CFA Sound has announced the beta release of Supersaw OSC, a freeware virtual instrument for Windows which emulates the classic supersaw oscillator waveform featured in various Roland hardware synthesizers.
The central part of the instrument is the oscillator section with a supersaw mix control and a separate knob which controls the amount of detuning (crank it up to 5 or 6 for that classic fat supersaw sound). You also get a global tuning control, a volume knob and a simple ADSR envelope for controlling the amplitude.
When it comes to a simple instrument such as this one, the most important aspect is the sound. I can confirm that Supersaw OSC sounds great and that it pretty much nails the original supersaw sound. It is also very easy on the CPU, which is a bonus if you’re planning to use multiple instances of the plugin inside your project. I’ve always wondered if you can get a übersaw by stacking up enough supersaws on top of each other. It’s definitely worth a try!
The current version of the plugin is 0.17 which hopefully means that we will be seeing a hefty amount of updates in the future. The plugin was recently updated with a refurbished ADSR section which uses sliders instead of knobs. So far, the developer has announced that the plugin will be updated with an additional fine tune control, a 24 db filter with a dedicated ADSR envelope, as well as a panning control for the oscillator section.
CFA Sound has pointed out that the main point of this project was to have fun and learn more about VST plugin development, however I think that Supersaw OSC has the potential to become a very useful tool. Although the instrument (at least in its current state) isn’t really quite versatile on its own, it can work great as a building block inside a modular environment such as the MuTools MUX.
Just for fun, I’ve patched up a very simple synthesizer inside MUX, using Supersaw OSC as the only sound source. You can see and hear this quick project in action in the second part of the demo video embedded below. If you’re wondering what MUX is, it is a great modular environment which you can load up as a VST plugin in any DAW and build your own virtual modular synthesizers or effect chains.
Video Demo
Check out the Supersaw OSC demo video:
Download
Supersaw OSC is available for free download via CFA Sound (1.95 MB download size, ZIP archive, 32-bit VSTi plugin format for Windows).
3 Comments
Dave Smith
onNice! It’s simple but very usable and effective for producing the Roland Supersaw type sounds.
Very cool. I wouldn’t mind stacking three or four of these to make some nice pads :)