Charlatan

Free virtual analog synth plugin by BlauKraut Engineering

Charlatan Screenshot

Charlatan is a polyphonic, subtractive virtual analog software synthesizer plugin whose design focuses on sound quality and easy usability. The design philosophy was to provide a feature set just large enough to cover a wide range of sounds rather than an infinite number of parameters and modulation options cluttering the user interface and distracting from the creative process. That said, Charlatan's synthesis architecture is flexible enough to create all kinds of sounds, from conventional classic leads, basses and pads to weird blips and noises.

While making no compromises about sound quality, the algorithms have been optimized for efficient CPU usage making Charlatan well suited as a ''bread and butter'' synth even in projects with a large number of plugin instances.

Best of all, it's FREEWARE! Enjoy!

Feature Summary

2 oscillators with triangle, sawtooth, rectangle and noise waveforms
oscillator pulse-width modulation (PWM) and slew rate modulation (morphing between triangle and sawtooth)
oscillator hard synchronization and ring modulation
2 ADSR envelope generators
1 LFO
3 filter types modeled after classic analog hardware: 4-pole (24 db/oct) and 2-pole (12 db/oct) lowpass, bandpass
filter code based on nonlinear zero-delay feedback technique for accurate emulation of analog counterparts
3 voice modes: Monophonic with retriggering, Monophonic Legato and 8-voice Polyphonic
low CPU usage
100% coded in C++
native 64-bit support

Version History

1.1.4 (2012-02-08)

Jet another revision of the 4-pole ladder filter implementation. Placement of nonlinearities is now correct wrt. the original circuit
new switch 2OCT for Osc2: double detune range (+/-2 octaves)
90 degree phase shift of Osc2 square wave wrt. Osc1 (only when sync is inactive). Emulates behavior of sub-oscs of Roland synths.
if Osc1 is set to noise, the ring mod input of Osc1 is now the rectangle signal rather than noise.
Reduced max. filter key tracking from 200% to 100%. 200% just isn't useful.
BUGFIX: LFO delay parameter was completely hosed (10x the displayed value!)
BUGFIX: handle LFO delay time on samplerate change
doubled max. LFO delay time (10s -> 20s)
minor tweaks'n'fixes

1.1.3 (2011-11-21)

BUGFIX: corrected placement of nonlinearities in 4-pole lowpass filter. Mainly noticable with high resonance.
Filter key tracking: account for glide and pitch bend
introduced slight pitch tuning error of voices in polyphonic mode
Detune parameter is now nonlinear to make it easy to dial in small values
minor tweaking of presets

1.1.2 (2011-11-06)

Handle MIDI program change
BUGFIX: aliasing artifacts of triangle oscillators at very high pitch
smoothing of filter cutoff parameter to eliminate artifacts when doing fast manual sweeps
BUGFIX: regression which broke compatibilty with older hosts such as Cubase SX
some more presets (based on banks from KVR member Alvfaria)

1.1.1 (2011-10-04)

BUGFIX: crash in Live with multiple instances

1.1 (2011-10-03)

improved 4-pole filter sound and time-varying behavior by introducing more nonlinearities, at the expense of higher CPU usage.
BUGFIX: properly report automatable parameters. Fixes crash in Orion/bug in Cubase.

1.0 final (2011-09-09)

enhanced factory preset banks
small fixes and performance optimizations

Download

Latest version (1.1.4)

Windows 32/64-bit VSTi (ZIP file)

User preset banks

Please note that many of the presets are already included (maybe slightly modified) in the official releases.

ZN_Classics_for_Charlatan.fxb (Zorniko)
ZN_Classics2_for_Charlatan.fxb (Zorniko)
Charlatan_Bank_NedK.fxb (NedK)
Charlatan_Bank_2_Tek.zip (Teksonik)
alvfaria_charlatan_banks.zip (Alvfaria)

More banks can be found at the KVR database. If you want to share your presets, please upload them there.

Demo tracks

Solidtrax - Charlatan 21 by Solidtrax

Also, many exciting songs made using Charlatan exclusively are the submissions for the KVR One Synth Challenge (OSC) 33.

Support

Discussion about Charlatan takes place in the official forum thread @ KVR audio. If you have questions or suggestions, post them there. You can also contact me at KVR via private message (username karrikuh).