Pura Belia Fragua is a new polyphonic Synthesizer plugin driven by nine chaos engines built on chaotic and strange-attractor systems.
Synthesizers are most often used to create melodic sounds like basslines, leads, or rich textures. You can also delve into experimental, noisy worlds where chaos reigns.
A new synth from a new developer focuses on this. Pura Belia has released Fragua, a Synthesizer with a core built around chaos.
Pura Belia Fragua
Fragua is a new Chaos Synthesizer plugin and standalone instrument for macOS and Windows.
There’s no information on whether the plugin was created with AI. My alarm bells, however, went off when I saw the Fragua UI and visited the Pura Belia website the first time. I can’t confirm it, but I have a feeling.
Fragua is a four-layer Synthesizer plugin, where each layer is a complete chaos-driven voice, consisting of an oscillator, sub-oscillators, envelope, filter, EQ, and output.
At the oscillator’s heart are nine unique chaos engines: Enjambre, Pozo, Hilo, Confluencia, Arena, Arco, Mitosis, Crisol, and Telar. According to Pura Belia, these are not static waveforms but generators that constantly evolve. A dedicated drift parameter in each voice sets this.
Each has a distinct character and flavor of chaos, from swarming particle clouds to a 2-D morphing wavetable weave. For example, Enjambre is based on a Kuramoto model, an additive bank of coupled phase oscillators, producing a swarming sound.
The engines can be tweaked in detail in the motor section with various parameters. The manual provides comprehensive information on this.
Next to this are two sub-oscillators per engine for adding extra depth to the sounds. Then, each engine comes with a multimode filter with 12 different types, ranging from all the classics to more unusual ones like comb, formant, and phaser.
No Modulation No Chaos
To create creative chaos, engines alone aren’t enough. A variety of audio-rate modulation methods are also necessary to make everything fluctuate and organic.
It houses eight synceable LFOs, four envelopes, and four attractor modulators managed by a full modulation matrix. They are freely assignable and adjustable on dedicated UI pages.
Each lane/engine has a fixed envelope slot which can be a classic ADSR or a VENV (drawable vector). They also have a low-pass gate option. LFOs, on the other hand, are freely assignable to various parameters and include classic waveforms like sine, but also more advanced modes like Perlin noise or warped sine.
Additionally, each LFO comes with an AR envelope, phase, slew, and skrew controls. The four attractor modulators come with various types like Lorenz, Rössler, Chua, and more. On top of that, you have macro controls, MIDI/MPE, and per-note keytracking.
Almost anything can modulate almost anything, including cross-modulation between the modulators. So a lot to work with.
Sound Design With Effects
Each lane also comes with an independent EQ with snapshot morphing and an output section with level, pan, and effects routing. Yes, there are effects. Pura Belia Fragua has a master chain and a send/return rack.
The master chain features a 5-band master EQ, saturator, compressor, stereo width, limiter, a VU meter, and signal visualization.
One click further, you come to the FX page where you can find three FX buses, each holding three adjustable FX slots in series. On the FX menu are: reverb, delay with tape-style wobble/flutter, frequency shifter, granular, howl, and ring mod.
They are not global but send/return effects. Thus, each lane/engine has three FX sliders, allowing you to route the effects to them and with the right amount.
There aren’t many demos available. Besides the one on the official website, there’s a short clip by Richard Devine.
Pura Belia Fragua First Impression
An interesting, powerful synthesizer that celebrates chaos in all its forms. It’s nice that this doesn’t have the usual oscillator-related suspicions but comes with unique chaos ones.
Also impressive are the modulators, which include some unusual ones like vector envelopes or attractors. The sounds you get from this chaos beast should be clear: rich, organic textures, evolving noise, special effects, and more.
The only downside for me is the somewhat high price for a new developer and an interface that lacks originality/personality. It gives me AI vibes, as many new developers use a similar UI pattern found in JUCE, for example.
Pura Belia Fragua is available now for 129€. A free demo version is available on the developer’s website. It runs as a standalone app and VST3 and AU plugin on macOS (native Apple Silicon + Intel) and Windows.
More information here: Pura Belia
Hi Tom,
Thanks for the write-up, and I’m glad the engines landed. That was the whole bet: no sawtooth-and-filter, but chaotic systems that misbehave in musical ways. They started as prototypes I built and tuned by ear long before there was a plugin, and the attractors came from the same idea, if chaos drives the sound, it should drive the modulation too.
Fragua is the first product from Pura Belia, and Pura Belia has been my dream for years. I’ve spent two decades producing music, and this is all of that poured into something new, alongside people with twenty years of their own in the field. It’s been built slowly, by ear, and with a lot of care.
And genuinely, thank you for the feedback, the UI included. That’s the kind of thing that helps us grow. There are more tools already in the works, and I hope you’ll put those through their paces too.
Best,
Alberto
Congrats on getting this out there! It looks fascinating. The free trial will help me decide for sure, but the bar is set pretty high with that price point. Good luck with it all!