Unusable Engineering Partials & Discrepancies is a new polyphonic Synthesizer that is powered by additive synthesis and a slot-based circular motion sequencer.
Additive synthesis is an exotic form of synthesis. The idea of stacking sine waves to create complex sounds isn’t rocket science. Often, it’s simply a matter of the user interface. The latest Sine Machine synth from Melatonin is a great example of how you can make it accessible.
For experienced users, there are also synths that take this sound-generation technique even deeper. Unusable Engineering, a relatively new plugin company, has released Partials & Discrepancies, a Synthesizer that puts additive synthesis on a rotating wheel.
What Is The Unusable Engineering Partials & Discrepancies?
Partials & Discrepancies is a new 8-voice additive Synthesizer plugin for macOS and Windows.
For Unusable Engineering, Partials & Discrepancies is already their second Synthesizer after the Curves & Membranes, a Bezier-wave-shaping mono synth, after a short time.
The core is based on an 8-voice engine, where each voice has an oscillator with up to 128 overtones (partials) and a rotating circle containing a slot-based animation. Each slot stores a full partial shape with seven node handles, which can also invert the phase in sub-areas.
You can draw new ones right in the circle manually or with a random function. They also include six behavior parameters: count, odd/even, distribution… with which you can go from harmonic to broken states with some clicks.
Cycling Additive Synthese
Special is here that you can bring the slots in motion by cycling through them. Driving through it allows for highly evolving additive sounds. The transitions between slots are also customizable. You can sweep, step, slew, or even key-follow between one another.
With the key follow for example, you can achieve that the lower notes move through the slots more slowly than the higher notes.
Then, you can also assign eight slots to the eight voices, so one slot per voice. This gives you significant changes in the sound per note. It’s a bit like an Aphex Twin mode, where you assign a new patch to each note.
Also onboard is an option to deactivate individual voices. According to the developers, this is inspired by a fault voice board on one of their synths.
In the dedicated discrepancy section, you can also infuse random variations for each voice. These can be applied to the tuning, wave, slot position, and more.
Alongside this cycling additive synth engine, Unusable Engineering Partials & Discrepancies also includes traditional subtractive elements such as a multimode filter, two ADSR envelopes, and an LFO. Also onboard is MPE and microtonal support via MTS-ESP.
The synth is capable of creating animated pads, unstable leads, btitle digital choirs, and more.
First Impression
It’s great to see more additive synthesizers again. The concept of sweeping through partial slots reminds me of the Virsyn AddStation synthesizer for iOS and macOS, which also lets you sweep through slots.
I like the synth’s sound output, as it doesn’t sound very static, classically additive. The movement capabilities bring lovely weirdness and unpredictability to the engine, creating unique timbres. My only complaint is the user interface, as it crams too much onto a single page.
Unusable Engineering Partials & Discrepancies is available now for 79€. It runs as a VST3 and AU plugin on macOS (native Apple Silicon + Intel) and Windows.
More information here: Unusable Engineering
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