Charlatan

Free Virtual Analog Synthesizer Plugin by BlauKraut Engineering

Charlatan is a polyphonic, subtractive virtual analog (VA) synthesizer plugin with focus on sound quality and easy usability. It comes with a flexible, yet not overwhelming feature set which encourages artists to start tweaking instead of just relying on presets. Inspite of it's simplicity, Charlatan's architecture is flexible enough to create both classic sounds and rather experimental noises. While making no compromise about sound quality, the sound engine has been highly optimized for efficient CPU usage making Charlatan well suited as a "bread and butter" synth even in projects with a large number of plugin instances.

Best of all, it's FREEWARE! Enjoy!

Key Features

2 oscillators with shape modulation

Oscillator hard synchronization and ring modulation

Unison mode with upto 7 voices and stereo spread

Stereo noise generator

2 ADSR envelope generators

LFO with host tempo synchronization

3 filter types modeled after classic analog hardware: 4-pole (24 db/oct) and 2-pole (12 db/oct) lowpass, bandpass

3 voice modes: Monophonic, Monophonic Legato and 8-voice Polyphonic

Ultra-low CPU usage

Latest Version

Fix loading of 1.x presets

Fix popup menus with multiple monitors

Make Amp envelope sustain parameter logarithmic

Fix old presets (LFO Wave), add some new ones

Reduce pitch drift

BUGFIX crashes on AMD systems

BUGFIX not loading in some hosts

BUGFIX note hanging after switching voice modes

completely rewritten DSP engine resulting in roughly 50% (!) CPU savings in polyphonic mode

unison mode with upto 7 voices and stereo spread. Even with 7-voice unison, CPU usage is very bearable

major GUI overhaul

additional LFO waveforms

stereo noise

some more presets

mostly compatible with presets for Charlatan 1.x (*)

2.0 Final (2015-06-05)2.0 Beta 3 (2015-05-03)2.0 Beta 2 (2015-05-02)2.0 Beta 1 (2015-05-02)

(*) Due to some tweaks to the sound engine, there may be subtle audible differences when loading some of the old patches. In most cases, it should be possible to compensate for those with some fine adjustments. Still, I recommend to keep an old 1.x version of Charlatan around if you need to fully preserve old projects. Sorry for the inconvenience...

Download

Charlatan 2.0 Windows 32/64-bit VSTi (ZIP file)

Latest version from 1.x (legacy)

Charlatan 1.4.1 Windows 32/64-bit VSTi (ZIP file)

User preset banks

Demo tracks

Please note that many of the presets are already included (maybe slightly modified) in the official releases.More banks can be found at the KVR database . If you want to share your presets, please upload them there.

Solidtrax - Charlatan 21 by Solidtrax

Also, many exciting songs made using Charlatan exclusively are the submissions for the KVR One Synth Challenge (OSC) 33.

Support

Discussion about Charlatan takes place in the Instruments sub-forum @ KVR audio . If you have questions or suggestions, post them there. You can also contact me at KVR via private message (username karrikuh).

Copyright © BlauKraut Engineering