Infected Sounds ACTIV8: 8-voice dance synth with a huge library of waveforms
5,0 / 5,0 | 
Another virtual synth from Infected Sounds and Rewired Records is packed full of EDM sounds made from 2 oscillators running 250 waveforms.
ACTIV8
If you’re running out of ideas with the LUN4 virtual synthesizer released in August then why not try a slightly different flavour with ACTIV8. This time you’ve got 2 oscillators that can load any one of up to 250 sampled waveforms. The waves cover the usual territory of virtual analogue before going off into all sorts of territory like acoustic instruments, pianos, bells and other sampled sources.
Each oscillator can be pushed up to 8 voice polyphony or unison for those big supersaw sounds. Infect Sounds has built in some clever random phase control to prevent the samples from stacking up on top of each other too precisely. There’s also an FM connection between the 2 oscillators.
The filter has multiple modes including 303 style, ladder and some fierce SVF ones and there’s a separate vowel filter. The cutoff is tied by default to the first of two modulation envelopes and so ready to offer up your perfect bass or lead sound. There’s a separate envelope for the amplifier and 2 LFOs which gives it a nice bundle of modulation possibilities. I like the fade-in you can give to the LFOs so that they come in slowly after the initial strike.
There are 8 effects that are all available simultaneously in the centre display including EQ, Delay, Chorus and Reverb.
The focus is on the 300 presets provided by Rewired Records that will fulfil any need for EDM leads, basses and pads. In a really useful video (below) you are taken through the process of designing your own sounds from scratch with a view to building up your own bank of presets, potentially to sell to other users.
ACTIV8 isn’t anything we haven’t seen before but then the familiarity makes it dead easy to use and if this is your style of music then for 50 quid you are laughing. It’s available for Windows as a VST plugin – there’s a demo version available if you want to give it a go.
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