AudioThing Wurly is a new hybrid vintage electric piano (macOS, Linux, Windows, and iOS) powered by physical modeling and sampling techniques.
An electronic piano is a wonderful instrument. As I write, I’m listening to a brilliant e-piano jam by Nils Frahm from his new Paris concert video. For space or financial reasons, many people resort to virtual e-pianos. E-piano fans have the hardware at home.
However, many prefer to use the cheaper virtual version for space or simply for financial reasons. These are now at a very high level and use samples or physical modeling techniques. AudioThing has opted for a hybrid construct for its new Wurly e-piano plugin.
AudioThing Wurly
Wurly is a new plugin emulation of the legendary Wurlitzer electronic pianos from the 1960s and 1970s. AudioThing has created a new engine that faithfully captures these instruments’ distinct tones and dynamic feel. This new emulation covers the classic 200 and refined 200A models.
The plugin achieves this using a hybrid engine consisting of samples and physical modeling. The electric section uses physical modeling techniques to capture the true behavior and sound of the original instruments by modeling the geometry of the pickup and reed.
You can also shape the electric part in four sections with various parameters: pickup (height, distance, keytrack, reed), envelope (decay, release, random, velocity curve)… It also hosts a built-in tremolo section, known as historically mislabeled vibrato.
The mechanical section then uses both physical modeling and samples to fine-tune each nuance of the piano’s character. This includes full control over the hammer, key, pedal noises, and clank section.
That’s not all. AudioThing also carefully sampled the speakers on each model so you can blend the direct sound with the speaker sound.
Like all other AT plugins, it comes with a resizable UI, a preset system with a randomizer, and brightness/contrast controls.
First Impression
Another excellent AudioThing plugin. It’s great to see that it offers many options for modifying the sound. Big thanks for the iOS and Linux versions.
AudioThing Wurly is available now for an introductory price of 39€ instead of 69€. It runs as a VST, VST3, AU, CLAP, and AAX plugin on macOS (native Apple Silicon + Intel), Linux, and Windows.
The iOS version is available for an introductory price of $12,99 instead of $19,99. The intro offers are available until July 9, 2024.
More information here: AudioThing
Available at my partner
It sounds great but they’ve not finished the job with the iOS standalone, no settings (midi, background play, etc.) and no way to map cc to parameters (tremolo would be nice to have on mod wheel etc.).