Reveal Sound Spire: the must-have synth plugin

Then came the day a friend recommended Spire to me, a software synth plugin for Windows and Mac by Reveal Sound.

The look and feel is excellent. The interface keeps things so simple that there is almost no break in my train of thought, and I can stay in the creative moment. It just doesn’t pull me out of my tunnel. The left-to-right layout of the oscillator and effect chain keeps everything within reach.

Each of the four multimode oscillators has a single knob for its volume and for switching it on and off. The built-in oscillator modes sound great and cover a lot of ground: classic waveforms, noise, FM, AMSync, SawPWM, HardFM and vowel sounds. They seem very well chosen to produce a wide range of sounds.

Of course the oscillators can do unison, but what is worth mentioning is that there are several unison modes. You can spread the unison voices across chords and octaves and imitate supersaw, hypersaw and other unison types.

The filter section gives you everything a subtractive synth needs, and the filters are wild: Perfecto, Infecto, Acido, Scorpio, Combo and Shaper. You really have to hear them yourself, they are anything but boring. If you want your sound to scream, the resonance knob is your friend.

And now my favourite part: the effects. I really appreciate that the interface is kept simple and the effects sound great with only the essential settings. They aren’t overloaded with parameters, and at the same time they sound like they want to beam you to another solar system. All of this with the usual suspects: Shaper/Decimator, Phaser/Vowel, Chorus/Flanger, Delay and Reverb.

The modulation section leaves nothing to complain about. Macros, envelopes, LFOs with morphing shapes and matrix slots with sources and targets let you combine almost everything with everything else, in a way that blows your mind without losing control. The stepper handles several Bézier-curve amplitudes per step, and the arpeggiator gives you staccato at its best.

All in all, the combination of all these details makes Spire a very good choice for your synth collection. The price is fair, and I’m glad I bought it when I did. It gave my inspiration the kick it needed to develop more detailed, precise and new sounds. If you ask me, it’s a killer synth and worth every penny. I caught myself using it on more than 85 % of the channels in my productions, simply because it is easy to use and sounds spectacular.

It comes with very good presets, and more are available. So give Spire a try, it really makes a difference. See you on the other side.

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