Recording - April 2018 - 50

IOS
MUSIC
TOOLS

SOUNDWARE

FOR THE
SONGWRITER
IK Multimedia
Syntronik for iOS
Free with in-app purchases
(individual libraries $9.99, full library
$79.99); www.ikmultimedia.com
IK Multimedia has been selling incredibly
useful virtual instruments based on its
SampleTank architecture for many years
now, and has settled into a very solid
access model that works on Mac/PC as
well as iOS. You can buy the full version
for a certain amount, or get started with
a free version that just gives you a taste
of the possibilities, adding more libraries
to get precisely what you need and no
more. (After you've done this a couple of
times, you usually realize that you may
as well save some money by buying
everything up front, because everything
sounds so good and you're just going to
end up buying it all anyway...)
Syntronik is IK Multimedia's latest such
instrument. It's available at full resolution
as a full-featured plug-in for macOS and
Windows for $299.99, but this review
covers the iOS version (playable standalone or as an AUv3 plug-in), which is a
lot cheaper but still one remarkable stack
of synths.
Syntronik is based on a common synthesizer architecture that uses heavily
multisampled synth tones run through
models of four different famous filter
chips and 37 classic effects, with circuit
behavior like tuning drift modeled as
well. As a result, while the 17 instruments
inside Syntronik look completely different
and have very different tonalities, a
50

RECORDING April 2018

closer look reveals that they all share
precisely the same controls, making it
easy to learn to program everything
at once.
The 17 instruments are made from
sampling 38 famous synthesizers and
string machines from Alesis, ARP, Elka,
Hohner, Moog, Oberheim, PPG,
Roland, Sequential Circuits, and Yamaha.
A few companies are heavily represented
(twelve models are Moog and ten are
Roland), while the others are represented
by one or two special models: the
Alesis Andromeda, ARP 2600, PPG
Wave 2.3, Sequential Prophet-5/10, a
variety of string machines, and-in a
juxtaposition that left me scratching my
head-Yamaha's behemoth CS-80 and
GX-1 teamed up with the teeny-tiny
CS-01II. Huh?
As individual instruments, the sounds
in Syntronik are pretty darned impressive.
There are over 1000 patches in the full
version that showcase a wide variety
of synthesizer timbres, with the unique
characteristics of each machine shining
through, even though the overall
architecture is the same. This is helped
a lot by the fact that instead of one
basic filter, Syntronik has four of them,
each one a great-sounding model of a
classic design.
However, Syntronik totally goes over
the top when you go beyond the basic
synth sounds. Because the actual synth
architecture is very CPU-efficient, each
instrument can be run through independent
effects chains-one chain of up to five
modeled effects per instrument. The effects
themselves are worth the price of
admission all on their own; they're
models of classic dynamics processors,
overdrives, preamps, EQ, modulation
effects, delays, reverb, and more, many
of which can tempo-sync to your DAW.

And as if that wasn't enough, four of
these instrument/effect combinations
can be layered into a Multi, with each
instrument having its own key range for
splits and layers, relative volume, pan
position, MIDI controller assignments,
and mute/solo capability. Once again,
the CPU efficiency of Syntronik lets it play
these massive sounds at low latency with
no buffer noise.
Some folks might miss the fact that
Syntronik isn't multitimbral; you can't
address individual layers on different
MIDI channels. That doesn't bother me
very much, but your applications may
vary. I find Syntronik to be a luscious
resource for replacing a full-on keyboard
stack for live shows and on-the-go playing, and I'm only just beginning to delve
into what I can do with Multis. It should
keep me very busy and very happy,
while I dream of IK releasing a version
loaded with Mellotron sounds...!-MM

Embertone
Sensual Sax
$4.99; www.embertone.com
Last but not least, here's a fun little
app from Embertone that takes the idea
of "the instrument suggests the genre"
completely over the top. Sensual Sax
is a multisampled saxophone instrument
with built-in effects that's designed to
evoke the role of the sax in many film
and TV dramas-namely, that when
a solo sax starts playing with lots of
quavering vibrato and reverb, people
are going to be tearing each other's
clothes off.
http://www.ikmultimedia.com http://www.embertone.com
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