VAST Dynamics has turned its Vaporizer 2 hybrid wavetable Synthesizer/sampler into a FREE plugin with an open-source code.
In September, VAST Dynamics re-released its hybrid synth Vaporizer 2 as a free download. Plus, they made it available to the open-source community. Good news today. VAST Dynamics has published the first big update 3.4.0 since the re-release.
One of the major changes is that it now features native Apple Silicon and LV2 Linux support. I’m very happy about this because I haven’t been able to try out the plugin on my M yet.
Then it now has micro tuning support (AnaMark Tuning files .TUN support), a 32-note polyphony mode, and major improvements for the performance, stability, and GUI. You can also explore all-new factory presets. Plus, they improved the installers.
The plugin is again on the right track to becoming a great success. Glad to see the update
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Article From September 26, 2023
Yesterday, SocaLabs released Wavetable, a comprehensive, straightforward, designed free wavetable Synthesizer plugin for macOS, Windows, and Linux. Today, the list of free synthesizer plugins is expanded by another one.
VAST Dynamics, developer of the Vaporizer 2 Synthesizer, released in 2019, today announced that its plugin is now open-source under GPL3. It is now off-sale and is available as a free download. So, two free wavetable synth plugins in one week. In terms of features, this one massively surpasses yesterday’s synth.
Open-Source Decision
This milestone comes after five years of dedicated development and we are thrilled to share it with the public. This does not invalidate existing licenses – they remain fully valid and guarantee support.
Our motivation behind this move is to create a community-driven development environment that fosters innovation and encourages everyone to contribute to its development.
We hope you enjoy using Vaporizer2 as much as we’ve enjoyed developing it to this milestone and we will enjoy taking Vaporizer2 to the next level as open source project.
VAST Dynamics Vaporizer 2 FREE
Vaporizer 2 is a hybrid Synthesizer plugin with both wavetable and sampler engines. The main core consists of four alias-free, versatile, high-performance wavetable oscillators with low system CPU resource usage, say the developers. Each oscillator comes with 780 wavetables and a deep wavetable editor, allowing you to draw shapes, and modify them in detail.
Each wavetable oscillator offers a massive amount of bending and shaping options, including:
- up to 24 oscillator unison
- 30 real-time wavetable effects per oscillator (hard sync, sincify, brew, and more)
- mix-in, amplitude modulate, interpolate, convolute, time>frequency, frequency>time, or normalize wavetable cycles.
- FM, PWM, harmonic morphed/reduced, low pass / high pass/band pass/comb/formant filtering, and more
- morphing and phase shifting of wavetable cycles.
- support for Serum/Icarus format wavetables via drag-and-drop
- Record single cycle changes into a new wavetable.
- Oscillator pitch modulation and phase modulation with very fast modulations (up to ~ 2kHz).
Hybrid Engine
Besides the wavetable engine, Vaporizer 2 has an additive synthesis section with full control over all harmonics and phases in real-time. Then, you can also dive into FM synthesis with up to 4 oscillators. That’s not all.
There is also a sampler engine with granular synthesis and resampling. You can set loop points, modulate the loop start position, and resamples samples to wavetables with pitch detection. Plus, you get a noise generator of various types.
A Feature Abundance
From here, it goes into an impressive multimode filter with 30+ different types, including 4x oversampled lowpass filter (bi-quad, state variable, and diode ladder implementations). Tons of filtering fun. This follows a 3-bus multi-FX section with 11+ fully customizable effects with reverb, delay, chorus, flanger, bitcrush, eq, compressor, limiter, flanger, phaser, comb filter, waveshaper, and more.
The Vaporizer 2 modulation engine is just as massive. You can work with 25 different modulation sources, including five multi-wave DAW syncable LFOs per voice (80 LFOs in total), five freely editable MSEG envelopes with loop function and sync, random drift, macro knobs, and more. These can be mapped into 220 modulation destinations for unlimited sound design fun.
Other Features
- built-in arpeggiator with polyphonic modes and MIDI files
- three syncable step sequencers
- intelligent polyphonic portamento / glissando
- MPE support
- preset browser
- scalable UI
- four different UI themes to choose from.
- 410+ factory presets, 780+ wavetables and single cycles
First Impression
WOW, what a gift. That’s what I call a feature-dense wavetable Synthesizer plugin. And now for everyone, open-source and free of charge. Particularly exciting about this synth is that not just a wavetable synth but also a sampler, additive and FM Synthesizer in one free plugin. Thanks a lot of VAST Dynamics for this massive move.
VAST Dynamics Vaporizer 2 is available now as a FREE download. It runs as a VST2, VST3, AU, and AAX plugin on macOS (Intel + under Rosetta on Apple Silicon) and Windows. The code is open-source and available on GitHub.
More information here: VAST Dynamics / GitHub
I would really like this synthesizer to have a great future.