Synth and Software’s Top 10 Soft Synths

UVI Falcon ($349)

If you’ve never tried Falcon, you’ve missed a singularly multifaceted, multitimbral synthesizer that’s also a full-featured sample player. Falcon’s deep architecture allows for sophisticated patches encompassing additive, virtual analog, 4-operator FM, wavetable, physical modeling, and numerous variations on sample playback with an onboard sample editor. It can even import samples to resynthesize as wavetables.

Create patches by clicking and dragging to configure elements such as oscillators, effects, event processors, and modulations. Combine different sound engines and control them with the same modulators in a single program. Falcon’s multitude of filter types includes a morphing vowel filter and a ladder filter with 37 response curves. Comprehensive modulation options include many envelope types, from a pattern sequencer with up to 128 steps to a Drunk module that generates random values within limits you define.

Although Falcon’s large collection of excellent factory patches doesn’t include many traditional instruments, it can load and play any sample library in UVI’s extensive catalog. Lots of synthesized add-ons are available, too. Whatever you want to do with a synthesizer, Falcon can probably do it, even if you don’t learn its scripting language. Along with its extraordinary versatility comes potential complexity, though. It’s so deep and different, you may face a challenging learning curve if you hope to master it. If you do, though, you’ll never regret it.

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