TECH NEWS
APP REVIEW
APP NAME : SYNTHORIAL
DEVELOPER : AUDIBLE GENIUS
FORMAT : VST/AU
PRICE :
USD $129.99
YUKSEK
CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT
ROLAND JUPITER 8
“Since becoming the lucky owner of the
Roland Jupiter 8, it has become the central
piece of my studio. As a crazy synth collector I
already have lots of Roland gear like the
Juno60, Sh2, Sh8, MC202. Each one of those
synths has a specific purpose. However, the
Jupiter 8 has everything inside — ‘80s bass
arpeggios, warm subby bass, silk pads,
hardest hits etc.
“It’s an eight voice polyphonic keyboard and
in my opinion only the Memorymoog is
equally interesting in that category, but for
different reasons, they are really
complementary. The Memorymoog is more
‘psychedelic’ and a bit warmer, but that’s
another story. The Jupiter 8 is also more
efficient and easy to use in a mix with other
‘virtual’ keyboards and modern drums. I used
this keyboard on most of my previous songs
and remixes released on my label Partyfine,
like ‘Last Of Our Kinds’, ‘Truth’, and even the
last songs I wrote together with The Magician.
All those songs included a mix of real
instruments, drums but also drum machine, a
few virtual synths and of course the Jupiter 8
on top.
“Compared to all the younger
brothers of the Juno and Jupiter
family this one only misses the
typical Roland chorus, but as soon
as you process it on an external FX
it starts to sing and give its full
potential. It’s really on another
planet.
“People often ask me which
analogue keyboard they should
buy to start a studio and I always
say ‘break your piggy bank and go
ahead’. It’s expensive, but it’s got
everything you need if you want to
get into fat analogue keys.”
0102 djmag.com.au
When producing tracks it is easy to rely
too heavily on pre-sets and often only
tweak a few settings by trial and error.
So wouldn’t it be fantastic to find a
way to learn how to properly program
synthesisers in order to get the best
from the tools already at your disposal?
This is where Synthorial comes in
because it is designed with the sole
purpose of teaching sound design
and synthesiser programming by ear.
Synthorial is much more than just a
tutorial, it teaches producers to stop
relying on presets, and instead to
program the sounds you hear as well
as when, why and how to use over 60
common synth parameters.
There are nearly 200
lessons included within
Synthorial. Each lesson
starts with a video that
teaches one specific
control or group of
controls. Each video
is then followed by
TECH NEWS
SOUNDBYTES
a “challenge” or exercises designed
to give hands-on experience using
the built-in synth within Synthorial.
These challenges are rather clever
and really do push users into properly
understanding the lessons by making
them tweak the parameters on the builtin synth to match the example sounds
from scratch, thus training both the ears
as well as the eyes.
Synthorial is very easy to use, the
design is clever and well thought-out
and this app really will improve your
synth programming skills in a fun stepby-step way that can be completed at
your own pace. And there’s a free demo
to download from Synthorial’s website.
FOCAL
RANGE
VERDICT
8/10
Focal Monitors are a
regular fixture in many
pro-end studios, now
they have taken all their
industry know-how and
put them into their first
pair of pro studio
headphones. The Focal
Spirit Pro headphones
have been designed for
sound engineers, DJs and
pr