Soda Devices has announced the release of Lith, a freeware virtual analog synthesizer in VST, VST3, and AU plugin formats for compatible digital audio workstations on PC and Mac.
The product page on Soda Devices’ website describes Lith as a “Virtual Analog Wavetable Synthesizer”. This description is somewhat misleading, as Lith doesn’t fit the common definition of a wavetable synthesizer. Generally speaking, a wavetable synthesizer generates the sound from a wavetable which consists of a sequence of single-cycle waveforms. Instead, Lith is a virtual analog synthesizer which simply uses static sampled single-cycle waveforms of a real analog synthesizer as the sound source.
See also: Download IK Multimedia’s Syntronik Bully (€49.99 Value) For FREE Until May 23rd!Naming conventions out of the way, there’s no denying that Lith is a capable virtual instrument. It features two detunable oscillators with four waveforms (triangle, sinewave, square, and saw), a pair of sub oscillators, dual filters, and multiple modulation sources with conveniently positioned modulation target controls. The developers have implemented oscillator drift and noise saturation capabilities as tools for achieving a more organic sound. Lith comes with a wide selection of factory presets, sorted into categories for easy browsing. The presets cover a range of bass sounds, leads, pads, and sound effects.
One big drawback with the current version of the plugin is the user interface design. It is too small and cluttered for comfortable use, with tiny parameter labels which are hard to read. Hovering a parameter with the mouse pointer will increase the font brightness in that section of the UI, but this is more of a distraction than a workflow enhancement. To make things worse, the interface features an overly bright, low-contrast color scheme which is simply hard to look at. Thankfully, the developers are working on a GUI redesign, as noted on the product page.
In summary, Lith is more than just a standard subtractive synthesizer plugin, but it’s held back by the lackluster user interface. Hopefully, the announced update will take this promising virtual instrument to the next level. In the meanwhile, we highly recommend checking out the recently updated T-Force Alpha Plus 2 synthesizer by Mastrcode Music.
Lith is available for free download via Soda Devices (1.8 MB download size, ZIP archive, 32-bit & 64-bit VST/VST3/AU plugin format for Windows & MacOS).
Last Updated on May 21, 2019 by Tomislav Zlatic.
