Happy 2025! New Year, New Sounds!
Treat your synths with a New Year's sonic makeover!
4,4 / 5,0 | 
Well here we are, ladies and gentlemen, it’s 2025! I trust you all had a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year? Did you get any new synths? If not, why not spruce up your existing gear with some new sounds?!
New Sounds for 2025!
‘UVI PX WaveFrame’ for UVI Falcon and UVI Workstation
The AudioFrame WaveFrame occupies an area of music technology history reserved for the rare, expensive and virtually unheard-of pieces of gear. To be fair, the WaveFrame was never marketed as a regular commercial synthesizer.
Instead, it was pitched to a more exclusive market where money was much less of an object, that of the TV & Movie post-production facilities. However, in 1987, samplers were doing two things: getting smaller and getting cheaper. The WaveFrame was a giant 10U rackmount unit that cost the thick end of $100K!
Peter Gabriel and, you guessed it, Stevie Wonder were early adopters, Gabriel using his on his ‘Us’ album. But even in the deep-pocketed world of audio post-production, where Synclaviers and Fairlight MFX systems were well-established, the WaveFrame was the exact opposite of what was about to come down the line.
UVI has already had a stab at the WaveFrame, putting out a library endorsed by the AudioFrame team themselves back in 2012, but this lacked any form of scripted interface, and to be honest, whilst the sounds were definitely of their time, they didn’t particularly stand out.
I’ve often asked UVI if they ever planned to revisit the library, and now it seems they have. Slotting in under their ‘PX’ banner, a moniker reserved for libraries of ‘prototype’ instruments, WaveFrame is back, resampled, revoiced and with a scripted interface that mimics the original software application.
This is NOT the old library repackaged. This is a new creation that features over 10GB of sample data across 351 presets, 151 layers and 220146 samples, all recorded at 88.2kHz and delivered at 44.1kHz. It works with both UVI’s Falcon instrument as well as their free UVI workstation and is just €79, available direct from their website.
‘Spectrum’ for KORG microKORG2 by Limbic Bits
KORG’s microKORG2 boldly stepped in to fill the shoes of its predecessor a year ago and they were big shoes to fill indeed. The portable virtual analogue synth that everyone loved needed a revamp and the microKORG2 did a pretty decent job.
The original lacked any form of informative screen, relying on a digit display and a matrix-style programming system that was a bit of a fiddle to use. The microKORG2 sorted that out with a decent sized LCD screen as well as many new and improved features.
Now with 8-voice polyphony and retaining the original’s bi-timbrality, the microKORG2 lends itself even more to a broader palette of sounds. The latest release from Limbic Bits takes advantage of this with the new ‘Spectrum’ bank that contains presets for ambient, techno and electronica.
The bulk of the sounds are pads and textures but there are plenty of leads, basses, arps and dub chords included too. In total, there are a healthy 64 presets included, all of which can be installed via USB from a connected computer.
‘Spectrum’ for KORG’s microKORG2 is available directly from the Limbic Bits website for just €17.
‘Lustral Vol.2’ for Arturia PolyBrute 12 by Scott McAuley Sounds
I can hear you all now… “Here we go… Rob’s off on one of his PolyBrute 12 lovefests again!” I’m not going to lie, the Arturia PolyBrute 12 was by far and away my favourite synth of 2024, if not of all time. A big claim but one I’m happy to back up with facts.
And to help me back my argument up, the brilliant Scott McAuley has delivered yet another bank of superb presets for it that exploit every aspect of this incredibly unique and powerful synthesizer. In fact, he claims to have discovered a way to do something that the developers never did.
Among the 96 patches, which include a wide variety of pads, atmospheres, basses, leads and more, exploiting the powerful splits and layers, bi-timbrality and FullTouch capabilities, Scott has discovered that the PolyBrute 12 is also capable of delivering Binaural sounds!
Scott is planning to release a video on his YouTube channel soon which will show you how to create your own binaural patches, but this is yet another reason to adore this creamy, dreamy synthesizer! But for now, we can bask in the glory of Scott’s own creations, which you can check out in the videos I’ve shared here.
Lustral Vol.2 is, as the name implies, the second in what I hope is an ongoing series for the PolyBrute 12 but if there are no more sounds to come, the 196 sounds in volumes 1 & 2 will keep me happy for a very long time. In fact, since installing them, I’ve played no other sounds on my PolyBrute 12.
Lustral Vol.2 for Arturia PolyBrute 12 is available direct from Scott’s website for just £29.99.
‘Dystopia Gallery’ for Decent Sampler by Paulee Alex Bow
Viewers of SonicState Live will know Paulee Alex Bow well, with their flamboyant, nerdy and unique spin on music technology. There’s no doubting their talent and knowledge, especially when it comes to Amiga-based music making and the more obscure corners of the world of synths.
A prolific composer and contributor to SonicState, both on-screen and on their website, Paulee has been discovering the joys of Decent Sampler, a rather lovely free sample player which encourages people to make sample libraries for low or no cost at all.
Because it’s free, it means anyone making music in a DAW can take advantage of the content supplied for it and now Paulee themselves has created a small but unique and intriguing sound set entitled ‘Dystopia Gallery’.
The 12 patches included here are sampled from a KORG Audio Gallery AG-10 General MIDI module. In Paulee’s own words…
By reverse engineering the SYSEX map of this unit, then feeding it erroneous values (a technique eluded to on a long-forgotten website), I obtained weird cross-modulation, noisy jam loops and other sinister twists on that classic 90’s ROMpler sound.
Priced at a measly £3.99 GBP/$5.00 USD, this is a really lovely little set of atmospheric and inspiring sounds to suit anyone’s style and/or budget!
‘The Phoenix Collection’ for Sequential Prophet 5/10 Rev.4 by Pulsophonic
Pulsophonic have appeared in my column previously, predominantly for their work for Kodamo’s EssenceFM and MASK1 synthesizers. Now they’ve turned their attention to one of the big hitters in the hardware synth world, Sequential’s delightful Prophet 5/10 Rev.4.
This brilliant, modern evolution of the seminal classic is a work of art, both visually and sonically, that remains faithful to Dave Smith’s original whilst firmly grasping the future and ensuring the Prophet 5 legacy will live on for years to come.
Whereas Pulsophonic’s ‘Phoenix Collection’ Vol.1 was a collection of pads, leads, basses, etc., Vol.2 is a set of 40 luscious pads that really show off what the Rev.4 Prophet 5 can do. And it doesn’t matter which edition of the Rev.4 you own as these patches work across them all.
The Phoenix Collection Vol.2 is available to buy directly from the Pulsophonic website for €15.00 and Vol.1 is still available for the same price. According to the website, Vol. 3 is coming very soon!
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