W.A. Production Babylon 2 is a major update for its wavetable Synthesizer plugin with a new wavetable editor, filter types, oscillator modes, and more.
Recently, there has been a big wavetable Synthesizer boom, especially in the plugin world. One of these is the W.A. Production Babylon Synthesizer, released in 2019.
After five years on the market, there is now a major paid upgrade/update with new features.
W.A. Production Babylon 2
Babylon 2 is a wavetable Synthesizer plugin, just like its predecessor. When you open it for the first time, you immediately see the newly designed UI.
W.A Production has completely redesigned the interface with a one-page synth programming concept. The new design reminds me a bit of Rob Papen plugins. Babylon not only has a new UI, but it also hosts many new features, making it more powerful.
Like the previous version, Babylon 2 features three wavetable oscillators with RM/FM/AM, a noise generator, a multimode filter, envelopes, LFOs, and more. The developers say that all the original Babylon features are available in Babylon 2.
The new version introduces two new oscillator modes: multi and quad. Multi allows you to blend multiple waveforms, while quad mode can morph four waveforms in real-time.
A significant upgrade compared to the original Babylon is the all-new wavetable editor. Whereas V1 had fixed wavetables/waveforms, you can now create custom wave content with the new two-line editor system. This is available for the single, multi, and quad modes. Plus, you can import own wave files.
New Filters, Effects & More
Then, the noise generator also got a facelift, now featuring nine noise flavors. Next, you can explore new filter types in three new categories: state-variable, IIR, and bi-quad, expanding the synth’s sonic capabilities.
W.A. Production also reprogrammed the multi-FX section in Babylon 2 with improved delay, reverb, distortion, and new phaser effects. New scale and per-note microtonal options also allow for more advanced playability.
Users also benefit from a new intelligent multimode arpeggiator with a new pattern generator with population and complexity parameters. Babylon 2 also brings new modulation options. For example, you can fully customize the envelope shapes and work with two additional envelope followers.
W.A. Production ships Babylon 2 with 858 factory presets. It is not known whether preset libraries from Babylon 1 are compatible. Since the original features are included, I can imagine that it works.
First Impression
At first glance, this is a big welcome update for the Babylon Synthesizer. It’s not a free update, but you get a lot more for the $9.99 fee. I’m not a super fan of the new UI because it looks a bit old-fashioned and small.
W.A. Production Babylon 2 is available now for an introductory price of $19,90 instead of $99 (until 2000 copies sold) until September 30th, 2024. After 2000 units, the intro price will rise to $29,90. Existing users of Babylon 1 can upgrade to version 2 for $9,90.
Babylon 2 runs as a VST3, AU, and AAX plugin on macOS (native Apple Silicon + Intel) and Windows.
More information here: W.A. Production
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