Rhizomatic Synestia is a new creative multi-FX processor plugin with physical modeling from the Absynth synth creator for macOS and Windows.
The founder of the young French software company Rhizomatic Software Synthesis is no stranger. It’s Brian Clevinger, the developer and father of the legendary Native Instruments Absynth Synthesizer plugin. After the slow decline, Brian worked on his projects.
The first release under the Rhizomatic brand was Plasmonic, a beautiful physical modeling synth released in 2020. Almost four years after the first release, Plasmonic Synthesizer, the second plugin from Rhizomatic, is out now and called Synestia.
Rhizomatic Synestia
The name Synestia sounds like a new Synthesizer from Brian Clevinger. Nope, it’s wrong. It’s a multi-FX processor with a unique, playful, experimental-flavored engine.
Rhizomatic Synestia is a powerful multi-effects plugin powered by eight effects: physically modeled resonators, dual filters, Echoes, modulated delays, flanger, distortion, a multi-FX called Sidebands, and a formant filter. Indeed, there is a lot of filtering and delay stuff in it.
According to the developer, many of Synestia’s effects are derived from Plasmonic, but they have all been improved and enhanced to expand their sonic character and capabilities.
Physical Modeling & Effects
One of the plugin’s big highlights is the sympathetic section. It bundles physically modeled resonators that respond to audio and are fully playable via MIDI MPE and dedicated sales.
Route audio into the resonators, and they begin to shine. They flip every signal into organic-sounding physical modeling-like sounds.The resonators are fully customizable with a wide range of parameters.
Then, you get a dual self-oscillating ladder filter with various modes and routing options. The Echoes section has two tweakable delay lines with built-in multimode filters per delay line, saturation, pre-delay, and more.
Next on the Rhizomatic Synestia effect menu is the diffuse delay (modulated delay). It’s fully tweakable with various settings, including color, saturation, and more. Neat, you can also use shimmering formant filtering in the diffuse delay.
One tab further, you can find a deep modulated delay-based flanger and chorus with up to eight stages. The built-in distortion module adds subtle saturation to the aggressive timbres. The latter makes the built-in wave folder possible.
Under the name Sidebands, two signal paths are hidden, each with a frequency shifter, delay, and VCA. In combination, you can create various fascinating effects, including multi-voice frequency shifter, ring -, and amp modulation. Last but not least, a rich formant filter adds more organic glitter to your sounds.
And all these effects are freely routable in any order you want.
Rich Modulation
A crucial point in the new Rhizomatic Synestia plugin is the built-in modulation. Brian has made the entire engine modulable, allowing you to delve deeply into experimental, complex sounds.
There are a plethora of modulators to work with, from classic to unpredictable ones. It includes 3x 128-segment envelope generators, envelope follower triggers, eight macro control groups, three LFOs with sample and hold and unique chaos control, three fast ADSR envelopes, and three random generators.
I think this should be enough to create very crazy effects from scratch. This is a pervasive feature set that takes time to discover. To introduce you to the plugin perfectly and showcase the capabilities, Rhizomatic Synestia ships with many presets from professional sound designers.
First Impression
Multi-FX plugins often combine very classic algorithms with some modulation on top. Chorus, delay, reverb, distortion… What Brian Clevinger offers here with the MIDI playable resonators and added flexible effects is more than just the more of the same multi-FX soup.
It is definitely worth looking at the sound demos, as they give you a nice insight into what crazy sound manipulations and manipulations you can make here. Check out the demo version. My fingers are already itching to run audio through these algorithms. Plasmonic was already an absolute killer plugin, I’m pretty sure it’s on the same level.
Rhizomatic Synestia is available now for an introductory price of $79/79€ instead of $119/119€. It runs as a VST3, AU, and AAX plugin on macOS (native Apple Silicon + Intel) and Windows. A demo version is on the website.
More information here: Rhizomatic
“Plasmonic was already an absolute killer plugin,”
Agreed 100% and the demo for this sounds very cool.
Can’t wait to run some of my loops thru it. Instant buy for me.