Serato has expanded its scope in recent years to encompass both DAWs and sampler plugins.
Today, the company turns its attention to the world of audio effects with the releases of Hex FX, a multi-effects plugin that Serato says is “designed to transform every track with unmistakable color, energy, dimension and movement”.
Hex FX packs a generous selection of 45 audio effects into a single plugin, including bitcrusher, compressor, delay, distortion, reverb and modulation, along with time-stretching and stutter effects. Also on offer are a number of Performance FX taken from Serato DJ.
Up to six effects can be chained together, blended and rearranged using Hex FX’s interface, and the plugin’s Hex Dial can be used to tweak every effect parameter at once with a single macro control. Along the bottom of the main panel you’ll find a basic filter, and controls for stereo width, tone, and mix blend, along with input and output gain.
Hex FX is equipped with more than 100 presets, many of which were designed by a list of artists that includes Disclosure’s Guy Lawrence and hip-hop producer Lord Finesse. “I love the sounds within Hex FX, especially the pitch reverb, saturators, and slap-back tape delays – really inventive,” Lawrence says. “It’s very me. It’s staying in my DAW.”
Priced at $99, Hex FX is compatible with macOS and Windows and available in VST3/AU formats. Find out more on Serato website.
“This should have been built 100 years ago – it may well become the story of 21st-century music”: Hans Zimmer on the next-gen synth he used for the Dune: Part Two score
Synth manufacturer Expressive E has released a new mini-documentary, Behind the Music of Dune 2, with Hans Zimmer, giving viewers an insight into how Zimmer and his team composed the film’s epic and futuristic score.
If you’ve seen either of the two recent Dune movies, you know that the scores, by Hans Zimmer, are an evocative mix of futuristic synthesized sounds, otherworldly ambiences and musical influences from around the world.
With Dune: Part 2, Zimmer created a score that is at the cutting edge of film soundtracks, using state-of-the-art expressive synthesizers to orchestrate his music, with sounds that blur the edge between electronic and acoustic sound.
The video, embedded below, explores how Zimmer created a unique orchestra for the soundtrack:
In the documentary, Zimmer explains that he wanted to avoid composing a traditional orchestral score for the Dune series, in order to place the film, a sci-fi based on Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel Dune, in a different universe. “Why can’t we believe that there will be new instruments, there will be new sonic textures?” Zimmer says. “Why can’t we go and invent new things that don’t remind us, in a peculiar way, of the past?”
In his quest to discover “unique sounds” for the score, Zimmer employed the Osmose, an instrument developed by Expressive E and Haken Audio that he said empowered him to “play the music of an imaginary future”. “We had one or two [Osmoses],” says collaborator Steven Doar, “and we started playing with it, then Hans said ‘we need five more!'”
Announced in 2020 but released last year, Osmose is an MPE-enabled synthesizer and controller that offers performers three dimensions of control from every single key, thanks to its AKA (Augmented Keyboard Action) technology. The first dimension is the initial key press, the second is the synth’s polyphonic aftertouch and the third is the lateral movement of its keys, made possible by the Osmose’s raised keybed. Along with Zimmer, Osmose has earned a number of famous fans since its release, including Flying Lotus and Jean-Michel Jarre.
Rather than having a piece of technology in the room, you suddenly have another musician in the room, that you’re having a conversation with,” Zimmer says of Osmose. “For us, it was an obvious thing once it existed. You’ve built an instrument for Dune, so we should take advantage of that. You guys spent an enormous amount of time building exactly the instrument that should have been built 100 years ago.”
The documentary provides a fascinating glimpse into how Osmose was used to create synthesized vocal lines for the score. “Hans had an idea for this very long vocal part that would just continue throughout a few scenes, and would constantly be evolving,” Doar says. “It was this idea that within one note, so much can happen. That’s what [the Osmose] does,” adds Zimmer. “This instrument allows us to play the music of an imagined future,” notes Zimmer about the Osmose.
Christophe Duquesne, instrument designer for Haken Audio, explains how the team transformed a sample of musician Molly Rogers’ voice into a synth patch using Osmose’s resynthesis feature, giving them the ability to not only play the vocal, as you would with a sampler, but also manipulate its timbral characteristics in real time via the instrument’s expressive keyboard.
“This is an important instrument,” Zimmer says of the Osmose. “It’s an important step forward in what can become the history of 21st-century music. While nations are fighting and politicians are useless, and television programs like The Bachelor are ruining any culture that we might still have left, you guys [Expressive E] went and built something that can actually create beauty and rage and emotion, and all sorts of things that amplify who we are at our best.” High praise indeed.
Find out more about Osmose at Expressive E website.
Today, Behringer announces that its Wave synthesizer, a knockoff of the classic PPG Wave synth, is now shipping from its factory.
The Behringer Wave copies the PPG Wave 2.2, a pioneering digital/analog hybrid synthesizer from the ’80s, beloved by artists such as Depeche Mode and David Bowie. Like the original, the Behringer Wave combines wavetable oscillators – which offer a much wider range of waveforms than traditional analog oscillators – with analog VCFs and VCAs.
Wave was first announced all the way back in 2020, but the brand seems to have ditched the original name of BBG Wave in favour of an only slightly less barefaced ripoff, Behringer Wave. Side note: Wave is not to be confused with Waves, a Eurorack module released by Behringer just a few weeks ago.
Wave is a wavetable synthesizer that shares many similarities with the PPG Wave 2.2 and 2.3, while adding some modern bells and whistles. It’s an 8-voice synth equipped with 16 digital oscillators, each of which can draw from a selection of 30 factory wavetables, themselves containing 64 waveforms, alongside 64 slots for importing your own via Behringer’s SynthTribe app.
Wave is a multitimbral instrument, allowing up to eight different sounds to be layered or split across the keyboard. It’s also capable of both 8-bit and 12-bit wavetable synthesis, so you can recreate the vintage charm of the OG Wave if you so wish. Wave’s oscillators run through a 24db low-pass analogue filter, and can be sequenced using a polyphonic sequencer and multimode arpeggiator. A single LFO is joined by two ADSR envelopes – one more than the original PPG Wave.
As for the hardware, Wave features 49-key, velocity-sensitive keyboard equipped with velocity aftertouch. Though the synth is smaller, its front panel looks remarkably similar to its bright blue forebear, right down to the font and keypad-style buttons on the right-hand side.
Wave is well-equipped in the I/O department, with USB, CV/gate, sync and MIDI in, out and thru joined by a stereo main output, headphone output and eight mono outputs (one for each voice). Expression and sustain pedal inputs are also on board.
The original PPG Wave was a key element of the Tangerine Dream sound in the ’80s, and you’ll hear echoes of this in the audio demos in Behringer’s intro video:
Features:
Wavetable generators and analog VCF and VCA designs based on the PPG* Wave 2.2 and 2.3 from the ’80s
Digital wavetable synthesis with 8 or 16-bit resolution
Aanalog signal path based on original VCF and VCA designs
8 voices configurable in modes such as splits, layers, and unison
30 classic factory wavetables and 64 user-defined wavetables, each comprising 64 waveforms, along with 32 user-defined transients
Import of user wavetables and transients through SynthTribe
200 user presets with storable sequence
Authentic and advanced oscillator modes for versatile sound design
Manual wavetable control for precise navigation through selected table waves with optional crossfading
Two ADSR envelopes for shaping the filter, amplifier, or wavetable position
Additional AD envelope for oscillator pitch modulation or wavetable position control
LFO for creating vibrato, tremolo, or cyclic wavetable sweeps
Built-in polyphonic sequencer optimized for both performance and studio applications
Dual arpeggiator with play modes including up, down, up-down, and random
49 full-size keys featuring velocity, aftertouch and polyphonic portamento for expressive playability
Stereo width control for dynamic voice placement within the stereo field
Individual audio outputs for all 8 voices to enable external processing per voice
CV/Gate and Sync In/Out connectivity for integration with external gear
Expression and sustain pedal support
MIDI implementation for full integration and flexibility
Wave Hands-One Demo:
Behringer Wave is priced at $599, and the company says it is now shipping.
*Note: It typically takes a month or so for new Behringer synths to be available at its ‘super partners’ after it starts shipping.
