Tonic Synth

What it does

Three layers stack in one patch, each with its own engine, filter, envelopes and modulation, and each can be routed to the effects separately. The engines cover classic analog shapes, physical models for plucks, mallets, blown instruments and strings, FM, wavetables that can be drawn in by hand, and a SoundFont player that loads SF2 files. Around them sit an arpeggiator with scenes and hold, a chord memory strip, a modulation matrix with two LFOs, and a row of chorus, flanger, phaser, delay, reverb, EQ, compressor and a rhythmic chop.

In the demo

Jade runs three instances in AUM on a piano motif piece, then solos one, strips it back to a single layer and builds it up control by control. She sets keyboard splits by MIDI learn, draws a wavetable, captures a chord set, and works through the preset banks on bass, pad, pluck, string and lead sounds.

Worth knowing

Preset levels vary enough that the master volume needs riding while switching. Jade also hits sluggish scrolling and short freezes on the large interface.