We’ve been lucky enough to break the story of Circle, a new soft synth with a creative user interface, and to take you behind the scenes of its creators thinking process in creating the software. But maybe you don’t buy into the idea of a synth that focuses on flow and working method, or its wave morphing, modulation and effects, and quick MIDI learn features. Well, now you can give Circle a try for yourself, because it’s publicly available:

Future Audio Workshop Circle

It’s obviously something a lot of people are eagerly anticipating, because, having missed the announcement only by a day, my inbox is full of tips. (Thanks to all of you for the reminders – and seriously, don’t hesitate to nag me on a story; sometimes I get distracted!)

Normally, this is where I’d put the specs, but the specs you’ve seen before: wavetable plus analog-modeling synthesis, with lots of modulation and effects. That’s the formula we’re seeing in plenty of new synths. The difference here is an unusually clean interface with color-coded assignments and bright, friendly graphics that have been optimized to support touch should computers go that way. (Windows 7? Snow Leopard?) There’s drag-and-drop assignment, much like what I loved in Native Instruments’ Massive, but with a distinct, graphical approach here. And, incidentally, you get this graphical goodness without the latest OS – Vista and Leopard are supported, but so are XP, Tiger, and Panther. Thank cross-platform libraries in the software’s foundation – it’s the Other Platform.

The creators also tell us this release is just the beginning, with additional features in store (like OpenSoundControl support, which I’m personally eager to try out).

I’ll be playing with this in the coming weeks. Stay tuned. But I’m very eager to hear your feedback – and sound designs, if you go that route.

And if anyone sees a cheap airfare from New York to Ireland, I may have to go visit FAW myself. Hmm … Farecast?

Circle from Future Audio Workshop is an upcoming virtual instrument that’s gotten our attention in a big way. In terms of sound, its capabilities are familiar, if very complete. What’s different is its approach to interface design and usability, refocusing on “Flow” and ease-of-use while looking forward to new interface capabilities in touchscreens, multi-touch, and OpenSoundControl. What makes that doubly interesting is that Circle appears to embody a trend in a new generation of music software — not that it stands alone, necessarily, as much as it seems to present a glimpse via an independent developer of where things may be going.

Eoin Rossney, our new writer and contributor to the Kore minisite, got a chance to talk to FAW co-founder Gavin Burke, a fellow Irishman. We’ll have more on the instrument itself soon, but it’s an excellent, coffee-fueled discussion of instrument design in general. -PK

I had the opportunity to visit Future Audio Workshop’s office in Connemara, County Galway, Ireland to have a chat with Gavin Burke about their upcoming synth, Circle. While instrument design is a collaborative process for FAW, Gavin’s area of expertise is in Signal Processing algorithms. I wanted to talk to FAW to find out some more about how the synth came to be, the company’s ethos, and the inclusion of OSC. What I got was a fascinating insight into the world of softsynth design and a sense that a shift may be about to occur in this area. If you haven’t heard of Circle check out CDM’s preview.

Over copious amounts of coffee, Gavin told me a little bit about how FAW came to be. Having spent a long time designing synths that strive to emulate old hardware (with many of hardware’s inherent limitations creeping across into the software effort), Gavin and the guys from FAW wanted to design a synth that does away with old conventions and embraces the type of advances in usability that we have come to take for granted in interface design over the last few years.

Something interesting is happening in software synthesizer design: after years of trying to boast more of ingredient “xx” (whether it’s modulation, eight-zillion-point envelopes or other whiz-bang features), the new challenge is to make the user experience itself different. The challenge: don’t just do more sonically — make it easier to actually make music. I’ve personally been a big fan of the elegant tabs in Cakewalk’s Rapture, the minimalist aesthetic of Ableton’s Operator, and the drag-and-drop routing in Native Instruments’ Massive. Now, could one instrument really leap forward in terms of guiding its design?

Circle is one of the most ambitious soft synth designs I’ve seen yet. Its core features read like a wish list for what a modern soft synth would do:

• On-screen routing designed for the computer screen, with color-coded circles, drag-and-drop, previews — and no silly virtual cables. (Sorry, Propellerhead.)
• OpenSoundControl support for the Monome, Lemur, Wacom tablets, whatever you’ve got — along wih easy MIDI learn.
• “Live performance”-optimized UI — actually very much a kindrid spirit with tools like Ableton Live or FL Studio in design aesthetic, workflow, and accessibility, but in a synth — just the thing if you’ve felt a gap between the sequencing workflow and the synth / sound design working method. And you can even swap presets with an Apple Remote if you’ve got one.
• Easy sound design (more on this soon)