BlauKraut has released Charlatan v3, a major update for its popular free synth plugin for Windows and Linux, now in beta.
There are tons of free synthesizers on the Internet. Keeping an overview is almost impossible, even for dedicated media. In order to offer as many releases for all platforms, I have focused my coverage on cross-platform plugins. So they run on Mac and Windows at least.
Charlatan 2, one of the most popular free synth plugins was previously only available for Windows. BlautKraut, the developer has just published a beta of the upcoming version 3 that brings the plugin to Linux.
BlauKraut Charlatan 3
Charlatan 3 is a new major upgrade for the popular free virtual analog Synthesizer plugin. There is still no macOS version, but with version 3, the synth conquers Linux systems.
BlautKraut’s updated synth features two oscillators per voice with classic shapes and custom drawable waveforms. Besides the ability to design waves, you can work with phase mod, linear FM, ring mod, and windowed hard sync.
Oscillator unison goes up to 7 unison voices per voice—enough to craft patches full of harmonics. Plus, you can work with a stereo noise generator.
Then, the oscillator goes into two multimode filters per voice with nine filter types (LP, HP…), mixing, and flexible routing. It also hosts a quality master FX section with classic effects processors.
The modulation engine is solid and has drag-and-drop support. You get four LFOs with user-definable shapes where each can operate as an LFO or envelope generator.
Further, four modulation transformers (XFORM) are available, allowing you to reshape any control signal through a user-defined mapping. This gives you tons of options for adding movement to your sounds.
Talking about sounds. It features a new preset browser with ready-to-use sounds. To achieve the best quality, you can also unlock an optional internal 2x oversampling. BlautKraut promises very low CPU and RAM usage. There is no demo of the new version available, but are sounds from from Charlatan 2.
First Impression
BlauKraut Charlatan 3 is available now in public beta and runs as a VST3 and clap plugin on Windows 10 and Ubuntu Linux 20.05 x86 64 or compatible distribution. Use the linked Windows and Ubuntu to download the beta versions. They are not available on the official website.
More information here: Blaukraut
Very interesting. Thank you for all the information.