Krotos Audio Concept £119

For their first ever plugin synth, these Scottish developers have focused on acrobatic modulation and fast, efficient workflow. A good concept?

Edinburgh-based developers Krotos Audio are among the first ports of call for movieand videogame audio producers looking to create dynamic, ‘playable’ sound design elements. Thus far, however, their plugins – including Reformer Pro (Foley effects, animal noises, etc; 8/10, 258), Weaponiser (gunfire and associated noises; 9/10, 256) and Igniter (real and sci-fi vehicles and engines; 9/10, 269) – have been largely irrelevant to musicians, so it’s with no small degree of excitement that we fire up Krotos’ first ever softsynth: a twooscillator virtual analogue going by the name Concept (VST/AU/AAX).

Think tank

Concept’s interface makes it immediately apparent that this is an instrument that wants to be your friend, no matter what your level of experience. Apart from the fold-out modulation controls, every parameter (two oscillators, amplitude envelope, filter and effects) is accessed from the front panel; and while any prospective user will, naturally, need to wrap their head around the basics of synthesis to get anywhere, Concept is as unintimidating as we can imagine a not-dumbed-down synth being.

Each oscillator outputs a user-adjustable mix of two waveforms (sine, triangle, saw up, saw down, square, noise), and FM Ratio and Depth knobs apply frequency modulation (FM) via a separate sine wave oscillator, for metallic tones, hard basses and the like. After shaping with the ADSR amplitude envelope, the oscillators feed into a simple resonant ladder filter that only offers high- and low-pass modes, and 24dB/ octave roll-off, but can be overdriven and variably mixed with the input signal.

Big ideas