Product Review - XILS Lab Synthix

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Published in SOS February 2012

Reviews : Synthesizer


XILS Lab continue to trawl the depths of obscure synth history, this time with an emulation of that rarest of beasts, the Elka Synthex.
Gordon Reid
The first two soft synths from XILS Lab were certainly notable, both for their sounds and their facilities, and I think that it’s fair to say that the XILS 3 and PolyKB II rank amongst the best soft synths yet produced. Now the company have turned their attention to another super-rare synthesizer, the Elka Synthex. A commercial flop, the Synthex now boasts a reputation that would have seemed impossible when it was discontinued in 1985, but is that enough to justify a dedicated soft synth?
Voicing
A Synthix oscillator.
A Synthix oscillator.
Like its inspiration, the Synthix is a dual-oscillator polysynth with a multi-mode filter that allows it to generate sounds that are not available from many classic analogue polysynths and their ‘soft’ descendents. It also recreates other unusual facilities that set the Synthex apart, such as its on-board chorus and four-track sequencer. However, compared with the original Synthex, Synthix boasts more waveforms, more contour generators (four instead of two), more modulation sources (five instead of two), routes and destinations, more effects (four instead of one) … well, more of everything.
Let’s start by comparing the Synthix oscillators with those of the Synthex. Although these look somewhat different from the original’s, closer inspection shows that they offer much the same facilities. The octave range is duplicated, coarse/fine tuning (called ‘Transpose’) is as before, as are the four waveforms. Pulse Width Modulation (which is actually Pulse Width cross-modulation from oscillator 2) is also retained, as is Ring Modulation, with knobs for initial PW and level. With oscillator sync and white/pink noise provided elsewhere on the control panels, there is one visible addition on the soft synth; you can defeat keyboard tracking if desired. There are also numerous hidden additions. For example, the triangle wave has a sine-wave option, and the sawtooth wave is capable of ‘super-saw’ effects, while the Width knob also controls the shape of the triangle wave and the depth of the super-saw wave.
Multi-mode filter.
Multi-mode filter.
...

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Published in SOS February 2012

 

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In this article:
Voicing
Voice Management
In Use
Conclusions
Guitar Mode
The Arpeggiators
A Brief History
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