Toneboosters Lowtone is a new 3-osc bass Synthesizer for macOS, Windows, and iOS featuring innovative loudness-domain harmonic synthesis.
Many probably know Toneboosters from downloading the 23 free excellent legacy plugins. They did this to make room for new plugins with higher-quality engines etc. This step also led the company to venture into the Synthesizer and iOS world.
In 2021 they released their first synthesizer, Flowtones. A virtual analog synth with great sound quality. The second follows today with Lowtone.
Toneboosters Lowtone
Lowtone is a new Synthesizer plugin with a specific focus. It is primarily dedicated to the bass, a sound often played with this instrument—hardware and software.
To achieve even more detailed and deeper bass, Toneboosters developers have developed a new, innovative engine called loudness-domain harmonic synthesis. Classic synths operate in the linear amplitude domain. This new engine tries to fix the inconsistencies in the loudness and timbres of a bass sound.
The result is: the LDH synthesis adjusts each harmonic individually to compensate for loudness deviations across frequency.
Lowtone consists of three analog-simulated, voltage-controlled oscillators with a wide range of waveforms plus a VC noise. They also offer continuous pulse-width modulation (PWM), frequency modulation (FM), and hard sync.
A newly-designed non-linear voltage-controlled filter with various types with cutoff, resonance controls, and an additional drive circuit follows this. Then, you give your sounds a final touch with high-quality effects, including reverb, chorus, delay, and peak limiter.
Modulation
Modulation side, you get two multi-wave extended low-frequency oscillators (X-LFOs) with beat or key sync options, configurable onset delay, and a specific number of cycles to run. It also hosts a classic ADSR envelope also upgraded with a configurable onset delay.
If you want to create rhythmic patterns, Toneboosters also have added something interesting. It features a gate editor allowing you to create modern modulation patterns very easily. You can route it to the VCO, VCN, and VCF parameters.
On top, you can benefit from a smart randomizer that generates new patches with a single click. Clever, it learns from the patches you have already created to generate new, personalized patches.
At the time of writing this article, there is no sound demo yet. There are some sound samples on the website.
First Impression
An interesting new Bass Synthesizer. I think it’s nice that companies also publish new concepts that try to improve known sounds. You don’t have to completely reinvent the wheel. This is an excellent example that the sound quality of synthesizers is getting better and better.
Toneboosters Lowtone is available now for 24€ for macOS and Windows. It runs as a VST, AU, and AAX plugin on macOS (Intel + native Apple Silicon) and Windows. The iOS version is available on the Apple AppStore for iPad and iPhone with AUv3 support for $9,99.
More information here: Toneboosters
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