The Synth Factory Horizen $129 PC MAC

A synth/sampler that packs in a lot of power at an almost silly price - despite its low profile, Andy Jones gazes at Horizen...

- Andy Jones

When you discover the vast range of features within Horizen, and that it’s at version 2.5, you might well ask, as we did, ‘how did I not know about this before?’. Maybe it’s because it’s one of those ‘is it a synth? Is it a sampler? Is it a ROMpler?’ applications so it falls between the definition cracks (clue: it’s all three). Or maybe it just hasn’t been marketed that well. If it is the latter, this is now sorted because its developer, The Synth Factory, is now under the Tracktion umbrella, one that covers the mighty Dawesome, makers of some of our top-rated synths including Myth and Kult.

It is essentially a 10-voice sampler/synth, with four sampler voices, four synth voices and two loop players. Each synth features both dual oscillator VA and wavetable engines, plus FM – so that covers pretty much all of your sonics. Each voice, however, has many further options, with 16-part unison, drag-and-drop and customisable modulation, four effect send slots and multimode filters being some highlights.

There’s also an X-Y pad option that lets you blend between eight of the ten voices, a Player area where you can use a dual arp setup, or employ a chord player (see right for more on these), or layer sounds using a KeyScale function. Oh, and you can import your own sounds. And use up to four master effects. See what we mean? Now you’re wondering why you hadn’t heard of Horizen too, right?

Bring me the Horizen