Phaseburn One is a new Synthesizer plugin that is built around a phase-locked loop and other distinct oscillator engines.
Plugins today probably cover most available synthesis methods. VA, FM, and wavetable synthesis are certainly among the most widespread. Plugins that explore new ideas that you rarely see in any form of synth are always welcome. Here’s a new one.
Phaseburn, a new developer company, has released the beta version of Phaseburn One, a Synthesizer that uses a phase-locked loop as the foundation of the sound.
Phaseburn One
One is a new, unique Synthesizer plugin for macOS and Windows that is built around a phase-locked loop. They are often used in pitch-tracking synth pedals or harmonizers.
The Phaseburn developers say they took this control circuit from radio engineering and turned it into a playable voice. The engine is written in 64-bit Rust with a custom DSP along the whole signal path.
One is structured into five sections, each with its own UI page. So it’s not necessarily a small synth to discover. The oscillator section is immediately visible upon startup. It consists of four oscillators: a phase-locked loop, a morphing oscillator, a vector oscillator, and a sub.
One of its key features is certainly the first. According to Phaseburn, it’s not just a PLL module built into a traditional architecture, nor is it a tracking effect; the loop itself is the synth’s main sound.
It’s not a traditional oscillator that you’ve come across before. The PPL oscillator listens to the reference oscillator and tries to adjust to it constantly. Thanks to accurate tracking, you get a unique-sounding oscillator that sounds clear but also oddly alive.
It gets interesting when it fails. You can loosen the loop and hear how the oscillator reacts: it catches up with the target, flies over, breaks off, captures the frequency again… This creates an interesting, strange character in the oscillator.
The phase-locked loop can be adjusted with a wide range of parameters, giving you the flexibility of an advanced, more traditional oscillator. You can change the octave, fine-tune it, but also work with chaos, FM, saturation, and more.
3 More Oscillators
Alongside the PLL, you get a morphing oscillator with 12 modes, including classic shapes, a 7-voice detuned unison saw stack, additive, vowel synthesis, spectral wavetable, and more. It also includes various shaping options.
Next to this is the vector phase-shaping oscillator, which bends a waveform’s phase around a movable inflection point with adjustable X and Y coordinates. It also comes with a formant mode. Plus, you have a sub-oscillator that goes down to -3 octaves
Phaseburn One also lets you route an external sound into it, where the input becomes the PLL oscillator’s reference signal. In a dedicated mixer section, you can mix the different signal generators together.
On the same page, you also have a node-based patchbay where you can create your own signal path in series, parallel, or even put the effects inside the feedback loops. Yes, there are also built-in effects and filters
Filtering & Effects
On the dedicated FX page, you can find the built-in filter as well as a multi-FX section. I would have designed it a little differently because, as it is, it looks like a sea of knobs where you quickly lose track.
The top row features a multimode filter with two distinct characters: a 4-pole saturating ladder (LP, BP, notch, HP) and a state-variable filter with morphing capabilities (LP, BP, HP, notch, peak, and all-pass).
Both are manually controllable with various pots or via automation. Directly below sits the multi-FX section with six flexible algorithms: a 4-type distortion, bit-crusher, a granular-based freezer, four-mode chorus, delay, and an FDN-based reverb.
Each one is richly equipped and offers many adjustment options.
Advanced Modulation
Phaseburn also offers plenty of modulation in the One Synthesizer to infuse sounds with movement, distributed throughout the UI.
Four assignable multi-wave LFOs can be found in the dedicated mod section, while the three advanced loopable AHDSR envelopes are on the oscillator page.
Next to this, you have four assignable modulation step sequencers, aftertouch, and velocity. You can easily set the modulators to all possible parameters. This also includes effects, which is a welcome addition.
That’s not all what you can find in One to bring in motion. In the groove bar, you can work with a probability-based sequencer with a scale-aware note pool and per-note probability. With one press, you can write grooves here, deterministic music-theory rules
Options to mutate these results are also onboard with a handy undo function. The beta currently ships with only 29 presets. This will change before the October release.
Phaseburn One First Impression
Many synth plugins are often based on the same ideas but packaged differently. That’s fair to say. It’s great to see new concepts being tried these days. For example, here with PLLs and other types of oscillators.
The sound samples embedded in the website offer a first glimpse into the sounds the engine can produce, and they sound very interesting to me. Fuzzy, noisy, dirty in a good way, and not quite perfect, just as you’d expect from a classic synth. I’m eager to hear more.
Phaseburn One is now available as a free beta download until its release on October 15h, 2026. They will give a free license to the ten most active beta test participants and discounts to the rest who actively help testing.
Once released, it will be 149€. It runs as a standalone and VST3, AU, and CLAP plugin on macOS (native Apple Silicon + Intel) and Windows.
More information here: dev page
Be the first to comment