Surge XT is a digital synth and makes no bones about it.
If you have used it in the past, it will be like welcoming an old friend back into your life. If you are new to Surge XT, welcome to the party. Come on in, the water is fine.
SYNTH SPECIFICATIONSGENERAL
Synthesis method: Subtractive hybrid
• Each patch contain two scenes which are separate instances of the entire synthesis engine (except effects) that can be used to create layered or split patches.
• Quick category-based patch browser with textual search and favorites
• Runs on a variety of operating systems, plugin formats, and architectures
FACTORY SOUNDS
• 2779 patches
• 614 wavetables
OSCILLATORS• 3 oscillators per scene, with 12 versatile oscillator algorithms: Classic, Modern, Wavetable, Window, Sine, FM2, FM3, String, Twist, Alias, S&H Noise and Audio Input.
• Classic oscillator is a morphable pulse/saw/dual saw oscillator with a sub-oscillator and hard sync.
• Modern oscillator is a mixable saw/pulse/triangle oscillator with an optional sub-oscillator mode for triangle (which can also change to sine or square) and hard sync.
• FM2/FM3 oscillators consist of a carrier and 2 or 3 modulators and various options.
• String oscillator uses two filtered waveguides to emulate plucked or bowed string sounds.
• Twist oscillator is based on a very famous Eurorack macro oscillator, and it offers a myriad of synthesis options in a very simple and quick way.
• Most algorithms (except FM2, FM3, Twist and Audio Input) offer up to 16-voice unison at the oscillator level.
• Oscillator FM in 3 different configurations and ring modulation between oscillators 1-2 and 2-3.
• Most oscillator algorithms (except FM2, FM3, Sine and Alias) are strictly band-limited, yet still cover the entire audible spectrum, delivering a clear, punchy and clean sound.
• Noise generator with variable spectrum (available directly in the oscillator mixer).
FILTER BLOCK• Two filter units in 8 different configurations.
• Feedback loop available in 7 of those configurations.
• Available filter algorithms: Lowpass (12 and 24 dB/oct, each with 3 variations), Legacy Ladder Lowpass (6-24 dB/oct), Vintage Ladder Lowpass (2 variations, each with and without gain compensation), Highpass (12 and 24 dB/oct, each with 3 variations), Bandpass (12 and 24 dB/oct, each with 3 variations), Notch (12 and 24 dB/oct, each with 2 variations), Allpass (3 variations), Comb (positive and negative), S&H.
• Open-source additions to our filter algorithms include: K35 and Diode Ladder filter types from Odin 2 synthesizer, 12 and 24 dB/oct multimode filters from OB-Xd, and weird but fascinating Cutoff Warp, Resonance Warp and Tri-Pole filters by Jatin Chowdhury!
• Filters can self-oscillate (with excitation) and respond amazingly fast to cutoff frequency changes.
• Waveshaper (43 shapes).
MODULATION• 12 LFO units available, 6 are per voice and 6 are global for the whole scene.
• DAHDSR envelope generators on every LFO.
• LFO shapes consist of 7 deformable LFO waveforms, step sequencer, a fully-fledged multi-segment envelope generator (MSEG) with various curves and up to 128 nodes, and last but not the least – a formula modulator which utilizes Lua scripting language to provide completely custom modulator output.
• Voice LFOs allow envelope retriggering in step sequencer mode.
• Extremely fast and flexible modulation routing. Almost every continuous parameter can be modulated!
EFFECTS• 16 effect units arranged as 4 inserts per scene, 4 sends and 4 master effects.
• 27 effect algorithms:
FILTERING:
• 3-band fully parametric EQ
• 11-band graphic EQ
• Exciter
• Resonator
DISTORTION:
• CHOW
• Distortion
• Neuron
• Tape (based on ChowTapeModel!)
• Waveshaper
MANGLING:
• Combulator
• Frequency Shifter
• Nimbus
• Ring Modulator
• Treemonster
• Vocoder
MODULATION:
• Chorus
• Ensemble
• Flanger
• Phaser
• Rotary Speaker
TIME & SPACE:
• Delay
• Reverb 1
• Reverb 2
• Spring Reverb
MULTIEFFECTS:
• Airwindows (itself containing 56 effects!)
• Conditioner
• Mid-Side Tool
We released Surge XT 1.1.2 on November 1, 2022.
The primary reason for this point release is that it contains a fix for a problem in recent versions of Ableton Live, where Surge XT’s sliders and Live’s VST3 automation conflict. If you have experienced jumpy or inconsistent sliders in Live, you should update Surge XT!
Additionally, 1.1.2 contains these incremental changes:
Plugins
• Fixed inconsistent and jumpy sliders in Ableton Live, due to inconsistent VST3 value setter messages, which recent versions of Live would send
• CLAP: Correctly labeled a number of parameters which are not polyphonically modulatable as such
• CLAP: CLAP_NOTE_ON events with velocity of 0 will now act as note offs
• CLAP: Defensively support the CLAP parameter cookie being nullptr without crashingMIDI
• Added an option for using MIDI channels 2 and 3 to play individual scenes, or not (enabled by default)
• Clearing current MIDI mapping will now also clear it from the DAW session stateDSP
• Processing block size is now a compile-time constant which can be a power of 2, but larger than 4 (Surge XT remains at block size of 32 samples)
• Added the Absolute option for Combulator voices 2 and 3, so that their frequencies can be set as absolute values in Hz, unlinked from voice 1
• Modulating global volume will now work (but be careful not to modulate too much!)UI/UX
• Fixed a crash in the FX grid which occured on some Linux systems
• Muted oscillator waveforms will now appear semi-transparent
• Fixed the always-on-top pin button for the torn out overlays not being visible on macOS
• Waveshaper effect parameter group names clearer
• Added an option to display CPU load as a number in the VU meter (Menu > Value Displays)
• Middle-mouse click on Patch and Category previous/next buttons will load random patch (regression from Surge 1.9)
• Patch comments tooltip will now appear more quickly
• Added a few accessibility labels and annoucnements we’ve missed, including the About screen
• Holding Shift when saving a patch will force-overwrite the patch (bypasses the dialog asking if you want to overwrite the patch)
• Shift-clicking in the main frame to open the main menu will now show Developer submenu
• We will now display skin’s category in the About screen, if it’s defined in the skin’s XML file
• Restored the CLAP logo to the About screen of the Surge Dark skinContent
• Added LinnStrument/MPE optimized patches from Roger Linn and the LinnStrument communityInfrastructure and work to re-introduce Surge XT in VCV Rack
• Fixed a problem where an invalid patch in the user search path could in some cases crash the patch database scanner
• Modified CMake so that Surge XT can be used as a sub-library of another project
• Made surge-common buildable without building all of JUCE, instead cherry-picked a few JUCE dependencies
• Made surge-common build without Lua
• Provided a from-disk windows.wt loading strategy for VCV Rack
• CMake now exports a compile_commands.json
