Home » GEAR: Virtual Instrument News, NEWS: Industry Headlines, Story Index

FXpansion’s Free ORCA Monosynth is now RTAS and AU Compatible

by Jesse JJ Jame
published Sun, 25 Feb 2007 – 18:38:44 -0800 PST
No Comment
Email this Page Share this Page Feedback

LONDON, U.K. — ORCA from FXpansion is an experimental monosynth based on detailed and accurate models of analogue synthesizer circuits and components. And now Orca is available in RTAS (Pro Tools) and AU (Mac) formats, as free downloads. ORCA was previously released in VST format.

According to the company, “ORCA is an experimental monosynth built to showcase some exciting new technology that we’ve been developing. Based on detailed and accurate models of analogue synthesizer circuits and components, ORCA excels at deep, squelchy basses and thick unison leads.”

ORCA Engine Overview
Orca has a simple subtractive synthesis structure, being comprised of an oscillator, filter, fixed amp envelope, velocity sensitive filter envelope and an amp module. The monophonic voice engine in Orca runs at twice the hosts sample rate to reduce the aliasing caused by the non-linear analog modeling of the filter and amp modules. A voice priority of newest note is used, and every new note re-triggers the amp and filter envelopes.

FXpansion OrcaThe oscillator is a fixed Saw (75% volume) plus Sub Sqr (25% volume) that has continuously smooth varying unison from 1 to 9 voices, and a detune parameter from 0 to 12 semitones. Oscillator sync is available from the mod wheel of up to 48 semi-tones.

The BLEP technique is used to bandlimit steps generated by the analog model of the oscillator. Since the oscillator is passed into several non-linear stages care is taken to have a fairly smooth time domain transition on waveform jumps, which results in less aliasing.

Orca is free to download. ORCA is available as a VST 2.4 plug-in for Windows (XP) and OS X (10.4 PPC and Intel), and can be used in other hosts (Audio Units, RTAS) via our VST-RTAS or VST-AU Adapters.

More information:
www.fxpansion.com/index.php?page=45

About FXpansion
Based in the UK in London’s east end creative hub, FXpansion has been one of the industry’s leading independent music software developers since 1999. FXpansion has established a growing range of innovative and original products which have consistently won awards from leading industry press.

FXpansion’s mission is to push the boundaries of audio software technology and open new doors in the music production process. At the same time, we believe it is important to present accessible, creative yet logical user interfaces and to continually provide a high standard of user support.

Founded by musicians, FXpansion feel that staying connected to the engineers, producers and musicians who use our software is vital in creating the most useful and intuitive software possible.

Technorati Tags: , ,
SPHERE: Related Content — CLICK HERE to See What Else is Out There!

About The Author / Editor:


JJ Jame is a percussionist and theremin player, formerly a member of the Redondo Beach based BoyRacer.com™ electronica band, and a long-time electronic music fan, formerly an editor for the defunct EMcult™ website.

  delicious:FXpansion’s Free ORCA Monosynth is now RTAS and AU Compatible digg:FXpansion’s Free ORCA Monosynth is now RTAS and AU Compatible newsvine:FXpansion’s Free ORCA Monosynth is now RTAS and AU Compatible furl:FXpansion’s Free ORCA Monosynth is now RTAS and AU Compatible reddit:FXpansion’s Free ORCA Monosynth is now RTAS and AU Compatible Y!:FXpansion’s Free ORCA Monosynth is now RTAS and AU Compatible  Add to Mixx! 
Permalink:   http://musicindustrynewswire.com/2007/02/25/min144_183844.php

Related Stories:


FXpansion Announces BFD2 Drum Production Workstation
FXpansion Audio Updates BFD2; adds JEX Expansion Kit
FXpansion has announced BFD Heavy Expansion Pack
During Sept. Get Line 6 POD Farm Plug-in for FREE
Sonic Charge Synplant 1.0.1 Now Available
FXpansion is proud to present a collection of Yamaha signature snares for BFD2

Rings With Side Stones


Leave a comment!

Add your comment below, or trackback from your own site. You can also subscribe to these comments via RSS.

Be nice. Keep it clean. Stay on topic. No spam. All comments are moderated and self-promotional posts will never be visible.

You can use these tags:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

This is a Gravatar-enabled weblog. To get your own globally-recognized-avatar, please register at Gravatar.