Dehli Musikk (Benjamin Dehli) has developed the Overtonium 32-partial overtone soft synth, with the emphasis on every control being visible and available – using the layout structure of a mixing desk.
This is an additive synth, which works on the principle of adding sine waves together — a stack of partials at different frequencies and levels.
While it may perhaps look rather overwhelming — and let’s hope you have a decent sized display to be able to see and alter all those knobs and faders — it is in fact a very obvious way of getting all the parameters to the surface and ready to tweak.
The whole instrument then is 32 channels plus a noise channel, and global controls along the top. It supports MPE if you have the controller to drive it.
Scanning down, there are controls for tune (which sweeps each partial continuously between equal temperament and just intonation tuning), phase, pitch modulation (shape, rate, depth, drift), envelope (strike, delay, attack, decay, sustain), key off (swell, level, release), amplitude modulation (shape, rate, depth), output (velocity, aftertouch, pan) and then levels as sliders.
There are 32 factory presets and you can create your own. Overtonium runs as VST3, AU and LV2, as well as standalone. It’s completely free (runs under AGPLv3) and the source is available for any budding coder-modders.
