D16 Syntorus 2

Polish developer D16 produce some of the
inest analogue emulations available,
ranging from the Roland-inspired Drumazon
and Nepheton drum machines right through to
hardware emulating efects such as their
Antresol langer, Repeater delay and Redoptor
tube distortion.
A decade ago they released their original
chorus plugin, Syntorus. This captured the
classic analogue chorus sound you’d ind on
synths, pedals and beyond and needless to say
we loved it and still do. But ten years is a long
time, and so it’s great to see this excellent
processor inally getting an overhaul.
So what’s new?
Syntorus 2 (VST, AU, AAX) builds on version 1 in a
number of ways. The big news is you now have
three rather than two delay lines and three
rather than two LFOs. This simple though
signiicant change has necessitated a layout
redesign, and what you now have are two
panels, one for delay Lines and one for LFOs,
with the red LEDs acting as selectors for the
processor you want to edit. A third Mixer panel
provides level, pan and metering for each delay
Line, and a Coniguration panel gives you three
options that dictate how the LFOs control the
delays. These include an Independent setting
D 1 6
Syntorus 2 €59
Chorus has proven to be a tricky efect to create in plugin form. Let’s see
if this upgraded classic hits the spot
“Ten years is a long
time, and so it’s great
to see this excellent
processor inally
getting an overhaul”
LINE
Select one of
three delay
lines to edit
DELAY &
OFFSET
Use these two
controls to set the
base delay time
and delay
time modulation
ANALOG BBD
Activate the
bucket brigade
device emulation
TREMOLO
Use this to adjust
the amount of
amplitude
modulation
MIXER
Set the panning and
mix levels for the
three delay lines
OSCILLATOR
PHASE
Adjust the left and
right channel phase
independently
FILTER
Select the filter type by
clicking on the graphic
and set cutoff and
cutoff modulation using
the controls
QUALITY
Choose the realtime
and offline processing
quality from this drop-
down menu
LFO
Select one of
three LFOs
to edit
CONFIGURATION
Choose from one of
three LFO routing
configuration options
LFO SETTINGS
Choose from six osc
waveforms, set the rate
and activate the
sync option
with LFOs simply controlling their respective
delays, a Summed option and a combination of
the two (Mixed). Overall the redesign works
excellently and the new panning option is
particularly handy for creating stereo efects or
simply tweaking the stereo image.
On the delay lines themselves you have the
same key parameters (Depth, Ofset and
Tremolo) albeit with slightly extended
parameters (up to 20ms). However, the global
high-pass ilter on version 1 has been replaced
by delay Line-speciic multimode ilters (Low,
High and Bandpass) with corresponding Cutof
control and LFO Modulation depth. This in itself
is a powerful addition that facilitates frequency-
speciic processing. Looking at the LFOs, once
again you have six types with tempo sync
option, but now there’s LFO Amplitude (with
invert), and independent left and right Phase
shift controls rather than a single stereo phase
knob. As before, Syntorus includes a Bucket
74 / COMPUTER MUSIC / October 2020
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