JRRShop Image Line Harmor < $59 (MSRP $149)

[TheSteven]

Image Line Harmor on sale for $59
https://www.jrrshop.com/image-line-harmor
Cart price $52.51 with code: FORUM

Additive / subtractive

Just like its little brother Harmless, Harmor is driven by a powerful additive synthesis engine. Its modules will look familiar to subtractive synthesizer enthusiasts: oscillators, filters & phasers, these are featured in Harmor but, because performed through additive synthesis, offer more freedom. You don't just select filter types, you draw them.

You wanted more, so also featured is the multipoint envelope editor of Sytrus fame, applied to over 40 parameters, in 2 independent parts. Through the same envelope/mappings, randomize any parameter or link it to key or velocity, and even fine-tune each unison voice independently.

Processing units can be rearranged in a semi-modular way. If you need one of the 2 filter units processed after the blur unit, that's no problem.

Image synthesis

Because it typically requires manipulating large amounts (up to 500 per voice) of partials over time, additive synthesis is hard to handle. No human can (or even wants to) edit 500 envelopes, but editing 2D images, that we can do easily. Get access to gain & pitch planes which you can tweak in the image editor of your choice, and import any bitmap, even if it wasn't designed to be turned into audio, it might still sound interesting.

Audio resynthesis

Being an additive synthesizer, Harmor can resynthesize audio files as well. The reproduction will be faithful, not a vague sound-alike as in many additive synthesizers. Resynthesis can of course be tweaked, providing time stretching, pitch shifting, or less conventional manipulations of partials.

And of course, the result of the analysis can still be turned into an image for further editing.

Efficient

Additive synthesis is generally very CPU-consuming, but not Harmor's engine. Its efficency is in fact, comparable to that of subtractive synthesizers. Voices may be generating hundreds of harmonics in parallel and still not overload the CPU. Processing being multi-threaded, extra CPU cores come in handy.

Pixels!

Resynthesis or image-synthesis, Harmor features both. Import a piece of audio and time-stretch or pitch-shift it (with formant and transient preservation). Convert this to an image and edit each partial individually!

Two parts

Two independent parts (or “layers”) for even more complex sounds. Parts can be imported from other presets.

SFX

In the effects section you will meet all the usual suspects: distortion, chorus, delay and reverb, as well as the mighty Soundgoodizer based on the Maximus engine. Just like processing units, effect slots can be re-ordered.
Each part has its own effect mix amount.

Looks pretty

If you don't understand it, visualize what it's doing, best way to learn! Watch how each partial evolves in the built-in spectrogram, a picture is worth a thousand words.
 

Don't forget to add to cart: Image Line Harmor Wavestation Wavetables - Free Download

Edited January 24, 2019 by TheSteven

[SmokeyJ628]

Such an amazing synth.  Takes time to get your head around it, but it is amazing.

 

There are extra patches in the Image Line forums as well.

[TheSteven]

Couple of Harmor videos

General overview of Harmor and its synthesis tools

 

Harmor Vocal Resynthesis

 

Also a gent who goes by the handle of Seamless has a whole series of informative Harmor tutorials.
FL Studio Basics 32: Harmor Part 1: Additive Synthesis From The Ground Up

 

Edited January 24, 2019 by TheSteven

[kitekrazy1]

4 hours ago, SmokeyJ628 said:

Such an amazing synth.  Takes time to get your head around it, but it is amazing.

 

There are extra patches in the Image Line forums as well.

MVP and Groove have tutorials. There's also Seamless Channel on youtube.   It's actually easier than it looks.

[Paul_in_wales]

I really wish they did this for mac.  I've played with the harmor demo in FL Studio 20 for mac - I'd buy this in a heartbeat if they did it as a mac vst/au.