Aconite is an analog-modeling polysynth built by Alkaloid Audio. Most synths
hand you a set of good parts and leave it to you to make them cohere. Aconite is
built the other way round: it models the whole instrument, including the parts
you never see on a panel, so the pieces settle into a single voice instead of
stacking into layers.
Some of that lives in the sound sources. The string model has a full resonating
soundboard body behind it that any excitation can drive, selectable per
instrument: a felt Hammer through a Grand body is a real piano (an actual strike
and an actual soundboard), a plucked string through a Guitar body is an acoustic
guitar. A per-note Humanize scatters pitch and level just enough that repeated
notes are never machine-gun identical, so the model breathes. The chip oscillator
now carries two authentic families, the NES 2A03 and the Commodore 64 SID, each
with the real output stage of the console it models, so stacking channels blends
them the way the hardware does. The rest is the glue further down the chain:
console-style bus saturation, a power supply that sags and blooms under a heavy
chord, and a sympathetic resonance that lets held strings ring with what you play.
None of these are effects bolted on the end. They are the connective tissue that
makes a signal path sound like an instrument.
Three full oscillators plus sub and noise: classic virtual-analog and
wavetable, a drawable additive engine with per-partial analog drift, and
physical-modeling String (plucked, hammered piano, and bowed, with a
selectable soundboard body and per-note humanize), Modal percussion
(fourteen tuned instruments), a flexible Kick, and a chip oscillator
with two authentic families, the NES 2A03 and the C64 SID.
Cross-modulated with true through-zero FM and band-limited hard sync.
It rings with what you play
A built-in bank of tuned string resonators sounds in sympathy with your notes:
the piano sustain-pedal bloom, a tanpura or sitar drone, a harp’s open-string
shimmer. A per-oscillator send lets any patch take on a sympathetic halo,
with a damper-aware mode that retunes the bank to the notes you are holding.
Analog character everywhere, placed by you
Not warmth at one stage: analog-modeled oscillators, per-voice and per-partial
drift, saturable filter poles, a driven voice mixer, console bus glue, and a
power-supply sag that blooms under heavy chords. Most of those amounts are
modulation destinations, so you move the character in real time.
Filters worth learning
Two independent filters, seven models each (Ladder, SVF, Bite, Multimode,
Cascade, Diode, Acid), a continuous mode-morph you can modulate, per-filter
feedback “bark”, in-loop saturation for real analog growl, and resonance that
self-oscillates into a pure sine you can play as a voice. Series, parallel, or
split.
One modulation matrix over per-voice and bus destinations, six drawable LFOs,
six routable envelopes that switch between analog ADSR and a drawn contour, four
macros, an envelope follower, MPE, and MIDI-learn.
Closer to a groovebox
A step sequencer with per-note velocity, accent, and chance lanes plus
drawable curve lanes, ratchets, ties, slides, and Euclidean fills, and a
scale-aware arpeggiator. Both double as modulation sources.
A full effects rack
Twelve effects, freely re-orderable, each insert or send: chorus, phaser, delay,
multi-tap, reverb, tape, distortion, bit-crusher, compressor, transient shaper,
EQ, and stereo imager.
A showpiece you can re-skin
A dense interface with real-signal visualisers and a full theme editor: edit
every colour live, build a theme from scratch or from an existing one, and save,
load, or embed it in a preset.
Aconite is for people who reach for a synth to shape a sound, not just pick one
off a shelf. It is equally happy loading a factory patch and playing, or letting you
build a tone from the ground up. If you want physical instruments that respond
instead of trigger, character controls that interact, and a modulation system deep
enough to make a patch breathe, it rewards every hour you put in.
And a master brickwall limiter sits last in the chain, so you can push the Glue,
Sag, and Drive as hard as the patch wants and the output still can never clip. It is
off by default and zero-latency when engaged: safe to push, safe to demo.