Scaler Music Carbon Electra 2, the successor of its CE 1 synth now with wave terrain & wavetable synthesis, and a higher focus on musicality.
In 2017, Plugin Boutique released Carbon Electra, one of their first own plugins. This was a virtual analog synth with some nice extras, such as a modulation sequencer that delivers very musical results. I made a video about it back then.
Nine years have passed, and Scaler Music, the creators of the popular Scaler 3 plugin, have now taken over the synthesizer, elevating it to the next level with Carbon Electra 2.
Scaler Music Carbon Electra 2
Carbon Electra 2 is the official successor to Carbon Electra 1, initially released by Plugin Boutique. Good: Scaler Music is offering existing customers an upgrade price from the first version to Carbon Electra 2.
The plugin has been completely redesigned. Little remains of the original engine.
At its core is, again, a four-oscillator synth engine, but this time with wave-terrain and wavetable engines alongside virtual analog.
The wave-terrain oscillator mode is based on topographic terrain-style sound generation. In this mode, a sound is produced via a 2D trajectory that scans over a 3D surface or terrain.
Neat, you can upload your own terrain images (.png format) and adjust the engine in detail with various parameters, including the terrain size, travel, and more. Also, the wavetable oscillators give you various options, including importing your own waves.
For each oscillator, you have an independent pitch, tune, width, cascading FM, and position-style controls. Plus, there is support across oscillators. The combination of wave terrain, wavetable, and VA enables a wide range of sounds.
Scaler Music plugins, as the name suggests, focus on musical scaling. This is also part of Carbon Electra 2, as you can lock the oscillators to musical scale degrees instead of only traditional pitch values.
A mixer combines all oscillator signals with per-oscillator panning, an optional gain boost mode, and re-routable oscillator/filter pads.
Musical Filtering & Shaping
From here, it goes into a straightforward but musical dual multimode filter section (12dB/24dB) with five modes (low-pass, band-pass, etc.), including the lovely vocal/formant filter from the previous version.
Musical because it offers three musical filter modes: interval, chord, and scale. In this, the filter movement follows musical relationships rather than relying solely on static cutoff values. That helps to achieve musical results.
You can refine your sounds in a re-ordable multi-FX section featuring built-in delay, distortion, chorus, EQ, and reverb, each with dedicated controls that are fully modulatable.
Modulation was one of the strengths of the first version from 2019, and Carbon Electra 2 under the Scaler Music banner is no different. I divide it into two areas: the basic modulation and the rhythmic section.
On the modulation side, you have three syncable multi-wave LFOs with rate, delay, and phase controls. Alongside this, you have two traditional ADSR envelopes for velocity, one fixed to the amp envelope and another freely assignable to multiple parameters.
Musical Animation
You can also delve deeper into the animation, thanks to two powerful sequencers that handle notes and modulation. The first is a scale-based note and chord sequencer with selectable scales, support for chord extensions and inversions, and more.
It’s a perfect tool for programming a complete sequence from a series of chords in a short time.
Further, you have a multi-shape step sequencer that runs independently from the note/chord sequencer. If you’re or were a Carbon Electra 1 user, you’ll be familiar with this.
Instead of notes, you can draw modulation curves that can be different for each step. This allows for very complex animations.
The multi-shape mod sequencer still has one lane but can be assigned to multiple parameters and have different timings than the chord one. It’s a lovely tool for infusing subtle or chaotic movement into any parameter, including the wave terrain oscillator and the FX.
Scaler Music ships the new Carbon Electra 2 with 362 presets from professional sound designers such as Carl Cox, Timo Garcia, Faze Action, and Christian Laffitte.
Scaler Music Carbon Electra 2 First Impression
Many years ago, I enjoyed using the Carbon Electra 1 synth because it was very easy to use. I really liked the one-screen concept back then. The Carbon Electra 2, while significantly more powerful, continues this user interface concept, which I appreciate.
Wave Terrain synthesis has finally been implemented in a commercial soft synth. That’s a welcome addition and makes it unique compared to other wavetable synths. However, as with version 1, I still miss a modulation matrix that provides a better overview of what’s active.
At first glance, a beautiful evolution of the original Carbon Electra. Glad it’s back and hope it gets more updates over the next few years than the previous one.
Scaler Music Carbon Electra 2 is now available at an introductory price of $79/79€ instead of $99/99€. Existing Carbon Electra users can upgrade for $39/39€. If you buy from Plugin Boutique, you get a plugin for free on top of that.
It runs as a VST3, AU, and AAX plugin on macOS (native Apple Silicon + Intel) and Windows.
More information here: Scaler Music
Available from my partner
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