency spread adjustment.
• Delay module with low- and high-pass filters, unique echo smearing function, pingpong mode with stereo spreading, independent left and right delay time and adjustable stereo width.
• Smooth reverb with adjustable pre-delay, damp, size and stereo width.
• Stereo compressor with attack, release, threshold and ratio settings, which can be used to increase punch, drive, warmth and analog feel of your sounds.
• Heavily optimized code using high-performance SSE processor instructions.
• Easy to use user-interface.
• Onboard preset browser.
• Fully controllable by MIDI. Knobs can be simply assigned to MIDI CCs or RPN/NRPNs using the MIDI learn function.
• Sync button for syncing LFO and delay parameters to host tempo.
• 2 Modes of portamento sliding, which will slide both velocity and pitch parameters in polyphonic or monophonic mode.
• 1000+ presets.

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So what’s new in version 2.0?

• Complete rewrite of the user interface and voice management, now fully written in C++ and assembly code.
• Fixes all previous problems (including sound stuttering) with several hosts including FL Studio, ACID Pro and Tracktion.
• Now also compatible with OS X for Intel Macs (VST only, AU is in development).
• Heavily improved loading and initialization times.
• Rebuilt MIDI learn functionality for ALL controls including support for RPN and NRPN messages.
• Onboard preset browser with 4 selectable banks of 128 presets each.
• Onboard menu for loading and saving presets and banks, as well as Copy, Paste, Insert, Delete, Init and Reset functionality for individual presets.
• Fully compatible with older Sylenth1 versions.
• Numerous minor bug fixes and improvements.
• Now ships with a total of 1024 presets divided over 2 soundbanks.

Download the new demo version here.