WaveCrest continues a series of vintage synthesizers – this time we present the beautiful, grainy, warm sound of the Ensoniq SQ80. Where the original keyboard has a 3-oscillator architecture, WaveCrest deviates from the tradition in favor of something a little more unusual: six cyclic oscillators plus an attack of waveforms. Six cyclic waves are controlled by phase LFOs, so they fall into a common patch, constantly changing the timbre. Choosing which waves will be reproduced and how quickly they will become obsessed, you can get soft tones of slowly developing sound or bright metallic sounding patches.
In addition, on a looped wave, you can also add one of 12 attack samples, which makes it easy to get a characteristic vibration of a flute, string bow or guitar. In these samples of attacks, the levels can be independently adjusted, so it is possible to create patches without them to get impressive soundscapes.
Each cyclic wave can be selected from a pool with 54 signals by the Wave Select slider. They can appear in a musical sense with a soft, warm sound in the lower frequencies or a bright, sharp sound with higher harmonics. This makes it easy to create patches that either change slightly (choose six waves from the limited area of the slider move), or enable a sharp change in tone (select alternately from the top and bottom of the slider bar). Then adjust how quickly they will loop in using the Sweep Rate knob, which has a range of 10 seconds to 1 second. Or, of course, you can click on the “Glitch” button, which randomizes everything.
Then, the entire variable signal can be further processed with a switchable 2- or 4-pass low pass filter, a dedicated high-pass filter, various LFOs, an overload circuit (for adding heat in an analog style), and a grain inspector that gradually reduces the depth and sampling frequency . There are, of course, our usual effects, as well as Lexicon’s convolutional digital reverberation for some authentic shine.
WaveCrest is distinguished primarily by its digital pads with a lot of tonal movement: think about the sounds in the early albums of Peter Gabriel. Since sound was developed from the very beginning as a cyclic and evolving sound, it is great for drones and long sounds; although the waves of attack mean that you can also get steep percussive sounds from it.
Regardless of whether you want to create something flickering in sound or dramatic, WaveCrest is able to do this.
Publisher : Rhythmic Robot
Format : KONTAKT
