Absynth is one of those synths that came as a bundle I bought from Native Instruments when they had a sale on, that I’ve used occasionally but never really got very involved with.
It seems really electronic-sounding and, unless you’re really careful, just a bit, well… naff.
It was for this reason that it fit the brief for a track I wrote many years ago for StarDog & TurboCat – the squeal at the beginning of TurboCat’s theme was deliberately over-the-top and a little tacky.
The brief asked for a sound that could have been made by the character TurboCat himself; he’s handy with electronics, but everything he owns has been scrounged from the rubbish tip, and, whilst he’s enthusiastic and really does think he’s super-cool, he’s a bit amateur and his skills don’t quite match up to his ego.
So I figured it was worth digging into for a few days, at least.
Journal
18/2/22
There’s an additional manual called an ‘Update’, discovered via googling to see if anyone else has had the issues I have with the instructions in the manual not matching up with the software (the answer is yes btw).
But this update document only lists some of the differences between the old manual and the updated software.
Lazy NI, lazy.
Also there are a TON of typos in the original manual. No-one proofread it.
Also, all of the patches I’ve made are distinctly digital/pristine sounding and I don’t like them.
Also it’s possible I’m tired and cranky and could do with a bit more sleep and it’s coming up that time of the month so everything is just that little bit more difficult, if you know what I mean.
… Although you can use a sample in an oscillator, so that fulfils the (odd) need for me to base everything on a real world sound.
…
I used a real world sound in an oscillator and popped a funky envelope on it and it’s turned out ok-ish. It’s definitely useable. But, again, I’d like to modulate a parameter (this time the position of the ‘Decay’ parameter – the D in ADSR) to give it some subtle organic movement… and, you guessed it, it’s not assignable.
So I can’t assign it to a modulator. WHY NOT huh?
…
All in all, I can see how powerful Absynth is but it’s not sitting quite right with me, and the sounds it makes have that tinny, digital precision that’s quite difficult to get rid of with effects in the chain, to get an effect that’s much easier in another tool. The sounds just feel really clinical. Perhaps I’ll revisit when I’m feeling a bit more patient.
15/2/22
Absynth uses custom waveforms in its oscillators – so can you import from recorded audio? Note to self: investigate.
It doesn’t appear to use wavetables though, just a single wave cycle.
It does have an effect plugin version (to put on an audio or instrument channel strip). Useful for effecting audio recordings.
The ‘Mutator’ is something I’ve definitely used in the past to make random sounds in the past, but I’ve no idea how it works (yet). This would be useful for a bit more control or direction rather than just something completely unexpected (though that’s still useful too).
Having worked through the theory and practise of previous synths – Serum, Reaktor, etc – a lot of Absynth is immediately more intuitive as it’s (obvs) based on similar principles – oscillators, modulators, effects, chains and routes, controllers, and mixing. It’s just the layout that’s different with a few extra bells and whistles (such as the Mutator, which appears similar to the ‘Randomize‘ button in Reaktor, which makes sense as they’re both made by Native Instruments.
The interface and text are NIGHTMARISHLY small though and there’s no effing zoom OF COURSE 😭
16/2/22
The Mutator instructions make sense overall… HOWEVER what they specifically ask us to do something we cannot.
“Select the Attribute Dark in the category Timbre and the Attribute Randomized in the category Articulation.”
Absynth 5 Getting Started
There is no ‘category Timbre’ or ‘Articulation’ that I can see, so there’s no way to select ‘Dark’ or ‘Randomized’. These categories don’t exist.
The only categories that do exist are ‘Type’, ‘Subtype’ and ‘Mode’. None of these categories contains the attributes ‘Dark’ or ‘Randomized’.
I feel slightly irritated when a manual doesn’t agree with the real world in such a basic way, though I sympathise with the makers a little. Updates are made all the time, and no doubt the programmers make changes and don’t think to tell the people who write and update the manual… or the people who update the manual don’t get the memo… Or there just isn’t enough time because other (ahem, moneymaking) tasks take priority. Such is life.
Anyway. Being able to mutate a sound in a more specific way seems both incredibly useful and quite a nice way to spend an hour at the beginning of a given project to make some new sounds for a fresh palette.
AGAIN – ugh, more inconsistency!
“Set the Resonance control (labelled Res, beneath the Frequency control) to about 0.3 so that the sound gets a bit more presence.”
Absynth 5 Getting Started
There is no “Res” labelled. In the Manual:

In my program:

It says ‘Feedback’. Is that the same thing? No, clearly not.
It is, instead, the send level for the Feedback tab (labelled ‘FB’ above). This impacts on the next tutorial’s instructions when applying some ring modulation in that feedback tab. Because here I’ve set the Feedback to such a low value (as instructed when I thought maybe it was merely a different label for ‘Res’) there was little audible change in this next step (so I set the feedback level higher to hear it more clearly).
But get this: there’s also a ‘Mix’ level on the FB (feedback) tab that basically does EXACTLY THE SAME THING as that Feedback level on the Main tab. This is some lazy-ass halfway-finished new-design-on-top-of-old that contributes to the impression these tools are difficult to use (when they are, in fact, as easy AF – when you get past poor tutorials, which is also down to good design – credit where credit’s due).
Some of the other filters (in the dropdown next to ‘Type’) do have a ‘Res’ option BUT NOT THIS ONE.
Even the Save menu is different. Patches are saved as a different format to the one in the manual. The manual says .ksd file; in practise you save as a .dabs file. At some point between the manual’s writing and the version of Absynth 5 I have here there was an upgrade.
I wish I didn’t get hung up on this sort of stuff but it’s sloppy work, it slows me down whilst I attempt to interpret whether it’s simply a labelling issue or an actual change of function – and it irks. What if I were the kind of person not so technically minded, or was more doubtful of myself, or even not quite as patient (lol)? How many people get put off customising and making their own sounds because the manual is so inconsistent?
Alright, probs not that many but still. There’ll be some and I feel a misplaced sense of righteous indignation that the system is flawed 😬
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On a lighter note (and this is proper useful): in the standalone version, you can open different windows as a new pop-up, so you can see as many pages as you want side-by-side rather than clicking back and forth between tabs. That’s excellent design and other synth apps could definitely learn from this.
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The ‘Morph Wave’ function operates something like a simple wavetable. Transitions between 2 input waveforms can apparently be controlled by a modulation source or MIDI, so the ‘morphing’ effect between the two different waves can create some variation in the sound over time. Nice.
(though left-clicking on the transition parameter comes up with ‘Not Assignable’ so that needs more investigation in the Reference Manual. WHY ON EARTH IS IT NOT ASSIGNABLE THIS IS MADNESS PEOPLE anyway onwards)
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Basically, the Aetherizer is a granular delay effect implementing a feedback loop on the grain level and sending the result into a post-delay section. If this sounds a bit cloudy to you, do not worry: this is all about grain clouds!
Getting Started Manual
Aw. Dad jokes. Adorable 😍 (not sarcasm – I genuinely find this innocent geek humour quite heart-warming).
The ‘Aetherizer’ seems like it’s a fun toy and might be useful. It’s a very similar effect to some of the techniques used in some or all of GRM Tools’ SpaceGrains, Freeze and Evolution plugins. Controlling/modulating any of the Aetherizer’s parameters would be much easier though than going through the rigmarole involved with GRM Tools.