Cherry Audio Quadra revives ARP’s “unicorn” analog multi-Synthesizer as a plugin with an extended feature set and full MIDI support.
There are plugins with new ideas and those which emulate other classics from the past. If you wanted the latter, you usually looked at Arturia. Mainly because of the number of available emulations. For some years now, the French developers have had stiff competition from the US. Cherry Audio has published a huge portfolio of great-sounding emulation at a very fair price in a very short time.
Today comes the next emulation of a classic. This time they emulate the ARP Quadra, a rare Synthesizer from 1978.
Cherry Audio Quadra
As a reminder: the ARP Quadra was an utterly-unique 61-keys analog Synthesizer that combined multiple “engines” in a single instrument. A mixture of many previous ARP products including the Omni, Odyssey, a Solina-esque string Synthesizer, and a divide-down organ with envelope. Plus, it offers a (4075) 24dB lowpass filter, and a phaser unit. All this is divided into 4 sections.
Cherry Audio’s emulation took this concept, emulated the circuits in detail, and put it in a new Quadra plugin with an extended feature set and much more flexibility. This can be seen already in the layout. Each instrument section can now be layered anywhere across the keyboard with increased transposition ranges. While the original had fixed layers.
Then, the paraphonic polysynth section has been upgraded with new waveforms, an additional octave, optional oscillator drift, velocity control, and new modulation options (PWM…). The Lead synth also got a significant makeover with additional waveforms, a new powerful arpeggiator, adjustable note priority, and more. The developers also transform the initial LFO design into a full-featured, multi-wave, syncable LFO making it a much more powerful modulator. The Cherrys also added a flexible bender section.
Effects
The Arp Quadra has a built-in phaser unit. This was also taken into account in the development. Thus the CA Quadra ships with a modeled 14-stage phaser but also with entirely-new effects. Including chorus/flanger, echo, and reverb. Handy, hese can be assigned individually to each layer. So you can only have effects on specific areas.
The plugin includes a multiple out version for maximum flexibility. The standard “Quadra” instance mixes the four sections to a summed output while the multi gives you five sets of outputs. A standard stereo mix and dry independent outputs for each section, as found on the original hardware.
CS Quadra ships with over 450 presets programmed by professional sound designers (Julie Kathryn, Huston Singletary, Katharine Fountain…). And of course, it has full MIDI support and DAW automation for all controls. Try that with the original one, hehe.
At first glance, another very exciting emulation by Cherry Audio of a classic synth from the past. All the more exciting because it is an emulation where there are hardly any others.
Cherry Audio (CA) Quadra is available now for an introductory price of $39 USD instead of $59 USD. It runs as a VST, VST3, AU, AAX, and standalone on macOS and Windows. If you purchase Quadra at Plugin Boutique, you get a free plugin on top.
More information here: Cherry Audio
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