MusicRadar

• Review

Not so long ago we were grousing about the dearth of new methods of synthesis, surrounded by ROMplers and virtual analogue synths, nothing more. It would seem our pleas have been answered in spades.

We've recently seen a wealth of synths released that shed the shackles of the commonplace in favour of more challenging and, most importantly, more inspiring instruments.

We have to confess that, while we definitely love our retro synths, we're always pleased when a developer deigns to design something that has no hardware, er, analogue.

Devine Machine's Krishna Synth is such an instrument.

While it isn't without precedent, it presents some unfamiliar ideas in an inviting (if not that intuitive) package that'll have you designing sounds you're unlikely to hear anywhere else.

Specifications

Krishna Synth is a cross-platform VST plug-in, with AU and RTAS formats on the way.

Though it isn't strictly a ROMpler, it comes with 3GB of data in the shape of well over a thousand presets, so lots of room on your hard drive is a must. The soul of Krishna Synth lies in its Frame Analysis Technology (or F.A.T.), with which a sample or sound may be converted to a series of many individual 'Frames'.

Said Frames are then stored as Krishna Movie Files, which can be played back using Oscillator 1 – the so-called Frame Oscillator.

A modulation source can be applied to the playback to 'animate' the proceedings. This is not unlike granular resynthesis or even PPG-styled wavetable scanning, but on a deeper level.

In use

Krishna Synth comes with more than 2000 Movie files covering a wide range of sounds, but the real power of the instrument becomes apparent when importing your own samples.

Any sound is fair game, though depending on your platform Krishna Synth seems a bit particular about where that sound should be located.

We froze Cubase 4 on our Mac when trying to import a sound. When we copied the sample into the Movies directory in the Krishna folder, we were able to convert it successfully.

Our Windows test machine had no such issues when we tried to do likewise on it.

Once you've selected or created a Movie file, you can perform all manner of manipulations.

There are a range of drawing tools for shaping a given Frame, as well as a few methods by which the number of Frames can be adjusted for a given sound.

Krishna Synth knows whether you're attempting to draw on a static or moving Frame and will adapt its behaviour accordingly.

In addition to the Pencil tool, you get Sine, Triangle and Ellipse tools, as well as a Line tool and a few others besides.

Directly manipulating Frames in this way is enjoyable and inspiring.

As mentioned, your Frames can be animated by a mod source, such as an LFO or AHDSR envelope.