Rob Papen has released Blade, a virtual synthesizer instrument for Windows and Mac.

Born of a synth fanaticism of epic proportions and forged in the darkest depths of a legend’s mind, BLADE rises to rid the planet of mundane music…

At the heart of BLADE, ready to twist and transform your musical mind, lies the Harmolator. An additive synthesis system, which rather than using the system of changing additive partials, uses global controls which capture the essence of additive synth in an intuitive way making the creation of sounds much easier than using other additive synths.

The nine Harmolator controls allow you to create a vast range of sounds so you get all the amazing sounds that additive synthesis can generate with the added simplicity of traditional subtractive synthesis.
The Harmolator allows oscillator spreading, fattening the sound and also square / sine wave sub-oscillator. What’s more, the sound can be modified further by the 21 per-voice distortions types and 14 filter types.

Blade offers total control of the sound over time using an array of different modulation controls.

Blade features

16 voices, operating in poly , mono 1/2 , legato 1/2 and arp modes.
Harmolator Oscillator with 9 controls, harmolator wave settings, two types of spread functions and extended sub-oscillator.
21 Distortion Units operating per voice (ahead of filter).
14 Filter Types including 6/12/18/24 low/high pass, 12/24 band pass / notch, vocal & comb filter.
Filter separation function for unique filter stereo soundAmp section with Volume, Velocity and Envelope control.
XP Pad with 12 amount controls for each X and Y, which can modulate the 9 Harmolator parameters, Filter Cutoff, Filter Q and Volume.
XY Pad which can operating either directly or with recorded paths, in poly, mono or free modes.
XY Pad playback can be tempo synced, with different tempo settings, and with loop & bi-directional loop options.
XY Pad movement speed control.
XY editing options at right mouse menu
Dedicated Harmolator velocity, LFO and envelope controls.
Pitch LFO and Pitch Envelope, 2 Free Harmolator control sources, 2 Free Envelopes, 2 Free LFOs and 4 modulation sources.
All of Blade’s controls can be used as modulation destinations, and there are a full range of modulation sources including midi controls and internal controls.
2 FX units with 27 effects, including distortion, reverb and tape delay plus many more.
16 Step Arpeggiator with each step having its own pitch, velocity and free amount, which can also be used as a sequencer for modulation purposes.
Easy Page allows control of the main parameters in a flexible and easy way.
Preset handling with copy, paste, clear and compare function.
‘Quick Browser’, ‘Recently Browsed’ and ‘Favorite’ functions.
Preset Manager screen allows you to easily find and organize presets and banks.
Full midi control over all parameters included the X/Y Pad.

Blade for Windows and Mac (VST/AU/RTAS) is available to purchase for the introductory price of 99 EUR (incl VAT) / $119 USD until the end of May, 2012.

http://www.robpapen.com/blade.html

 

I already bought this...... *yes*

 

Pardon me – i've tested this one and i'm not convinced of it!
The sounds are I.M.O mediocre, the GUI too dark, not well designed and the animated screen isn't necessary at all.
Well, nice as an experiment but i wouldn't buy this nor install it.

 

Good that we all of our own opinions *yes*

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVeD887AU0g

these "factory" sounds arent so mediocre

the animation is kinda necessary since you can have a different automation per note. unless you just keep it vanilla and automate nothing

lol at animated screens. thats what i think about the swinging cables in reason everytime they flip the rack around. and about all the un-necessary extra eye candy in fl studio too. but they both still continue to make excellent music

 

Blade is surely more oriented to techno-trance musicians as its sounds and design shows.
Nothing against it – but also nothing really special! All the sounds in the DEMO clip have an annoying delay effect and sound rather thin, almost like VANGUARD but this one sounds even better than Blade. The Canadian company ReFX this time beats the Dutch MR.Papen. *yes*

 

I like his work. Don't base a vst on presets.

 

Kooker.. u should add IMO.. after such strong opinions.. otherwise you appear as a bit of a know-it-all. *yes*

eg: The Canadian company ReFX this time beats the Dutch MR.Papen...IMO. *yes*

like Dan said.. Presets dont mean anything. It's knowing how to use the plug that matters.

Tip: that 'annoying delay effect' can be turned.. off.

 

Lolz I was Alpha tester. Blade is quite old to me. Very good for making those rough basses. :D

 

The interface is quite ugly and not easy on the eye, the kind of design which is appealing to a 16 year old hard style kid I guess.

A lot of this synth programmers should definitely take some lessons in ergnomic interface design.

But I guess they do not even use their programs.

 

Haha yes with the blades and a kind of gothic/metal look ! And I'm tired of that dance/drum'n'bass/techno, it's not my tastes at all !!


BUT I heard the demo, I'm almost sure it's possible to do some cool stuff with it in any genre ! I'm gonna try the demo...

 

Absolutely right!! *yes*
That's indeed the point in which most developers/programmers fail!
Today, they're all in a rush to bring out new stuff, neglecting the aspects of a good product design. Maybe later on they apply some changes – but then forcing people to upgrade to get the "new/old" product. But as you say: perhaps Blade is aimed to younger people.

 

who cares what it looks like.. your making music not videos (I used acid pro for years and before that "making waves=the ugliest daws on the planet" IMO It didnt make my stuff sound any worse or better.

This thing can make sounds fast. I didnt even read the book yet and was able to design a fat dirty bass in seconds from the init patch.

pssst...I made a 75bpm street anthem type hiphop track

Papen's distort and delay plugs have been a secret weapon of mine for a while. Nice to see them implemented as modular fx in this plug. His reverb is actually really nice too. IMO Dont take my word for it. I know nothing

 

Wrong! *no* I care, and many other artists too. *yes*
In the end we're not a bunch of Technocrats – we're artists!!

 

very true. The Gui is gay. Its almost useless, because u can make the EXACT same sounds in NI massive

 

I agree full!! MASSiVE is in many ways much, much better than Blade! *yes*

 

well, instead of choosing one or the other. i will use all the tools available to me.

i like programming massive, but it takes longer to get similar results. i am exceptionally fast in making patches in sylenth too. albeton operator as well. and I will use them all layered on top of eachother as homebrewed multis = my unique sound/presets

uh, the unison in massive is weird. sounds alot better/smother in twin or sylenth or dune or blade IMO

This has been known for ages
weird unison in massive

but i guess youd have to program a patch to know this

try this. make the same patch using the same osc in all the above mentioned synths. then crank up the detuned unison voices and compare what the same thing sounds like in each one

heres some food for thought. how come the worlds best guitarists have the most beat up ugliest guitars? theyre only concerned with the sound, not the look.
if you want to look good, buy a mac. if you want to sound good, buy a computer

 

sorry, what exactly do you mean by "gay"?
do you have information this gui has intimate relationships with other guis of the same sex?
or is it you find the gui is happily enjoying it's day?

 

lol. maybe he meant its happy cause the ease of modulating parameters compared to massive's click/drag mod matrix