I just dropped by the FXpansion booth and saw a couple works in progress that grabbed my attention. The first was a suite of three soft synths called the D-CAM Collection (D-CAM stands for Discrete Component Analog Modeling). FXpansion says that they model analog circuits right down to the level of resistors and capacitors, and you can even bend the virtual circuits by changing their component values. What I heard sounded really good and looked like loads of fun for all the synthesists in your familyl

The three synths are Strobe, Amber, and Cycper. Strobe is a single-oscillator lead and bass synth (I’d swear it sounded like more) with an arpeggiator and multi-stage saturation. I saw something in Strobe I’d never seen before: an LFO that gives you the ability to specify a swing value (now, why didn’t I think of that?). Amber also does something I’d never seen: it emulates paraphonic instruments like combo organs of the ’60s or string machines of the ’70s. Cypher offers a very flexible sound engine that employs all kinds of modulation capabilities. The D-CAM Collection is still over the horizon, but FXpansion promises completion well before Summer NAMM rolls around.

The other ultracool software at FXpansion is BFD 2. The programmers have rewritten the virtual drummer BFD 1.5 from the ground up, with a redesigned user interface, new onboard effects and dynamics processing, integrated groove composition, and a new sample library. One thing I heard about (but didn’t actually hear) is that the BFD 2 team has sampled one of Ringo’s old drum sets from the late ’60s. Now you too can get that Beatles sound. Gotta have it, right? I can headly wait for that one.