Tracktion have updated Horizon, currently available for $90.00, (usually $149.00).
What’s new in version 2.6:
- Expansions – Unleash the full potential of Horizen’s with a range of new expansion packs! Now, you can effortlessly display, load, and play expansions, giving you the power to enhance and extend your sound sources like never before. The choice is yours—select and install the expansions that best suit your creative vision.
- Tag based search and retrieve for sounds and presets – With the addition of Horizen expansions you may well end up with many many hundreds of sounds! To help you navigate a vast library with ease, we’ve introduced a tag-based retrieval engine for sounds, loops, and presets. Each sound and preset comes pre-tagged with carefully chosen keywords, ensuring you can quickly find exactly what you need. Plus, you have the flexibility to add or remove tags to suit your personal workflow. Effortlessly explore and organize your sounds with Horizen’s intuitive tagging system, and let your creativity flow without limits.
- Scalable vector interface – We believe in giving you complete control over your creative environment, which is why Horizen 2.6 now allows you to set the UI size to your exact preference, ensuring it remains crisp and clear at any scale. We wanted to avoid a flat, characterless interface, so we’ve worked hard to retain the rich visual feedback from previous versions. But that’s not all – you’ll find a host of quality-of-life enhancements to make your experience with Horizen even better
- All new FX – Explore and enjoy six brand-new and inspiring FX including:
- Soft Clipper: Smoothly tame your peaks for a polished sound.
- Wavefolder: Add rich harmonic content and unique textures.
- Compressor 2: Achieve precise dynamic control with our upgraded compressor.
- Twin Chorus: Create lush, wide choruses with dual modulation.
- Spectral Tilt EQ: Shape your sound with versatile spectral adjustments.
- Transient Shaper: Enhance the attack and sustain of your sounds for added punch.
- Streamlined workflow – by moving note effects like Glide and Note Harmoniser to their own dedicated Note FX panel. Plus, we’ve added an octave folder and per voice user-drawn velocity mapping for even more customization. And to top it all off, we’ve improved the limiter in the global output for better overall sound quality.
- Tempo Additions – Tempo-synced options for effects, arpeggiators, and LFOs have been expanded, adding five new slower tempo settings. Now, you can go as slow as 2 bars, 3 bars, 4 bars, 6 bars, and even 8 bars, perfect for crafting those long-term effects and smooth transitions.
Initially born to serve the demands and requirements of composer/producer Andy Hodgson, Horizen 2.5 is a true breakthrough in terms of sonic capability and workflow.
Having worked on countless Netflix/Amazon titles and with artists from Bryan Adams to Katie Perry, Andy often dreamed of a synth that would aid his professional workflow while sounding phenomenal. After a chance meeting with veteran audio developer Lindon Mulcahy-Parker of Channel Robot, it was clear they shared the same vision. In fact, Lindon was already working on the original concept that would become Horizen.
A joy for sound designers and producers alike, Horizon’s 10-voice architecture allows for combining 4 sample engines with 4 voice dual OSC/wavetable synths plus 2 loop player engines. The resulting sounds are lush, extremely detailed and with a depth not often heard. Horizen will effortlessly fit to any genre – from Rock to EDM to Lofi and everything in between, it also offers a LOT for those working in Game/Film. A synth made by composers for composers!
The deep yet intuitive XY pad design lets you drag & drop any of Hoizen’s 10 sound sources to any of its corners. Simple movements and gestures allow you to blend the different sources together with creative and exciting results. These X/Y gestures can be recorded so you can take your hand off the mouse and focus on performing. You can even save and load gestures into another patch should you wish.
At the heart of Horizen you’ll find its Modulation panel. Simply choose from the LFO preset menu or design your very own before dragging to designated targets around the instrument. Up to 6 LFO modulators can be used, covering a wide range of shapes/speeds that support any sound design need. A single LFO can be assigned to as many targets as you like. You’ll also find two Key modulators to be used alongside two Velocity modulators that can refine your control even further… if you so wish.
Each modulator allows you to create fantastic user-drawn shapes to be run over various time sequences. You can lock time to the DAW tempo, run free or even make your modulation run in oneshot mode. The Synth Factory has included some interesting and useful shapes to get you started.
Horizen offers several tools to add instant movement and harmony to your sounds. A classic arp is on hand which allows you to define its number of steps, adjust swing, tempo sync and octave movement. The velocity, note length and pitch can be adjusted per step and playback is offered in 6 different directions (including chord playback). Each of the voices in HoriZEN can be routed to one, both or none of the arps, allowing for voices that can play freely and arpeggiated at the same time. Finally, it boasts a chordal (scale) pitch-offset table where you can pre-select a scale and have notes snap to that.
And speaking of Chords, Horizen has you covered with a dedicated player featuring sixteen MIDI keys. It’s set up to play back one of a wide range of chords based on a user-defined root note, one of 12 popular chord types and the octave range. Performance controls like Strum can be configured and synced to the DAW while augmentation options easily facilitate more complicated chord structures.
A huge amount of time and dedication was spent by Lindon on the 18 onboard effects and the results speak for themselves. The idea was to eliminate or reduce dependency on ‘better’ 3rd- party plugins by offering a range of high quality, producer-friendly options within Horizen.
The effects system is both comprehensive and extensive, with a dedicated Send and Master Effects section. Each Horizen voice has 4 dedicated Sends to the 4 Send Effect Slots, and these Sends are targets so you can modulate the amount of each voice going into each send effect slot. It’s quick and easy to set up your own sequence of effects and where appropriate effects have dedicated LFOs for further control.
HoriZEN’s Loop players allow you to load, play and blend your very own audio files. Simply drag & drop wav files from anywhere directly into the Player window, or even set your own user defined library within the Loop Browser. The latter will ensure your existing loop collections are automatically loaded and ready to be processed with the tools available. Audio can be played as a loop (hence the voice name) or as a one-shot per note press. You can have the loop play forwards or reverse and pitch-track the keyboard or play a constant pitch.
You’ll find over 400 presets designed by Andy himself. While they fit a multitude of genres and production scenarios the driving force behind them all was to inspire! And while we believe there are no rules to music, we’ve divided presets into subgroups to help you navigate and locate sounds a little easier, these are:
- Arps – Utilizing Horizens duel function arp technology allows for multiple arps in a single preset making for some interesting fresh ideas.
- Atoms – Essentially “Drones” but with a twist. Each tells a story through Horizens deep modulation systems. You can come up with an entire soundscape using just one sound!
- Bass – Multi genre bass sounds, from EDM to 808 subs to synthwave to the unhinge.
- Keys – lush while packing plenty of character and vibe. From noisy keys perfect for lofi, to lush vibrant tines that’ll cut through a hiphop mix.
- Lead – Cutting, powerful and thick! Full of multi-genre feelgood sounds, but with the right twist could work in pretty much anything!.
- Pads – Big, bold & beautiful. Horizens otherworldly pads are not just static sounds. Hear them breathe, evolve and move. Instant atmosphere!
- Plucks – From delicate to aggressive, here you’ll find small staccato sounds for the modern era.
- Retro – OG sounds sampled from Andy’s very own retro synth collection and manipulated in Horizen. Super sun synth action from the 80′.
- SFX & Noises – Transitions, impacts and a ton of other elements to add that missing something to a track!
- Textures & drones – Very similar to Atoms but these are playable textures. Blurring the line between pads and atmospherics leads to some very interesting results!
- Weird & wonderful – Oddball sounds without we needed a home for. From the exotic to the twisted and bizarre.. say no more, the surprise is on us.
Features include:
- 10 voice Architecture (Samplers,Synths & Loop Players).
- Over 850 Voices with Browser-based user-favourites.
- VA & Wavetable Synths.
- FM on all voices.
- Drag-and-Drop Modulators.
- User defined LFO shapes.
- User defined XY Pad targets.
- Load your own Sounds.
- Dual Arps, voice assignable.
- Multi-FX Send and Master effect slots.
- Multi-mode Filters per voice.
- Over 350 presets.
Watch the overview video HERE.
Horizon is available to PC and Mac users (VST3 and AU).
For more information on Horizon and to compare prices, click here:
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