King of VHS

What it does

A lo-fi instrument made from vintage synths recorded through a VCR and resampled. Two layers each hold either one of over 160 multi-sampled PCM instruments or a synth oscillator, with level, octave, fine tune, pan and linked or separate ADSRs. Around them sit three LFOs with two destinations each, two filters, lo-fi and crush, VCR tape depth, speed and noise, stereo widen, auto pan, delay, reverb, heat, tremolo, phaser, a harmonic filter, a step sequencer and keyboard splits.

In the demo

Jade opens with six instances in AUM, then works from an init patch: creating a bank, exporting it as a file, routing an LFO to layer one fine tune and then to filter cutoff, and splitting the keyboard between layers. A follow-up episode has her building presets for her own bank and writing playing notes into each patch.

Worth knowing

Jade opens by explaining that an earlier, unrelated VHS synth was sold on and put behind a subscription, so this is a separate app rather than an update to that one. The sound set is deliberately grubby and will not stretch far outside that.