We stumbled across one feature-packed instrument guaranteed to keep both preset cruisers and die-hard synth heads happy. Best of all it’s free…

Free Or Newly Free

Incredibly, a sizable number of independent developers continue to produce a whole range of high quality software tools that are absolutely free to use. While some of these are conceived and developed as free solutions, others start life as paid products before being gifted to the world for any number of reasons. Often individual developers move on, perhaps to work on another venture, or even to work for one of the big names leaving their creations behind. Without the considerable skill set it takes to maintain a software product as computer hardware and operating systems, and other factors evolve, developers are left with some decisions to make. Luckily for the user, often it is decided that it’s better to make the product free to use and maintainable by others.

Surge XT

After some time away, Surge has been made open source for use by those running any Intel or silicon-equipped Macs, as well as Linux and Windows 7 systems onwards. The plugin comes in AU and VST3 flavours. Thanks to the generosity of @Kurasu (owner of Vember Audio), Surge XT can be accessed as part of the surge-synthesizer GitHub project.

Described as a sound designer’s dream, Surge XT is a fully functional hybrid synth featuring many synthesis techniques, a great selection of filters, a flexible modulation engine, a fully-blown effects engine, and modern features like MPE and microtuning.

Employing subtractive hybrid architecture, each of the 2779 factory patches can access up 614 wavetables containing two scenes which are separate instances of the entire synthesis engine (except effects) that can be used to create layered or split patches. Also included is a quick category-based patch browser with textual search and favourites. Hear it for yourself as we prove it’s not just for tweakheads, providing fresh usable sounds to compliment any arrangement.

More For Your DAW

While no-one is pretending that DAWs don’t come bundled with everything creators might need to make music, it’s true to say that with most users lean on a very small pool of well-known instruments. With that in mind, there’s never been a better time to break away and use something different.

Watch below as synth legend Roger Linn gets further in-depth with Surge XT using his groundbreaking LinnStrument controller. Surge XT has its own YouTube channel as well featuring this and other videos.