Surge XT

Written By Troy Ouellette

How Free Software can help revitalize sound-art Practice

Although I have been looking at experimental musicians as of late I wanted to shift focus to mention the software that’s available for anyone using a DAW (digital audio workstation). I recently came across the free Surge synthesizer. In my view Surge is one of the most versatile instruments in my plug-in arsenal for creating and manipulating sounds through MPE (MIDI Polyphonic Expression). I found the interface extremely easy to use with plenty of ways to explore new sound dimensions. As of this writing, the new 1.9 version of Surge is one stable piece of software.

Here is a short list of what the software has to offer:

  • many versatile oscillator options, including sub-oscillator, wavetables (with import), shaping, horizontal + vertical skewing, saturation, self-sync, unison with spread and FM).

  • mixer with Gain (over)drive before the filter section (and AM).

  • noise generator with a dedicated own HP/LP filter slider for noise "colour".

  • great (dual) filters of different types, slopes and characteristics (features a separate global HP filter too).

  • several Wave Shaper functions.

  • various audio-path routings (with feedback).

  • several MONO modes (with or without legato and/or amp/filter envelope retrigger).

  • 3 operator/oscillator FM matrix (and 2 or 3 operator in the FM2/3 oscillators).

  • almost any continuous parameter can be modulated (including oscillator shapes).

  • great and versatile modulation sources (that can modulate each other too).

  • ADSR envelopes with different curves (and more complex DAHDSR envelopes in the multiple (G)LFO sections) even has audio input.

  • various FX in chains.

  • Win, Mac, Linux, 32/64-bit.

My hope is that this software will remain open-source as it offers an alternative to Serum or Arturia. These later packages can get expensive through expansion packs and preset purchases. For those that want to explore SurgeXT I recommend trying it out here… https://surge-synthesizer.github.io/downloads

The download sizes are roughly 80mb to 200mb depending on the version and operating system you are using. Please respond in the blog and let me know what you think of Surge XT.

For those wanting more information about this amazing plugin (for your DAW) please check out the team website https://surge-synth-team.org/

and this excellent tutorial by Venus Theory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeEiqytXVNg

Troy Ouellette
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