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Ronan Fed Releases FREE Pneuma Pro Synthesizer For Windows

By 47 Comments2 Mins Read
Ronan Fed Releases FREE Pneuma Pro Synthesizer

Ronan Fed releases Pneuma Pro, a freeware polyphonic synthesizer plugin for Windows.

Happy New Year to you and yours, dear readers! Hopefully, you’re recovering from the festivities with minimal issues.

We’re back in the fray today with a new synthesizer from developer Ronan Fed. Pneuma Pro is a fully-featured polyphonic synthesizer for Windows computers.

So, what sets this apart from the scads of other polyphonic subtractive synthesizers available to download?

Pneuma Pro comes with a great deal of flexibility. You’ve got a quartet of standard oscillators, each with multiple waveform options, sync, FM, and unison controls.

These are versatile, capable of coaxing out a good variety of sounds that range from bread and butter to absolute filth, thanks to the FM.

You’ve also got controls for panning and detuning, which are crucial when making your trance and dance leads and plucks.

There are a pair of noise oscillators and sample oscillators as well, which are a wonderful inclusion. I’m always happy to see a sample oscillator for any synth because using atypical sound sources as synthesis fodder is just a joy.

You can route the output of the oscillators to one of the two main filters in the signal path. These are multi-mode and resonant, as you might expect.

You’ve got four modulation envelopes and four LFOs as well, meaning you’ve got plenty of options when it comes to adding some movement and changes to a sound.

This is rounded off with seven effects, including chorus, phaser, reverb, compressor, and an additional filter and EQ. You’ve got full wavetable support on the oscillators along with a step sequencer and arpeggiator.

Pneuma Pro reminds me heavily of the likes of Spire, especially when looking at the overall layout. I do miss the inclusion of a delay, but I’m more than sorted when it comes to my own delays.

As a whole, Pneuma Pro is a great little synth that is well worth the hard drive space for any Windows user. Mac and Linux are sadly left out of the fray.

Supported plugin formats for Pneuma Pro are VST and VST3. If you aren’t much of a sound designer, you’ve got over 700 presets included for use.

UPDATE: Ronan Fed’s plugins are no longer available.

Download: Pneuma Pro (DISCONTINUED)

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Liam is a producer, mixing engineer, and compressor aficionado. When not mixing, he can be found pretending to play guitar, as he has been doing for the last 20 years.

47 Comments

    • Petter

       on

      Thanks Liam, the synth looks great and its a generous gift from the dev. One thing: in the pic above, there is indeed also a delay (I assume it’s working).

      Reply

  2. Matt

     on

    You legit wrote an article where you ask yourself a question, then fail to answer the question you asked yourself. You didn’t mention a single feature which sets this apart from every other soft synth. You acted like you were gonna, then just…. Didn’t…

    Idk who is paying for this, but fr, pay me to edit, I won’t let make these kinds of mistakes, and know at least as much as the author about audio, synthesis, and music production.

    Reply

  4. Numanoid

     on

    Thanks for the update :-)

    I am curious: Going to the plugin folder, under Data, the Instrument folder contains 58.8 MB, but when I open it, it is empty?? I am pretty certain I have chosen Windows 10 to show hidden files. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to see the ProgramData folder under C:

    Reply

    • no_name

       on

      Looks like files protected by the system, if hide them option is enabled, you won’t see any file inside Data folder.

      Reply

  6. JOP

     on

    “I do miss the inclusion of a delay, but I’m more than sorted when it comes to my own delays.”
    Of course there is a delay section, right below the chorus….. which synth did you review?

    Reply

  7. Lukas

     on

    Installation was simple, unzip and run executable which installs vst3 to default folder.

    First off the synth was built with Synthedit. Gui is well laid out, easy to dial in sounds. It is not resizable and some knobs are bit too small on higher rez screens. I compared Pneuma to Podolski, (which I haven’t found a higher quality free synth then Podolski by u-he… yet) Listening to Init saw wave there was a bit of whistling noise on lower registers, and also when you just press, as well after you just release a key you get a noise. The tone was surprisingly rich and of higher quality, not as smooth as Vital though. Would definitely compare to some paid synths tones. Effects are of decent quality as well. The developer is probably a musician, therefore you get a lot of usable, high quality preinstalled patches (unlike Vital.) I was especially impressed by choirs in Orchestral section, also nice fx and bells, (very lively sounding even without effects.) It is a bit of CPU intensive so not a good idea to run many instances. (Ran on i7 11th gen) If you make electronic music this synth is definitely for you. “Analog” aspect is present and ok, but you will not get a rich Moog sound. I tried other synths by Ronan Fed, and wasn’t really impressed, but this one is definitely a good replacement for lower quality synths such as Surge, and with loads of very usable presets it’s a keeper.

    Lukas
    20 years live sound
    12 years studio

    Reply

      • JEP1928

         on

        Some Surge wavetables kinda have some fluctuations on sound quality, but most on the run, this should be fine for sound design or anything, though you need some knowledge of how to run that synth.

        Reply

      • Peter Dillon-Parkin

         on

        This looks interesting. Don’t know why anyone should denigrate another (free) synth to big up this one. If you don’t like something, don’t mention it. For this to be good others don’t have to fail. They are contributing their time and work for zero cash. Be respectful.

        Reply

    • Paul

       on

      Surge Low Quality? It’s one of the most fully featured excellent sounding freeware synths available today. The range of sounds that can be achieved with it is absolutely huge.

      Reply

    • Gary Openhill

       on

      your statement about surge basically disqualified the totality of your review and all of your statements for all eternity.

      Reply

    • Exink

       on

      > I tried other synths by Ronan Fed, and wasn’t really impressed, but this one is definitely a good replacement for lower quality synths such as Surge, and with loads of very usable presets it’s a keeper.

      Maybe the lower quality you’re talking about doesn’t come from the synthesizer but from whoever uses it. I mean, you can like or dislike Surge, but saying it is lower quality… I join the others and I couldn’t agree with them more.

      Reply

  8. Febbie Ivaaden (Febbs!)

     on

    Honestly, Ronan never misses for free stuff. It’s very similar to Sylenth1 and it hits just the right spots on being an alternative to syenth1 for me! Thank you William for sharing Ronan Fed’s stuff here for everyone to explore and try out!

    This will definitely be in my toolbelt of synths!

    Reply

  9. Lukas

     on

    I learned that, we as humans will defend what we grew close to on our lives journey, what is closer to our heart. People have a right to be unbiased in a predominantly biased world. We compare things every day. How do we know what is good and what is better if we do not compare? Which sound sounds cheap and which more rich? That is why I mentioned Surge as well as Podolski and Vital. No disrespect intended. Happy new year to you my friend and all of Surge community!

    Reply

    • Anglepipe

       on

      Lukas, you made the grave mistake of not sticking to familiar slogans, chill words and intellectual shorthand. You actually made a useful distinction. Some people can’t stand that. Next time try saying that the synth is “great for soaring leads, gritty basses—and even lush pads”.

      Reply

  10. Numanoid

     on

    Following in the footsteps of Computer Music, the new issue of Beat Magazine out this weekend, has G-Force ImpOscar 2 free

    Reply

  11. Thomas

     on

    Someone who includes information about how many years he has been in the music industry in his signature, but no one else is actually interested in it, must be an unpleasant person.

    Surge – one of the 3 best free VSTi in my opinion, described as low quality. This is either poor provocation or ignorance.

    Reply

  12. Martin

     on

    Woah. Surge is nowhere near low quality. It’s hands down one of the best Hybrid/Subtractive/Wavetable synths out there. And Pneuma Pro will definitely give Sylenth1 serious competition.
    New features in Pneuma pro include:

    Complex, Custom & Sample-based oscillators.
    Oscillator key-tracking.
    Hold Time in Amp and Mod envelopes.
    Global Saturation effect.
    2 more LFOs (4 in total) with Phase and Offset (Phase offset?) knobs.
    2 more Mod envelopes (4 in total).
    Filters have a drive function (Self-oscillation?)
    New Filter type (Formant Filter).
    Finally, more Trance-tailored presets for Leads and Bass.

    All in all I think Pneuma pro is a GREAT improvement on an already awesome synth. Your efforts are highly appreciated Ronan Fed. Thank you.

    Reply

  13. Robin

     on

    What a cool synth. It reminds me a lot of ANA. Very full featured too with an easy workflow. Just for that last thing alone it is a useful addition to the toolkit.

    Reply

    • Martin

       on

      ANA1 was a beast! I believe it was (Still is?) among the top 5 go-to-synths for Trance production. Sadly It couldn’t work for me in the long run because of the moderately high CPU usage. Thank God for Pneuma & Pneuma Pro. I also use T-Force Alpha Plus sparingly but the Usage is also high.

      Reply

  15. Marcel

     on

    Lovely synth. I am playing with the factory presets at this moment, and they really impress me. Thank you Ronan Fed, much appreciated. Surge is also a brilliant synth. Extremely flexible, not a beginner’s synth but you need to spend some time with it.

    Reply

  17. Brenny C

     on

    I really wish Ronan’s plugins were made with C++ (my computer doesn’t get along with most SynthEdit creations) but they are excellent.

    This one is especially great, probably his best, due to the sound and it’s insane versatility. That piano patch is fairly realistic for a synth and the strings are so lush and quite realistic as well.

    I don’t want to get my hopes up but I just might have to give in and download this to see how it fares on my system. Maybe I’ll luck out and it’ll be one of those rare SynthEdit plugs that doesn’t fight with my computer!

    Reply

  18. Ray

     on

    It appears that the presets only work with the VST2 version. I get an error when loading them with VST3 version – “.vstpreset file does not appear to be for this plug-in”

    Reply

    • Konstantin K

       on

      Yes, but they work if you select them in GUI, but preset manager in Reaper gives me same “…not appear to be for this plug-in”.

      Reply

  19. Gerald

     on

    I downloaded this new Pneuma Pro, and its great haven’t gone thought it all yet! but my Pneuma sub poly synth the presets stopped working about the time this version came out, except Init and LD ICE CYSTALS presets work that’s it?
    I get the kind of of sounds I need in the non pro version I use in my Audio and video production Studio,
    and I also have presets I created for projects on the non pro version
    ?

    Reply

  23. Moxiesynth

     on

    I got the luck to download it. It is really awesome!, Some stupid fellows disturbed him, Ronan Fed is a ver creative person. I salute him for his work!

    Reply
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