Erica Synths SYNTRX

Not for everyone – but excellent

Let's start with this: not everyone will like (or need) this synth. The "pin matrix" design is hugely flexible, but also complex; the sound can be gnarly and unruly; and you know that famous vintage machine that it bears a passing resemblance to? Sounds nothing like it.

But for sound-design, inspiration and all-round sonic weirdness, it's unsurpassed. Happy accidents pour out of it. The basic structure is two main VCOs (with quite complex waveform options) plus an LFO which stretches up into the audio spectrum (so can act as a good sub); plus various colours of noise; a "trapezoid" envelope generator; and a variable state self-oscillating filter. Adding to the fun are "output filters" (ie tone controls), built-in speakers with a grungy lo-fi tone, a very neat joystick controller (fully assignable via the patch matrix), a sample-and-hold circuit that can take its feed from the Noise or from Osc 3; and a built-in spring reverb tank. There's a LOT of cool stuff to get your teeth into here.

The video demos I've seen on YouTube have tended towards the "tweak all the knobs and make it howl and squeal" kind of approach, which is cool but gives the impression that all the SynTrx can do is sound like a shortwave radio in distress. In fact, if you hook a MIDI cable into it, it plays with solid tuning across a wide octave range and is eminently usable for leads, basses etc. Sample its outputs and you can generate really unusual, complex pads from this thing, too.

At its heart I'd say this is a sound-design machine – a Pandora's box of sonic excitement :-) There are probably better monosynths out there for "standard" lead and bass duties, and the SynTrx isn't cheap; so it'll come down to whether its brand of strange and unruly sonic joy is worth it to you. Almost certainly not a first synth, but I'm absolutely loving mine and having a blast sampling it into the EPS to make it polyphonic...!