Six of the best partial-packing softsynths

Native Instruments Razor | £89

NIs’ powerful Reaktor-based instrument boils down complex additive synthesis into a subtractivestyle interface, helping the creation of cutting-edge, aggressive timbres.

AIR Music Technology Loom II | $100

This semimodular weapon lets you choose one of 34 partial-processing modules to load in slots, then blend variations using the Morph Pad.

Apple Alchemy |

Now bundled with Logic Pro, Camel Audio’s uber-instrument offers additive modes alongside VA, formant shaping, spectral/granular sampling and more.

u-he Zebra 2 | €199

Very much a ‘workhorse synth’, u-he’s four-oscillator instrument can do it all: wavetable, subtractive, FM, and… yep, additive! Simply draw harmonics in the lower Wave Editor.

Image-Line Harmor | €139

This CPU-efficient, two-layer additive synth, again, has familiar subtractivelike controls and expert visualisation. It also lets you turn images into audio, and resynthesise audio files.

Audio Damage Phosphor 2 | $59

Based on the alphaSyntauri, a vintage digital hardware additive synth, this can run in either classic lo-fi or hi-res modes, and features a dual delay section with filtering.