Virtual Emulation of the Year

u-he Repro-1 $120

Web www.u-he.com Format PC/Mac Like every other year since the dawn of the VSTi, 2017 brought with it a slew of spectacular classic synthesiser plugins, but it’s u-he’s componentmodelled resurrection of Sequential Circuit’s legendary Pro One we’ve found ourselves firing up more than any.

Like the original, Repro-1 is a two-oscillator monosynth, Urs Heckmann and team refusing to pander to modernity with the addition of a polyphonic option. The oscillators feature pulse width modulation and hard sync, and you can dial in either a noise oscillator for bite and fizz, or a feedback circuit for bass boost.

Frequency-sculpting is handled by a selfoscillating 24dB/octave low-pass filter, and modulation is brought to bear on it, the amplifier and the oscillators by two ADSR envelopes, an LFO and the output of Osc B. The Perform section adds two open-ended modulation pairings not present in the original hardware. There’s also a very basic arpeggiator and a step sequencer housed in its own panel of the GUI.

Polishing and mangling is done with a board of five stompbox-style effects, including the incredible Jaws wavefolder, Lyrebird BBD and Drench plate reverb. And if you fancy making a few under-the-hood modifications to the sound engine, hitting the Tweaks button tears off the top panel to reveal the PCB below, replete with alternative oscillator options, filter circuit options and more.

As easy to use as the hardware it recreates and bang on the money sound-wise, Repro-1 is a wonderful slice of electronic music history right there in the palm of your, er, DAW.