KILOHEARTS Phase Plant FROM $169

The quest for the ultimate soft synth has been hotting up of late, with many companies really pulling out all the stops to reside in your hard-drive space. There have been great-looking options with incredible UIs, including the likes of Arturia’s Pigments and Audaire’s Zone, which both make the whole synthesis experience more intuitive and fun. Or there have been incredibly cheap options including Nektar’s Bolt, Rob Papen’s Go2 and Plug-in Boutique’s Carbon Electra 2 that simply rack up the features for very little outlay.

Kilohearts – the relatively small developer from Linköping, Sweden – has another angle entirely. In Phase Plant, it has developed a synth that uses a semi-modular approach so you can simply make it whatever you want it to be. Wavetable with a side order of noise? No problem. Analogue with some sampled