Review of Synapse Audio Dune: After years of hibernation old softsynth maestros Synapse Audio once again show their skill in creating synthesizers. Dune is a synth clearly aimed for the electronic dance music scene, and gives synths such as Sylenth 1, ElectraX and even Nexus a tough run for the money.

 

 

In the vacuum of reFX not getting their act together and release their highly anticipated and delayed Vanguard 2, the competition is getting harder by the moment. Apart from the hailed Sylenth 1 - which is a damn fine synthesizer - during the months of 2010 we saw the release of two entirely new products squarely aimed for this genre: ElectraX by Tone2 and Dune by Synapse Audio.

Synapse Audio?! Yeah. _The_ Synapse Audio. Last time I was checking out their plugs was when they just released Hydra, which was about eight years ago - which in terms of soft synth development is equal to the Jurassic period.

An unexpected surprise - but not totally so. After all, while new developers come and go like trendy t-shirts, Synapse Audio has not been bought up, thrown in the towel, asked its users to kindly f-ck off, nor faded away. From this perspective, Synapse Audio deserves respect, and when their first synth in almost a decade shows up - and as I remembered how impressed I was with Hydra when it came out - I directly wrote a pathetic email to Synapse asking them for a review copy, which they kindly accepted.

WHAT IT IS
Directly snatched from the documentation, Dune is 'a next-generation software synthesizer plugin designed for creating music on a computer. It was developed with the highest possible audio quality in mind and offers exceptional flexibility. The latter is achieved by its modulation system, the new differential unison engine (DUNE) — hence the name. Despite the complexity of the synthesizer, the highly optimized code allows Dune to run even on older computers.'

Stripped down to its core it says:

• high quality
• flexibility via modulation system
• new synth engine
• optimized code

Of these there were two that caught my eye. Optimized code means it's not a cpu hog like Synth Squad which still demands a cutting-edge computer. A cpu effective synth alone lays the foundation of a to-go-plug for many, including me. The talk about the DUNE engine only halfway caught my mind - there are way too many acronyms (Differential UNison Engine) and since almost each new release of soft synthesizers bears the promise of being revolutionary, a whole new engine etc and so on.

Everything is so damn hyped these days, that the good stuff gets lost in the noise. But the real test of anything is to hook it up and let it speak for itself.

PRESETS
Any regular visitor to Plughugger knows my affection of presets, and this is what grabbed me by the [something]. Already from preset number three I was wide awake and had a genuine interest in what this DUNE engine actually was.

Being an old preset designer/slut, I found these presets to be absolutely excellent. Inspirational and walking that fine line of show-off and usability. Expect some nasty bass expansions coming out from the Plughugger Laboratories for this one.

ARCHITECTURE

In its purest form, Dune is a subtractive synthesizer built upon the classic blocks of oscillator, amplifier, filter, modulation and lastly an effects stage. I won't be wasting space and time by going through each and every button in Dune, but rather highlight the noteworthy parts.
Already in the oscillator section you see evidence of smart design. There are three oscillators in Dune of which the two first can be set to saw, square and sine, or any of the 69 additional waveforms. The two first oscillators is crammed into one module, something that is quite convenient.

Although I said Dune is a subtractive synthesizer, you can also treat the sounds with ring modulation and also fm modulation. Although the fm modulation is as basic as it can get (one oscillator modulating another) this is very welcome feature and expands the possible sounds a lot. Fm with only two oscillators is also quite manageable.
Before we leave the first oscillator module, I'd like to put the focus on the two knobs that are controlling the oscillators 'fatness'. Set to zero, the oscillator produces the sound of your selection, set to anything above adds six more oscillators with a increased detuning. Which means that you already can have 14 detuned (15 with the third oscillator) already before you come to the Unison engine of Dune.

What this means is that Dune can sound sharp, hard and surgical by using single waveforms, all the way to massive-wall-of-sound (tm).

The third oscillator is simpler and can be set to saw, square or not sine, but triangle, and/or noise of your choice. The third oscillator cannot be transposed and it best regarded as a     sub oscillator.

The sound quality of the oscillators is in the top range. You don't have that crunchy subliminal analog vibe as with DCAM Synth Squad, but the waveforms are clear and full of harmonics. Although roughly 72% of all cool synth sounds are built upon the sawtooth, the additional waveforms is very appreciated and expands the possible sounds in ways that spans in a whole different direction than what fm and ring modulation can do. Some of these waveforms sound organic - some very digital. Me personally, became most happy with the sine-esque tones, since pure sine waves are sometimes hell to work with. So with a few added harmonics, it's easier to create nice sine-sounding sounds. About half of them is totally new, half comes from Hydra (updated & recalculated to sound better the creator of Dune informed me).

Some of these additional waveforms can produce aliasing when played in extreme pitch. While many people consider aliasing to be The Bad, I'm not. Well, sure, I've had my share of annoyance of aliasing at times, but it's no sworn archenemy of mine. Sometimes I actually like it - a good example when aliasing is a desirable side effect is the reFX PlastiCZ which alias very easily something that contributes to its artificial sound. Mind you, this just happens with a few of the 69 waveforms and is not anything what I would call a problem.

FILTER
As one might expect from a plugin year 2011, the filter offers enough flexibility to satisfy most needs except for the most specific. I can gladly report that there is only one filter module in Dune, and although a handful of the selectable filter types includes an additional filter in serial, there are no way of setting up a parallel filter in Dune. Thanks for that! Although having two separate filters is cool and all, and sound designers just love being able to muck about with different portions of the sounds in separate filters. But as a musician, I damn hate it. I always end up having to add a separate filterplug after the instrument, since there is no way you can create the filter cuts you would like to have in your music.

I won't go into detail for each and every filter mode, but on the whole Dune gives a respectable amount of filters and quality. The normal lowpass has a very pronounced resonant edge to it - not at all like the Moog-type Ladder filter (although there is one included) that to my ears always sounded like a hipass-filter with an added sinus wave when used in a high resonant setting. I know people swear on the Moog filters, but I'm not one of them.

There are a couple of interesting additions such as the combined lowpass filters with various distorters, such as saturation and bitcrusher(!). Especially the bitcrusher version gives a very pleasant degradation of the sound.
There is also a comb filter, but unfortunately that one didn't raise my pulse at all. I guess that once you've been touched by the comb filter in the Waldorf Largo, there is no looking back.

THE DUNE ENGINE - What Dune is all about
As we already covered, DUNE is an acronym of Differential UNison Engine, and is what separates this synthesizer from others.

To explain what this is all about, we have to start in a different corner, the unison mode to be exact. The unison function has historically been a way for synthsizers to create one huge sound by combining all available voices in the synthesizer. It creates a sound, similar to the chorus effect, but much more pronounced and stronger. In modern synthesizers, there usually ways you can control the unison, such as amount of voices, detune and how it should be spread in the stereo panorama.

The Dune engine is all of that, but instead of just having control over number of voices, detune and spread - Dune let you individually control each and every detuned voice.

This idea is as brilliant as it is daring. By using unison instead of stacking sounds on each other, you solve lots of problems one among them phase issues. But how the h-ll can you have control over individual voices in unison without creating a huge mess while editing?

The answer lies in the modulation matrix, which lets you specifically address any parts of the synthesizer, including specific voices in the unison.

Normally, in a modulation matrix you are given the opportunity to connect let say a lfo with a low pass filter. To make things more interesting, you can make additional connections such as the modulation wheel controls the speed of the lfo. This is all old news. But with Dune, you can apply this filtering lfo - that you control with the modulation wheel - on the third unison voice. The fourth unison voice, you might have set to a radically different pitch, such as 19 semitones up.

Instead of using oscillators for creating intervals and chord-like sounds, you simply take one oscillator and set the individual unison voices to different pitches.

I could go on forever, but let me just underline the obvious. The design possibilities with this thing are staggering. And before I forget. It's possible to solo selected unison voices, which make detailed settings easy.

ARPEGGIATOR

The arpeggiator in Dune reminds me a lot of the arpeggiator in the Linplug/Rob Papen Albino synthesizer, in the respect that you can use it both as a composition tool or as a modulator, for creating rhythmical changes of desired parameters. But the arpeggiator in Dune got swing, you can use it for chords and there are a couple of very clever new modes that let you create more sophisticated arpeggios.
If the Virus TI and Waldorf range of synthesizers were the kings of clever arpeggiators, this one takes it to a level above. Initally, I was dubious about the text-based interface to control the arpeggiator - rather than using nifty graphics. But after using Dune for a couple of weeks, I cannot say that I'm really bothered by it.

EFFECTS

The effect section is made by six effects: distortion, two parametric eqs, one phaser/chorus, delay and reverb. The distortion is alright - it got a handful of different variations coupled together with filter settings. But although they sound nice and are capable of beefing up the sound, I think it really could do better with some more oumpf. Tarzan needs a new set of hairs on the chest.
The equalizers are good, no remarks, and can be set to Peaking, Lo or Hi Shelf.
The phaser/chorus was a pleasant surprise. It contains quite a few different flavors, and all of them scores top marks in my book. None of them muddles up the bass or takes over the sound and transforms into a mushy soup. Good!
The delay and reverb is the most important effects of any synthesizer, and here Dune does not disappoint. The quality of the reverb is not that high, but together with the oscillators - it's perfect. Synthetic sounds work well with synthetic reverb. Both the reverb and delay can be set in many different variations and filter out the bass frequencies or damp the higher frequencies on both.

INTERFACE
When it comes to the interface, I must say that I am double. On one hand, it's well laid out, very easy to operate and you never lose your way due to some extravagant animations or hardcore 3d renderings. But - judging by the looks, Dune is not bad looking, but looks a bit, eh, dull. Compared with the skinable and hardcore rendered ElectraX that looks like a toy factory covered in syrup, Dune might give the visual impression that it's just a synth among the others.

While I do prefer toned down interfaces, I wouldn't be upset for a few graphical improvements.

Just like Sylenth 1 there is a big display in the middle of the interface, which gives you access to the modulation routing and the arpeggiator/sequencer. One smart feature is that when selecting new presets, the included comments show up in this display. This information is generally a description of the sound and what function the modulation wheel has. But this opportunity is down to the sound designers, and after going through them all - not all designers took that opportunity.

Although most parameters in Dune can be controlled via midi cc's. When I was writing this review it was with version 1.2 that didn't have midi learn - just fixed controllers. But A couple of weeks later, v1.3 dropped down with, yes - midi learn. Good support!

CONCLUSION
Dune is like a heat-seeking missile set for dance music. I am not a big fan of reviewers throwing out statements like 'I was blown away' or simply using the retarded 'awesome'. But in many respects that's how I would sum up Dune. Although I feel Dune would do better in a set of fashionable clothes, the interface and inner mechanics works without glitches or head-scratching. It's powerful, sounds very good and fun to create sounds with. Masterful job, Synapse Audio.

Synapse Audio Dune
Web: www.synapse-audio.com.
Price: 129 euro.
Good: Fantastic sound, very clever features, easy to use.
Bad: Only negative I could find, was that the interface is a bit boring.

Review copy: thanks to Synapse Audio for NFR.