Waverazor: Torturous, virtual future-synth that will cut you in half
Waverazor is a troubled, angry virtual synthesizer with an uncommon edginess wrapped up in a neon-tastic, futuristic Tron-fest of an interface. This is looking like a load of fun.
I saw an alarming promo of Waverazor when it first emerged at NAMM this year. Designed by MOK (Media OverKill), comprising of the designers behind the Alesis Quadrasynth, Andromeda, ION and Tracktion BioTek amongst others. Tracktion Corporation seem to have stepped in as sort of curators and that’s no bad thing because Waverazor fits quite well with their redesigned Waveform DAW.
Waverazor
I am so enjoying the look – fabulous, spot-on, pushes all my buttons. The sound on-the-other-hand is cruel, sharp and angular. They say they were looking for “never-heard-before” sounds and they may well have accomplished that. It’s fiercely digital and features three competing oscillators that can be wave-mangled independently by the big central circle. They talk about the design of the oscillator being “patent-pending” and utilising a new form of synthesis. That’s quite intriguing.
Each waveform is carved up into a number of slices dictated by the segments around the circle. Selecting a segment allows you to mess with that specific slice. You can alter the shape of each slice, producing different harmonics which are subject to amplitude modulation at a rate and level determined by the contents. So each harmonic can be effected differently making it a very complex form of ring modulation.
The central circle can be a gloriously dynamic oscilloscope, or it can be a precise waveform editor. The surround buttons and parameters allow for intensity and detuning adjustments. On either side are two more circles offering and sort of XY pad of filtering and modulation. I’m very happy to say that the whole interface is multi-touchable so you can really get your fingers in there if you have a touch-screen.
Usability
Although there is some instantly intuitive control in the two smaller circles, other tweaking and deeper sound design takes a bit of time and thought. The demo includes a good range of sounds that give a decent indication of what’s possible here. It’s a delight to watch the oscilloscope bounce around while playing with parameters. Getting into the wave editing can become very absorbing. Messing with the pitch and phase offsets, or pushing the wave shapes, or mixing different waves just to see and hear what happens. It’s all very intriguing.
Waverazor is available now with a cool 50% off at $75. For more information and to download the demo head over to the Tracktion website.
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One response to “Waverazor: Torturous, virtual future-synth that will cut you in half”
This seems to be a “wow” kind of thing.michael krewitsky