AudioKit Nerd Synth is not an accurate hardware emulation of the Nord Lead A1 Synthesizer for iOS but captured its soul for new sonic paths.
If you type “Synthesizer” into the Apple AppStore, a flood of synth apps will appear. You can find instruments from small indie developers and big players, including Moog, Korg, and Baby Audio.
Matthew Fecher, aka AudioKit, ‘s releases are particularly popular, mainly because he involved the community in the development, sound design, and beta testing. Almost all AK apps are rompler synths focusing on achieving great sounds in no time, without the nerdy factor of classic synths. Matthew’s new app, Nerd Synth, now has exactly this.
AudioKit Nerd Synth
Nerd Synth is a new AUv3 Synthesizer that is heavily inspired by the classic sounds of the Nord Lead A1. No, it’s not an accurate emulation, but rather, it captured the soul of the synth and took it further.
DiscoDSP is different with its Discovery Pro plugin on macOS and Windows, which tries to emulate the Nord synths as closely as possible in software. More importantly, unlike the previous releases, it’s a full retro virtual analog synth, not a rompler.
Nerd Synth’s core has 64 voices and consists of two multi-wave oscillators/layers. In addition to its classic waves, it includes all 40+ modeled Nord Lead A1 waveforms, like the popular supersaw waves. Each oscillator also has classic controls: level, tune, fine, and pan.
Two features are unique to Matthew’s take on the Nord Lead A1: a digital VA-synth-modeled super FM for digital aliasing vibe and a crazy aggressive ring modulation distortion.
Then, it goes into a filter with dedicated linkable ADSR envelopes for each oscillator. For adding movement, it comes with three multi-wave versatile LFOs that can be routed to all parameters of the engine. It also can modify other LFOs, fun stuff. And of course, the amp can also controlled with an envelope.
A highlight of the synth is its ability to transform into a 4-voice unison synth with the tap of a button. Three algorithms—regular, hyper, and beast—provide different results.
To refine your sounds, it hosts various, including reverb, analog-style tape delay, distortion, flanger, chorus, bit crusher, and more. For more diverse sounds, it also comes with a hardware-style arpeggiator with creative features and a hands-on step sequencer with layer routing.
Further, you can turn on two fully-assignable touchpads for creating animations with your fingers. Nerd Synth ships with over 450+ presets from various sound designers in the iOS sphere, including Electronisounds, DMT Cymatics, Moby Pixel, Red Sky Lullaby, Sound of Izrael, and more
Another handy feature is a built-in record button, which allows you to instantly record your sounds, even without an attached hardware or DAW.
First Impression
An excellent iOS release. What you can hear in the sound demo so far sounds very good and makes you want more. For people who like the sound of Nord or other older VA synth, this might be a synth to check out.
AudioKit Nerd Synth is available now for an introductory price of $4,99. It runs standalone and as an AUv3 plugin on iPad/iPhone/Apple Vision Pro.
‘Nerd’ is hate speech, sadly this is problematic for many of us 🙁
not really here in Europe, freak is negative associated
No, it really isn’t.
Your just looking for problems where there are none.
I was actually really looking forward to this emulation.
The sound is pretty dull, sometimes muffled. The filter doesn’t close completely. I somehow get the impression that there is no oversampling. Also, important things are missing, like a modulation matrix. There is no way to set acceleration as a source for the cut of filter. The delay is always an extreme stereo penning, so important modes are missing. There is a menu button. FX, however, effects appear on several pages, which is all a bit inconsistent. I hope the developers put some work into optimizing the whole thing so that it really is similar to an A1!
like I said, it’s not a close emulation 😉 It’s something different with the soul of it, in this case the waveforms
They missed a golden opportunity to call it the Nerd Lead.
This is supposed to be the Nord sound? Do you have a hearing problem?
It’s not an Nord emulation! It’s a new synth that is inspired by these. So it doesn’t have to sound 1-to-1 like a Nord.
Come on, there’s not a lot of words there. If you read them , you don’t put your foot in your mouth.
I’ve always had issues running AK synths in anything outside of AUM. They’re either way too cpu heavy (poorly optimized) or crash constantly in NS2, Drambo or Logic.