Sun.io has released VI-Celestia, a free virtual synthesizer library for Native Instruments Kontakt.
VI-Celestia is a synth for Kontakt that uses tonemachine formants to manipulate different kinds of pure wave shapes, instrument sounds and sound fx to create new sounds. The sounds that can be produced are basically endless.
VI-Celestia has 3 banks (tabs), in each bank one can select either a shape, instrument or sound-fx to work with. So in total 3 sound sources can be mixed together. Each bank stands on it’s own, therefore each sound can be manipulated. The last tab is the mixer where one can do additional processing of the 3 sound sources. With the red display one can select a sound to work on. To enable a sound, click either P1, P2 or P3. This corresponds to either: SHAPES, INSTRUMENTS or SOUND FX. With the arrow keys it is possible to browse through the sound sources. Usually, one can produce a lot of different sounds with P1, the SHAPES alone. There are a lot of knobs that can be tweaked. The Formant, Speed, Smoothing, Cutoff are necessary to tweak to produce a sound, as they control the sound source and the respective low-pass filter. Of course, tweaking the ADSR is usually needed to create a certain sound. Each bank has it’s own 3 band EQ, Shape modulators, Effects and a Arpeggiator. The modulators can be activated by clicking the shape images on the right side. So to enable the Sine modulator, click the sine wave image. Not very intuitive, so I guess it was worth mentioning.
VI-Celestia does not produce instant sounds, it is a synthesizer that needs tweaking. If you are looking for instant sounds, then this is not for you. However, VI-Celestia can load and save settings. It is possible to save your configuration by pressing the “SAVE” button. You can also load a preset, by clicking on “LOAD”. These presets are stored as a NKA file. Which basically is a text file which contains all parameters for easy sharing. Note: each bank must be saved independently, and the mixer tab settings will not be stored. The “Data” folder has therefore 3 folders: Bank 1, Bank 2, Bank 3. This way you can store a preset and later retrieve it in the bank it belongs to. It’s not possible to load a preset for Bank 1 into Bank 2.
It is also possible to assign 9 CC controls to various knobs. 3 per bank. Click the MIDI CC MAPPING to select a knob to assign it to. The CC number can be selected by dragging with the mouse over the black CC box. So you could assign the Cutoff to CC1 and thereby control it with the modwheel. Etc.
More information: VI-Celestia (Mediafire download)
