Spitfire Audio LABS Cassette Synth packs epic sounds from the legendary Yamaha CS-80 shaped by 100 cassette players in a new free virtual instrument.
Spitfire Audio is part of the premier league of sampling companies. They produce virtual instruments based on samples at a very high level. A standard in many studios, an expensive pleasure for many hobby musicians.
For a long time, Spitfire Audio has also been offering libraries for little money. The LABS series is also there. These are virtual instruments that are offered for free and will be expanded by one title each month. The concept is particularly exciting here: these are no classic bread-and-butter sounds that are given away here. Spitfire Audio puts a big focus on sound design and experimentation in the LABS series. This is also seen in the new release for the month of December.
Spitfire Audio LABS Cassette Synth
LABS Cassette Synth is a new virtual instrument that features sounds from the legendary 1980s analog polyphonic Synthesizer Yamaha CS-80.
Simply sampling the instrument would be too uncreative for the Spitfire crew. So for this release, they route the epic CS-80 sounds through cassette players. Not one or two, yes, many musicians would be happy to have at least an old Portastudio to work with. Spitfire Audio has taken this to the extreme, chasing the sounds through 100 cassette players.
Through this creative process, they infuse a new character into the massive analog pad sounds of the CS-80. They added the lovely unstable, noisy, and lush timbre we know from tape. The result sounds impressive. Very epic, emotional, and moving. As if the sounds would take you into new worlds.
As always, you can customize the sounds to fit your music using a selection of parameters, including filter, reverb, noise, and more.
This is another fantastic extension for the free LABS virtual instrument series by Spitfire Audio. For me, Casette Synth is one of the best titles so far.
Spitfire Audio LABS Cassette Synth is available now as a free download. It runs in the free Spitfire Audio app as a VST, VST3, AU, and AAX plugin on macOS and Windows.
More information here: Spitfire Audio
Useless video and a useless plugin. It’s free, so I’m not complaining, but as a public service announcement: Stay away from this type of stuff. You’ll just fill up your VST folder with garbage and never get anything done.
Different plugins are for different purposes: I downloaded it without listening to a demo and still haven’t used it. Spitfire’s legendary Hans Zimmer strings would probably be useless to an EDM artist, and Nightlife isn’t something I’d be that interested in. But seeing the amount of work put into this VST, I’d say that it’s bound to be useful for something, maybe not in a way you’d expect. Personally, I all but detest “pads,” and stay from ambient soundscape type stuff. But I still use them sometimes. As far as synths go, there’s really no such thing as a useless plugin.