Terrain Synth Explores New Territory For Sound Design
At Knobcon 2025, held Sept 5-7 in the Chicagoland area, Conductive Labs previewed a new instrument, Terrain Synth, along with an interesting new approach to synthesis.
Conductive Lab CTO Steve Barile explained that Terrain Synth is new hardware synth that’s based on Terrain synthesis.
Here’s how Terrain synthesis works:
- Terrains are essentially 3D maps of a landscape. You can think of Terrains like a topographic map that reflects the altitude of the land it maps.
- As you move a point across the Terrain, you can sample the ‘altitude’ of the map. This series of samples creates a waveshape – similar to the way that exercise trackers can map over time the altitude of hikes or rides that you take.
- The resulting waveshapes are a function of both the Terrain map and the path that you take across the Terrain.
The Terrain Synth lets you select from a library of Terrains and a library of paths, which results in a huge variety of waveshapes to start with. But it also lets you modulate the Terrain and path, and even to customize these options.
It gets much deeper than this, too. You can control the angle of your path, combine two terrains per voice, use multi-layer terrains and more. Other synthesis options include suboscillators; deep modulation options with LFOs, envelopes and more; several varieties of noise; a wide range of effects; layering; and more.
The Terrain Synth is also four-part multi-timbral, with 8 voices per part. This makes it a great partner for Conductive Labs’ NDLR, which is designed to let you sequence four different parts.
The Terrain Synth also has a dedicated mixer, so you control panning, volume and effects for each voice. It also lets you control how the four parts map to your keyboard, supporting splits, layering and more.
Conductive Labs have also designed the Terrain Synth to fit into modern electronic music studios, with support for DIN & USB MIDI, along with 6 CV/Gate patch points.
Here’s an overview with Conductive Labs CTO Steve Barile, via CatSynth TV:
Features:
- Unique terrain oscillators
- 32-note polyphony, with 8-voices per timbre
- Four timbres that can be split or stacked
- Two morphable terrains per voice
- Up to 7x unison per voice
- Two sub-oscillators (-1 & -2 octaves) per voice
- White Pink, Blue & Brown Noise
- Oscillator sync, phase distortion, mirroring and windowing
- 17 math-based terrains with infinite resolution
- Dozens of image-based terrains
- User-loadable terrains
- 18 morphable paths with infinite resolution
- Dedicated mixer for timbre layers
- LFO, Envelope and Expressive-matrix per parameter
- On-board effects, including Delay, Ping-Pong Delay, Reverb, Shimmer Reverb, Chorus, Flanger, Phaser, Stereo Phaser, Overdrive and Decimator
- Dedicated sequencer, arpeggiator and audition buttons
- Hundreds of sortable presets
- Onboard preset librarian
- 36 quick access patch favorites
- Multi-level patches, Init, Copy & Paste
- Infinite encoders
- 7″ IPS display
- Selectable terrain view angles and color schemes
- MIDI IO via 5-pin DIN, USB Host and USB Device ports
- 6x CV/Gates
- 3x expression pedal inputs
- Left/Right balanced stereo and headphone (w/volume control)
- Desktop/4U rack configurations
Terrain Synth Audio Demos:
Conductive Labs is planning to fund initial production of the Terrain Synth via a crowdfunding project. Barile said that they expect to open up orders within the next couple of weeks. You can sign up to be notified when this launches at the Conductive Labs site.
In the meantime, check out the details and overview, and share your thoughts on the Terrain Synth in the comments!
