Despite all the initial hype about Fxpansions new synth trio DCAM Synth Squad, can't say it initially caught my interest. Boring bread and butter synthesizers, I thought. No, not just boring. Pointless. One one-oscillator synthesizer, one string synthesizer (yawn) and one half interesting analogue/FM-hybrid deal. Fxpansion must really have run out of ideas.

One of the good things about being me, is that I never cease to be amazed how utterly stupid I can be. DCAM turned out to be one of the most important things that have happened in the software synth scene for a very long time.

It wasn't after I read a review in Computer Music that I no longer could resist taking Synth Squad for a serious test drive. The audio demos on the website didn't caught my interest in any sense, and it wasn't until I started to watch the short video tutorials I've realized that this wasn't an average collection of synthesizers.

The first thing I did was to fire up Cypher, which might be considered as the hottest member of the squad. This quickly turned out to be a mistake. Cypher is huge and I lost myself time after time, and like any other eager noob I had to swallow my pride and get down to the basics: beginning with Strobe.

While Strobe indeed is the most simple synthesizer in Synth Squad – it's far from simple. Actually, it's one of the coolest synthesizers I've ever laid my perverted virtual hands on, and it succeeds with this by combining great oscillators with great filters in the smartest modulation system I've seen. Actually, that's pretty much the condensed version of this text. If you're itching to burn your money on a bag of fresh synthesizers – this is it. You don't need to know anything more. Go buy Synth Squad right now. For the rest, I'll try to explain how Strobe works and what's so damn clever about it.

Let's start with the technical side of it. Basically Strobe is a basic monophonic analogue synthesizer. Actually nothing in the previous sentence is correct. It's not basic. It's not monophonic. And it's quite virtual. But never mind that. If you think about it as an analogue monosynth you are in the right mindset. Strobe has been inspired by the simplicity and directness of analogue classics such as the Roland SH101, Oberheim OB-1 and Yamaha CS-10. The good thing about those synthesizers is that you can dial up basic sounds in practically no time - the bad thing is that the sonic palette is limited.

While Strobe have its roots in the performance type of synthesizers – it expands the functionality in some clever ways, which broadens the possible sounds without sacrificing the simplicity.

At its heart Strobe has one single oscillator which allows you gradually to create a mix of saw, pulse or noise waveforms. On top of this (or rather at the bottom) there is a sub-oscillator that follows the pitch of the main oscillator. As with the main oscillator you can create your own waveform by mixing sine, triangle, saw and pulse waveforms. An interesting detail is that each waveform can be set in three octave levels. There is also a stacking function that allows you to add up to five copies of the oscillator output and detune them.

This is a quite big improvement compared with the old monophonic synthesizers Strobe is inspired from. Working with the oscillator is a pleasure. It's a perfect balance between usability and features, and in conjunction with the lfo and the sync function you can create quite complex sounds. No complaints from the master of whining? Well, yes. Sort of. During the process of creating a soundset for Strobe, I sometimes felt the wish to individually being able to freely transpose the main oscillator from the sub-oscillator. While this would radically expand the possible sounds for Strobe – I also understand why it isn't possible. But developers should understand that we journalists have magical powers and we must be Obeyed and Worshipped. Oh well, time for the hourly pill.

Like with all subtractive synthesizers, the tone from the oscillator goes to the filter, and in the case of all modern synthesizers, the filter is a multimode that can be set to lowpass, highpass, bandpass, peak and notch, plus a couple of variants where the different filters are combined. Of all the parts of a synthesizer, the filters are almost all about personal taste, but in my book the filters in Strobe are the finest I've ever encountered. Ever. Just the normal four-pole resonant lowpass sounds like a dream. It's exact but still has a slight grainy feeling to it – you push up the drive and the sound gets an injection of steroids. Muscular with a touch of danger, but it never goes into la-la land. The combined filters are great and gives the power of up to three(!) filters in serial. Particularly the lowpass/notch combinations can be seriously effective when wanting to boost a part of the signal while keeping the feeling of lowpass filtering. There is also a combined notch/low- and highpass variation that is like an exotic flavor of bandpass. Cool filters all the way, in other words – but what impressed me most was that they all are usable, rather than interesting from a technical point of view.

If I may come with some constructive criticism. I can't say it's really missing me, but I would be very curious to hear how Strobe would sound with an aggressive comb-filter, such as the one found in Waldorf Largo. A combined comb/lowpass filter would probably be something that could expand the sonic capabilities quite far.

But as all good programmers of synthesizers know – oscillators and filters might be the meat and potatoes of a synthesizer, but where the actual dish gets made is in the modulation – and here Fxpansion creates a new system that brings modulation to a whole new level. The normal way of doing modulation is either that the sources have a number of fixed destinations that you can choose from. This method comes largely from old analogue synthesizers. With a switch you could for example set if the modulation wheel should affect the cutoff, the speed of the lfo or maybe the volume of an oscillator. The more modern way is by the modulation matrix, which collects all sources and destinations in one convenient place.

The modulation in the DCAM synthesizers is neither. Or to be more exact, actually a combination of both. I would say that the method used is like a visual modulation bar. Getting into the modulation system takes a little time and the best way of doing it is to watch a few videos on Youtube.
Basically it works like this. At the modulation bar at the top of, you click on which kind of source you would like to use. Then you locate the destination parameter and dial in the amount of modulation you want to use. Done.
This is executed in a visual and clear way and although you don't have a command centre in form of a matrix showing you an overview of all your modulations – you never feel lost or that things are getting too complex.

In fact, the modulation system in Strobe is so powerful that you actually can trick the synthesizer to create an additional oscillator with its own filter, envelopes and lfo. No, this is not a typo. The technique is done by by taking one of the unison voices and let it become a modulator itself. Does it sound complicated? I agree, it does. But the way to activate this feature this is in fact very easy. The only drawback with this is that it's not as easy to figure out what's going on with the second oscillator – although this is something you get used to, I personally prefer to add the extra oscillator last.

Conclusion
The only thing I dislike about all the DCAM synths is regarding the settings of quality for the plugin. Despite its simple appearance Strobe is very heavy on the cpu. When I mean heavy, I mean 50-percent-swallowed-up-by-a-monophonic-sawtooth-on-a-dual-core-two-gigahertz-Macbook kind of heavy. You can reduce the load by selecting a lower quality setting – and Fxpansion also provides you with a alternative setting for rendering, so you can have one setting when Strobe is playing in real time, and another (possibly higher quality) setting when Strobe is being rendered to an audio file.
That there is a setting for controlling the quality is good – to have two settings is not. If you have two different settings here, the chances are high that the sounds is going to sound different in realtime and after being rendered to disk.

DCAM Synth Squad is the finest software synthesizer package I've ever bought and I say this even if I've only gotten as far as the smallest sibling in the family. It's with great anticipation I now turn to the other two. There is little that doesn't impress with Strobe. The filters are among the best I've ever heard and the modulation capabilities are making complex sounds easy to create – and best of all. It's so damn easy to use. DCAM Synth Squad might actually be the synthesizers that will rule them all. Watch this space.

Fxpansion DCAM Synth Squad Strobe
Web: Fxpansion.
Price: 217 Euros including EU tax (189 Euros without tax).
Good: Powerful, yet incredibly simple to use. Fantastic filters and intelligent modulation.
Bad: Nothing really. The double quality settings can be of annoyance, but once that's set it's fixed.

Review copy: bought from Fxpansion for full price.