u-he has announced the release of RePro-Alpha, a free “researchware” synthesizer instrument for Windows and Mac.

u-he RePro-Alpha

It is an excessively CPU hungry anti-optimized monophonic synthesizer, in essence a stripped down version of the Sequential Circuits Pro-One we’re currently modeling.

The research part is, we have implemented the same pretty extreme model of the CEM3320 Curtis filter chip in our vintage Pro-One using 5 different numerical methods, each costing a very different amount of CPU. We wish for you to spot the “most analogue” sounding method. By that we wish to see if it is worth spending a lot of CPU or if we could get away with something cheaper. Furthermore we wish to discuss the following questions:

  • what differences do you spot between the models?
  • when do these differences become audible, i.e. which settings promote these differences?

Please download the plug-in, check it out, it’s free forever (but won’t be updated other than to the final commercial version), try some stuff, build an opinion, take your time, discuss and vote here in this thread.

RePro-Alpha is available for download for Windows and Mac (VST2/VST3/AU) from the u-he forum.

More information: u-he / RePro-Alpha