Spitfire Audio has teamed up with composer, producer and music technologist BT for the release of Phoenix, a hybrid software synthesizer that brings together samples from BT's private archive with wavetable and FM synthesis, a versatile effects engine and extensive modulation capabilities.
Equipped with 16 voices of true stereo polyphony, Phoenix is built on six synthesis engines: a spectral wavetable engine, a six-operator, 34-algorithm FM engine, and a multi-sampled instrument engine with a broad sample library covering strings, brass, woodwind, choirs, guitars, pianos, and percussion from Spitfire Audio's library, alongside more experimental sounds from BT's own collection. These are joined by a dedicated transient engine, a sub-oscillator and noise oscillator.
Phoenix's wavetable engine is built around a "stereo-from-the-ground-up" architecture with two independent synthesis chains per-voice across both left and right channels. This means that key parameters can be can be independently modulated across each channel, creating complex spatial effects. There's also a deep cross-modulation bus with 20 modes spanning FM, AM, ring modulation, phase distortion, wavefolding and more.
The synth's modulation engine comprises 37 modulation sources in total, routed via a matrix with no fixed slot limit. You get multiple four-stage curve sequencers, five-stage envelope generators and LFOs with freely drawable waveforms, alongside four random generators that draw on sample-and-hold, noise, stochastic models and libraries of rhythmic patterns lifted from BT's Stutter Edit plugin.
Paralleling the modulation engine in its depth, Phoenix's library of effects features 37 processors, spanning multiple styles of reverb and delay, along with a multimode filter, chorus, flanger, phaser, tape emulation, saturation, distortion, multiband compression, and – as is to be expected in a BT plugin – glitchy rhythmic stutter effects.
That's not all: you also get a 128-step sequencer and arpeggiator with probability control, and Phoenix is MPE-compatible, giving you per-note control over all five dimensions of expression when used with an MPE controller. All in all, this looks like a beast of an instrument, and one of the most ambitious projects we've seen from Spitfire Audio in a long time.
"This is true cross-synthesis," BT said in a press release. "I've spent my entire life exploring synthesis modalities, built on the back of giants, to be sure, and combined and augmented this way, none of this existed before, not even in a related form. This is a dream inspiration engine fully realized."
Currently priced at an introductory discount of £199, Phoenix is available for macOS and Windows in VST3/AU/AAX formats. The synth currently requires an active internet connection to operate, but Spitfire Audio says it will be introducing offline operation in a future update.
Find out more on Spitfire Audio's website.
Watch a conversation between BT and Spitfire Audio's Paul Thomson below.
