Enter the Abyss with Tracktion’s colourful new ‘visual’ synth

There’s always been a strong relationship between sound and colour – music is often described as dark or bright, for example – and now Tracktion Software are offering a very literal exploration of this in the form of the Abyss synth plugin. Offering a workflow that “focuses on the ‘art’ rather than ‘numbers’,” this gives you many of the features you’d associate with standard synths – a filter, envelopes, LFOs and effects, for example – but enables you to build patches using more than 2000 ‘sound colours’.

Sounds are created by placing your chosen tints or shades on a central tone gradient, and you get an “arbitrary modulation” system with 13 sources and 23 destinations. More than 130 presets are included, and the UI is easily scalable and responsive. With its strong emphasis on the visual, Abyss promises to make it easy for you to create evolving, nuanced textures, which can really come alive whenever you hook up an MPEcompatible controller.

Available for PC and Mac in VST/AU formats, Abyss has a regular price of $129, but it’s currently available for $77.40.