WS Audio Trueno USB synth £140
Housed in a USB drive and controlled via software, Trueno is the world’s smallest analogue synth. Si Truss sizes it up
The very existence of Trueno is impressive. It claims to be – to our knowledge accurately – the smallest analogue synth on the market, housed in a slightly above-average sized USB dongle. The hardware itself offers no controls, so all interaction is handled by an accompanying software interface. Inside that diminutive package are housed three multi-mode analogue/ digital oscillators and an analogue filter, which are accompanied by digital modulation, amp and effects sections. An onboard 44.1KHz 24-bit ADC handles communication between the two elements.
The oscillators can produce analogue saw, triangle and square waves – Osc 1 has an adjustable pulse width for the square mode – and each also features a digital additive mode with 256 wavetables each composed of 64 partials. A slightly crude and fiddly edit mode allows users to manually draw and adjust these additive wavetables too. While Trueno’s analogue credentials are obviously is key selling point, the inclusion of these digital modes is a big bonus, allowing the creation of some really nice hybrid synth textures. Oscillator 3 can also be repurposed as either a digital noise generator or analogue modulation source, which can be routed to Osc 1 pulse width, frequency modulation or filter modulation. Trueno can function in both mono and paraphonic modes, the latter allowing chords of up to three notes.
The filter is described as being ‘based on a Soviet Russian design’, which is evidently meant to resemble a Polivoks – a fact made obvious by its offering of low-pass and band-pass modes. Sonically, it lacks some of the bite we’d associate with Polivoks-style filters though; even with resonance at max, it never really screams, and Trueno could use a filter drive control for adding grit.
On the digital side, Trueno has an impressive amount of modulation – a total of six ADSR envelopes and four LFOs are included, which is, if anything, more than necessary. The effects section is a nice touch too, and capable of really bringing sounds to life. Here we get Delay and Reverb, both with built-in filters, and a Phaser/Flanger/Chorus section.
Unfortunately, there are quite a few rough edges to Trueno’s design at the moment. The software interface is neatly laid out and easy to navigate, but it’s not resizable. At launch, the application also lacked any preset browser, although a Beta update is available addressing this. There’s a slight unpredictability to Trueno, which to some extent is part of its appeal – the fact that the oscillators can drift out of tune and act up in unexpected ways is, after all, proof of its analogue credentials. Unfortunately this can cross over into the realm of less desirable anomalies too. In our tests we experienced several unexplained audio dropouts, and it doesn’t take much CPU strain before changing parameters results in audible pops and clicks.
Trueno is an intriguing and promising concept, and the very fact that it exists is impressive. Right now, however, it feels like a work in progress. Hopefully a lot of this can be ironed out with software updates – here’s hoping it feels a little more refined in a few months’ time.