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FL Studio fans will find Ogun's design to be familiar.

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• Review

Compact. That's the word that springs to mind when describing Ogun, the new additive synthesizer from Image-Line.

Size, though, isn't everything, and while it might not have the most mighty of interfaces, the asking price isn't going to break the bank. Fortunately, Ogun doesn't come up short on sound or features, either.

The pedigree of this instrument is clear for all to see from its design, with Ogun sharing the tight, subdued graphical interface of Image-Line's other releases. Unlike some recent offerings from the company, it's currently only available to Windows users, though it does come in both VST and FL Studio plug-in formats.

Overview

This is an instrument with a purpose: metallic and shimmering textures via a massive additive synthesis engine, without the hair-pulling befuddlement usually associated with this technology.

Additive made easy? Well, not quite. Ogun does put the heavy stuff out of the way until you need it, focussing instead on familiar functions and instant gratification via a click 'n' drag interface that encourages you to experiment.

Familiar stuff includes an X/Y pad, multimode filters, unison section, EQ and a trio of effects processors (reverb, chorus, delay).

As with all additive instruments, Ogun produces its sound by piling sine waves upon sine waves – up to 32767 of 'em, in fact! Fortunately, there's a resynthesis engine to help circumvent the tedium of the technique.

However, if you want to do the work, you can design the sounds from the ground up, clicking and dragging in the Articulation Editor, which serves as a canvas for everything from partials to envelopes.

Speaking of which, fans of the nifty multipoint envelopes found in Sytrus will be glad to see them return in Ogun. There's also the super-cool Envelope Sequencer for adding plenty of motion and vitality to your patches.

Sounds

The first sound you hear after opening Ogun is, somewhat unexpectedly, a cymbal. It's a rather convincing one at that, and while it may not be the sort of glamorous opening volley one expects from a modern synth, it certainly sets the tone.

The cymbal in question is not, technically, a sampled sound, at least not in the traditional sense. Instead, this is a patch with all of the malleability one expects from a synthesizer.

Undoubtedly, it was created via the resynthesis engine, which enables any sampled sound to be analysed, broken down into harmonic parts and put back together as a synthesised waveform.

Also, Ogun can examine the harmonic content and amplitude of any sound and then apply them to a patch. While working well with metallic sounds, it's not limited to them. And, we were quite pleased with the fact that audio files can be dragged into Ogun for instant resynthesis. Sweet.