Straightliner is a straight-lined subtractive synthesizer in a modern guise. You will find the well known building blocks of classic analogue synthesizers (4 oscillators, a filter, 2 envelope generators) patched together in the traditional way. The building blocks themselves offer more flexibility than commonly seen in subtractive synthesizers: Instead of relying on a set of fixed waveforms, Straightliner’s oscillators support loading of arbitrary (single cycle) audio files which may be even stereo. In turn, the whole signal path is laid out in stereo which allows for wide and enveloping sounds even without application of any effects. The standard ADSR model for envelopes is replaced by a flexible modulation generator which allows to define an arbitrary number of breakpoints.
The heart of subtractive synthesizers is the filter, of course. In this department, Straightliner offers a multimode filter with 15 modes, among them a sophisticated Moog model. The user interface of the synth focuses on visual editors optimized for editing on screen with a mouse instead of the commonly seen hardware oriented interfaces. These visual editors don’t just ’sketch’ the resulting curves but exactly represent what is being generated in a ’what you see is what you get’ manner.
Other features include support of microtuning via import of .tun files, use of .wav or
.flac for the osciallators,
• 2 flexible modulation generators, with an arbitrary number of breakpoints and 9 options for the
shape in between any pair of breakpoints as well as a hierarchical preset management to let you load and save presets not only for the synth as a whole but also separately for each relevant building block to easily hybridize your patches. |
