SIMPLE from Chris St’Aubyn: Synthesis from a musical perspective SIMPLE is an enlightened polyphonic synthesizer for HALion that provides maximum musicality in a beautifully streamlined interface redesigned for v1.5.  SIMPLE SIMPLE is exploring the balance between delivering superb synthesized sounds and using a minimal, curated interface. Colossal sounds via a simple interface – that’s the vibe producer and developer Chris St’Aubyn is going for. All the parameters are designed to produce musical results at all times making it easy to dial in sounds and intuitively work through the interface without getting lost in the complexities. The “SIMPLE” knob has been moved to the left contains an animated display of each oscillator’s waveform so you always have a visual reference of what’s going on. But its main purpose is to drive the oscillator into fatness by taking on a whole load of tweaks to the detuning, saturation, phasing and layering of the waveforms. Turning it up just sounds brilliant! Super Tone The other big parameter is the Super Tone which now appears as a slider that reskins the interface as well as altering the sound engine to bend it in different directions. You have a punchy and bright “Digital” tone, a warm and saturated “Analog” tone and a non-linear, vintage and drifting “Bionic” tone. It’s like choosing your intention before you start to design your sound or trying different feels to sounds you’ve been working on. It also doesn’t treat you like an idiot and all the tools you need in a synthesizer are available to you if you wish. There’s a rich multi-mode filter, envelopes and LFOs over on the right and in the middle the display changes between master controls to effects and modulation sections. V1.5 brings in a new arpeggiator with different patterns, gates and groove controls. You’ve also got over 800 presets to play with. SIMPLE 1.5 is available for a special price of ￡46 and will run in the full version of HALion or the free HALion Sonic SE for macOS and Windows. |
