Minimal Audio Current

Minimal Audio’s Current is nothing if not ambitious, and not just as an instrument...

Minimal Audio are a Minneapolis, US‑based company that have carved a niche for themselves as developers of distinctive plug‑ins and sound libraries. Current, their most recent and complex product, is also their first virtual instrument. But actually it’s more than that: it’s a flagship that brings with it the rest of the Minimal product fleet, so to speak. In investing in Current you also get a whole suite of goodies that interrelate as a kind of mini ecosystem. It’s an intriguing idea, but with so many capable soft synths out there already, is it enough to make you jump ship?

High Voltage

Current is an über‑synth in the style of Arturia’s Pigments. It’s not based on any one thing from the past, and instead almost every aspect of it is ultra‑flexible and configurable. It’s still essentially a subtractive design, but of the most lavish, well‑equipped kind.

Constituting the oscillator part of the signal chain is a handful of sound generators running in parallel. Two wavetable oscillators encompass everything from typical analogue waveforms to complex digital and sample‑like timbres. Literally hundreds of wavetables are built in, and they’re all of the real‑deal, multi‑frame, smoothly morphable type. Two additional parameters, Wave and Warp, dial in waveform distortion with over 20 modes each, emulating the sound of oscillator hard sync, bit reduction, filtering, formant and frequency shifting, and a lot more with just the turn of a knob. Also, like Xfer Records’ Serum and Vital Audio’s Vital, Current can synthesize wavetables from audio you drag and drop into it, and import existing wavetable files from other synths too.

With their own tabbed interfaces the granular, sub and sample oscillators are no poor relations: they underpin many of the more experimental presets for one thing.

The granular oscillator here is a nice implementation of this sound‑generating tech, with parameters for playback position, spray/jitter, grain rate/density (sync’able to clock), flexible grain envelope shapes, and embedded filters. Finally there’s a sampler with a sub‑oscillator that will do classic chipmunk‑susceptible re‑pitching or time‑stretch your samples to keep their original duration, and more plausible formant content. There’s no pitch‑ or velocity‑driven sample switching but samples can reverse, loop and crossfade, and there’s an embedded multi‑mode filter and (like the wavetable oscillators) a unison feature offering as many as 16 detuned voices/layers and stereo spreading. The sub‑oscillator is unusually sophisticated, with parameters that redistribute the intensity of its harmonic spectra, and detune upper harmonics. All five of these oscillator types can play at once, though in practice you’re more likely to use a smaller combo.

Next along the signal chain we get two filters, which can operate in series or in parallel. With identical capabilities they offer filter responses grouped into categories called Basic, Morphing, Creative, Formant, Comb and Phaser: well over 50 different types. Together with the inevitable cutoff and resonance parameters there’s also Spread, which decouples left and right signal paths for stereo widening effects, and Morph, which for the Morph filter responses provides that wonderful continuous low‑/band‑/high‑pass transition typical of the Oberheim SEM, and for others dials in complex slope/peak distortions or variable spacing.

Further expanding the harmonic treatment options is a whole bank of audio modulation paths. Any oscillator can be frequency‑ or amplitude‑modulated by itself, by any other, by a noise source, or by the output of either filter. Audio‑rate sonic shredders, fill yer boots...

Alongside, the modulation scheme is similarly open‑ended. We could be here all day, so I’ll summarise it. There are 10 modulation sources: one AHDSR envelope that’s hard‑wired to amplitude, and nine others freely assignable. They can be further envelopes, LFOs, curve generators (an LFO/envelope mix on steroids, with a variety of preset shapes), or envelope followers (tracking oscillator or filter outputs). All are superbly equipped: for example, envelopes have variable curve shapes and can be looped. LFOs are sync’able, key‑triggered or free‑running and morph between classic analogue waveforms.

Further modulation comes from the keyboard: key‑tracking, note‑on and ‑off velocity, pitch‑bend, mod wheel and aftertouch. If you prefer an MPE controller you can switch these to become Strike value, Glide, Slide, Press and Lift instead. All with variable value limits and response curves. Four macro knobs look conventional at first but turn out not to be. They can modulate multiple destinations, and can themselves be modulated by anything else.

Assigning modulation is done in one of two ways. The first is to right‑click on any parameter and choose ‘Add Mod’. The second is to drag a ‘token’ from a modulator and drop it on top of a parameter, which will then be equipped with a little horseshoe‑shaped knob that both indicates it’s being modulated by something, and lets you dial in the modulation depth you want. Right‑click it and you can set unipolar or bipolar response, and also choose a further modulator to control modulation depth. Then, moment to moment parameter values are shown by animated rings around knobs, and in the case of the wavetables oscilloscope‑like waveform displays. There seems to be no limit on the number of parameters that can be controlled by a single modulator, but apparently individual parameters max out at three simultaneous incoming modulation signals.

All told, Current’s synthesis scheme is an embarrassment of riches. Anything you can’t achieve with it, in pure harmonic terms, is probably not worth doing. But as is the way in the 2020s, it’s only part of the picture. Effects are arguably at least as important an element of sound design these days, and Current does not mess about in this area either.

I mentioned Minimal Audio’s existing reputation for effects plug‑ins, and it turns out that their entire line‑up is built into Current (barring the flagship Rift distortion processor, which appears here as Polar Distortion, a sort of ‘Rift‑lite’) and can be deployed how you like in nine effect slots. It’s clear from only a moment’s experimentation that all are of top quality and are very controllable, for treatments from subtle to cataclysmic, often with surprisingly few controls. Effects parameters are fully available to the modulation scheme too, so can be animated as part of synth presets. Taking staples like the Swarm reverb and Cluster delay as a case in point, I appreciated the fact that they can quickly get very synthetic and experimental in character, for some really out‑there sounds. That seems appropriate given the versatile, no‑holds‑barred style of Current as a whole.

The Stream view is where Current leaves behind most other soft synths. The content browser features are familiar enough, but the net‑connected cloud content may well be a unique selling point. Seen here is a preset browser poised to dig into some curated preset packs. The ‘Bloom’ panel is an example of a search for sounds, with dedicated buttons to load these samples straight into the granular or sample oscillators.

Plugged‑in

So far, so good, but whilst Current’s feature set is colossal and the implementation impressive, it’s not fundamentally different to some similar synths I’ve already mentioned. The Stream panel is where that changes. Essentially, Current utilises an Internet connection in a way I’ve not really seen before in a synth.

Stream is a sort of dedicated browser and file management system, with audio previews, content filters and various different ways of sifting through the material on offer. But rather than trawling through the murky depths of your hard drives for long‑forgotten WAVs, this browser connects to Minimal Audio HQ on the Internet, and draws from a large pool of content: presets, wavetables or WAV‑based sounds ready to be loaded into the granular or sample players. It can alternatively see local content, but only ever Current‑specific stuff.

At the time of writing, looking at the Cloud offerings, a precise total number of available presets isn’t given, but it looks to be well into the hundreds and quite possibly the low thousands. Fewer wavetables were available, but still ran to some hundreds. And as for sounds, it’s certainly thousands. The promise from Minimal Audio is very much for this number to increase significantly over time.

Downloading this content makes it available locally, so there shouldn’t be any nasty gotchas when you take your laptop into the wilderness, or on a flight, and find that a lack of Internet access prevents you from picking up where you left off. However, like many an online subscription‑leaning scheme, there are some realities to be aware of. See the ‘Current Contract’ box for more on that.

Stream is a sort of dedicated browser and file management system, with audio previews, content filters and various different ways of sifting through the material on offer.

Bun Fight

Current clearly has a formidable synthesis and effects architecture, but how does it actually sound? In one word: complex. In a couple more: really impressive.

It’s not that you can’t get simple and clean results from it, and fast too. That’s revealed if you initialise a preset and load just simple oscillator waveforms and conventional 12 or 24 dB filter responses. It can sound very smooth and warm indeed, especially with each wavetable oscillator capable of anything up to the 16‑voice unison I mentioned before, and without affecting overall polyphony. There are silky filters, fat filters and sizzly filters, and with a touch of chorus and reverb you’re already through and way beyond vintage analogue polysynth territory. As part of testing I pushed all the oscillators to ultrasonic extremes and heard little or no side‑band or aliasing gunk. A global option to run the synthesis engine with 2x or 4x oversampling should do away with it completely, at the expense of some additional CPU load.

Current clearly has a formidable synthesis and effects architecture, but how does it actually sound? In one word: complex. In a couple more: really impressive.

However, with Current, a world of altogether noisier, darker, multi‑layered and aggressive timbres always lies just a few steps away. Even the simplest wavetables will morph in milliseconds into edgy, distorted territory. The granular oscillator, meanwhile, absolutely exists to do hazy and splintered. The FM/AM section is another source of wild and wonderful textures, and that’s even before you’ve fired up the Polar wavefolder and distortion effect.

Of course, I’m describing programming here. If you’re more of a preset person you may think you’ve arrived in synth heaven when you start mining the in‑built and online Minimal Audio reserves. Many presets have a colossal wow factor, and often a really contemporary ‘produced’ feel, as if they were sections lifted from productions you’d worked on for a week. Lots seem tailor‑made for anything from EDM, trance, trap and jungle to cinematic soundtrack and more experimental electronic use, and will require only a single note to be played for sophisticated results to be heard. The mind‑boggling timbral range that gushes out of Current has to be heard to be believed: in part it’s down to that amazingly versatile synthesis architecture, with sequenced and arpeggiated elements, but probably at least as much the way the synth draws on Minimal’s existing commercial sample libraries in the granular and sampler oscillators.

If there’s one down side to this often larger‑than‑life, even bombastic character, it’s that the provision of simpler vintage timbres is much less good. For example, I worked through all 160 locally accessible presets with the tag ‘bass’ and I’d say less than 10 sounded like they could have been generated by a Minimoog or other analogue synth and used to play a bass line in a conventional way. Many of the rest were banging, howling, digitally degraded mini masterpieces of their own that could spawn a composition, but might struggle to fit into an existing one. It was a similar situation with leads and pads, which often tend towards the huge and cinematic: chock full of movement and even embedded harmonic progressions (and yes, this aspect in ‘leads’ too!), and not exactly team players. It’s good that a synth exudes character, but I wonder if Current could have wider appeal if it’s eventually equipped with some more generic sound packs and conventional preset types over time. It’s certainly more than capable of supporting them.

Currentcy

In the final reckoning, and by almost any standards, Current is an absolutely phenomenal synth. I grew to really love using it during the review period.

Drawbacks are few. It can be CPU intensive, especially with all synthesis sections and a slew of effects enabled. Nothing that the most up‑to‑date CPUs and a bit of judicious track freezing can’t handle, but something to be aware of if you’re planning to fire up 25 instances.

Then there’s the polyphony situation: every instance is eight‑note polyphonic at max. Not terrible, especially compared to broadly similar hardware synths like the original Waldorf Quantum, and a lot of the time you’d never notice, especially when triggering any of the factory one‑key symphony presets. But it seems a surprisingly limitation in software, and becomes an issue most of all with long release times, where you might hear note stealing.

The user interface is, it has to be said, rather spartan: grey and purple (with a smattering of yellow) is the new black here. These things are very much in the eye of the beholder, though, and the flip side is that the upper‑case bold‑type labelling makes for great clarity, and it’s impressive that almost all synthesis parameters can be visible on a single screen, with modulation paths shown clearly and intuitively. One thing I was less keen on is the documentation: just a handful of quite cursory pages on Minimal Audio’s web pages, supplemented by video walkthroughs. They’re good for learning the basics fast, but I’d take a PDF (as well) any day. Actually, a mouse‑over tooltip mode is pretty good, doesn’t get in the way like some do, and helps not to have to move away from your DAW at all.

As for the positives, I could go on and on. It’s just so versatile. And I’m quite glad it is a true synth, and doesn’t try to be a complicated scripted sampler like NI’s Kontakt or UVI’s Falcon. That keeps it feeling immediate and manageable.

As for the online content feed, yes, that does generally have a strong character and attitude. If it’s not quite your thing you’re not forced to use it, but if it is you might feel like you’re set for life. There is a little bit of complication surrounding the All Access plan generally, that even hardcore perpetual licence lovers will end up dealing with, but Minimal’s policies for post‑subscription life are well considered and support the user, which is a refreshing change.

It’s not the cheapest soft synth out there, but Current is, currently, amongst the very best.