Surge, a not-to-be-missed open source Synthesizer plugin for PC/Mac & Linux has received a massive 1.7.0 update with hundreds of changes, new presets & a new black UI.
Surge, formerly a paid product, only became an open source project last year. Since then, developer from all over the world have been working on the project and let their ideas flow into the plugin. It has received some amazing updates and meanwhile it become one of the best free Synthesizer plugins. I’m sure of this.
Today we can welcome another huge update for Surge, which in turn significantly extends the plugin. Surge 1.7.0 adds many new features including new oscillator functions, new FX processors, patches, modulation options, and a large collection of UI enhancements. As a small topping on the free update cake there is a also new black GUI.
The number of changes in Surge 1.7.0 is huge. For this reason, I would only list a few highlights of the update.
Highlights
- Surge now has a dark skin, now runtime skinnable with swappable assets and all synths elements in both skins get “hover” gestures to make the UI more active
- sine-oscillator becomes a mini-synth with more quadrant waveforms, unison mode, extended feedback range including negative, low- & high pass filters…
- built in filters added to Window, S&H and Audio Input Oscillators
- FM2/3 can have negative feedback in new instances.
- new effects: reverb 2 (based on a network of all-pass filters and delays), flanger, ring modulator and effects improvements.
- other DSP changes: unison goes up to 16 on all unison oscillators, surge tuning library…
- modulation and voice management changes
- each voice LFO can now trigger filter and amplifier envelopes.
- desactive the rate of the LFO which makes the LFO take the constant value at current phase.
- step sequencer UI rewrite
- substantial improvements to portamento (add constant rate and constant time modes, multiple portamento rate curves, glissando mode,…)
- Allow the AEG and FEG to moduate LFO states.
- Substantial Linux UI improvements
- new patches from Jacky Ligon, Dan Mauer, Psiome Send…)
- ARM support
- and more…. full change log
The developers did it again. Surge has become even more interesting, versatile and powerful. There is no reason not to like Surge and not to download it for free. You can of course criticize the aging GUI but I think the open source community can do something there too. We will see. I am confident that Surge is not yet at the end of its development.
Surge 1.7.0 is available now as a free download for PC, Mac & Linux.
More information here: Surge
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