RES-09

What it does

An emulation of the Roland RS-09, a late 1970s divide down organ and string machine. Two organ voices run off a set of drawbars beside a string section, each side with its own ensemble chorus, pan and volume, and a bias control sets the blend between them. A vibrato offers triangle, square and sample and hold shapes with delay, rate and depth. Separate tabs hold global tuning with drift and per note detuning, and an effects rack with a tape echo, overdrive, phaser and spring reverb.

In the demo

Jade builds up from the init patch, muting the organ to hear the strings alone, then bringing in drawbars, ensemble and attack until it becomes a pad. She locks parameters with padlocks before hitting the randomiser, detunes individual notes on the tune page, and runs presets through the effects to move it away from its carnival register.

Worth knowing

The hardware style switches respond to a swipe rather than a twist, which takes a moment to get used to. There is no Mac build of the app, though AudioThing sells a desktop version separately. Jade saw one crash in two weeks.