Binarysqurae Offworld is a new colorful virtual analog Synthesizer plugin for macOS and Windows that is inspired by various vintage synths.
The synth adventure often begins with an analog or virtual analog Synthesizer. This form of subtractive synthesis is the most common and the easiest for beginners. Commercial or free? Well, the market is full of VA synths. There are excellent VA synths for money as well as freeware.
Honestly, developing a VA synthesizer that breaks through the wall is very difficult. New releases almost always quickly disappear from musicians’ focus and join the list of many virtual analog synths. Even with such difficult conditions, interest remains. New developer Binarysquare has released a new synth that goes this route.
My favorite goto synth has always been the Moog Voyager. It’s by far the most inspiring hardware analog synth to my ears. The Yamaha CS-80 and DK Synergy are awesome too.
So I set out 13 years ago, not knowing a thing about Digital Signal Processing (DSP), to develop a software plug-in that captures that organic, almost alive sound that Bob Moog created. Well… I believe it’s finally done.
Offworld is not suppose to be a copy of anything. It’s the best parts of my favorite synths, put together in a way that inspires me musically. I hope it inspires you too.
Binarysquare Offworld
Don’t be fooled by the company name BinarySquare. The new Synthesizer Offworld doesn’t dive into the fascinating dirty 8-bit world. But that can be experienced in the games for iOS that the developer has also developed.
Offworld is a new colorful virtual analog Synthesizer plugin for macOS and Windows with three vintage-style oscillators and 16-note polyphony.
Key Features
- three vintage style oscillators with continuously morphing waveforms (sine, triangle, sawtooth, square, and pulse)
- alias free with full piano range
- noise generator (white/pink, frequency)
- oscillator hard sync and ring modulation
- 12dB/24dB lowpass and highpass filters (cutoff, resonance, amount)
- glide (normal, legato)
- keyboard mode (polyphonic, monophonic, legato)
- two AHDSR (attack, hold, decay, sustain, release) with looping function
- a multi-wave LFO with delay, rate and drift controls
- stereo delay with time, feedback, wideness, and mix controls
- resizable GUI
- 16 note polyphony
- ….
First Impression
First of all, congratulations to the developer for releasing his first synthesizer. However, I must say clearly that the plugin is not a big highlight. It’s tough, but I’m honest. This is mainly because it offers nothing new, fresh, or innovative that we have not seen in 100 other VA synths, including free synths.
You must make a lot different from the competition to get out of the crowd with a simple virtual synth in 2023. The word vintage or a colored GUI is not enough. And the regular asking price is for the year 2023 too high. Always remember: VAs are the most widespread synths out there, and how many people want another straightforward VA? I say very few.
Update: it looks like the developer has changed the price to $60. That’s a better price for the plugin.
Binarysquare Offworld is available now for $60. It runs as a VST3 and AU plugin on macOS (Intel + native Apple Silicon support) and Windows.
More information here: Binarysquare
oh boy!
It is not a bad sounding synth but also 60 dollars is a too expensive price for what it does. Cherry audio synths cost half and do double of the things. Unfortunately I don’t see a lot of market for offworld.
Maybe at 20 bucks someone could pull the trigger but not at 120/100/60.
This synth isn’t about features, it’s about quality of the sound. Try the free demo, it sounds as good as a $3,000 Minimoog Voyager. Priced at $100, it’s a bargain. Each note of each waveform (morphable) contains all harmonic partials under the nyquist for the chosen sample rate with no aliasing. It’s the most amazing sounding synth you’ll ever buy. Check out the albums “Galactical” and “Electric Sheep” by Danny Bliss (streaming everywhere). Everything you hear is Offworld (including the drums).