Vital (synthesizer)
More info
- Creator
- Matt Tytel
- Released
- 2020
- Type
- Software synthesizer (plugin)
- License
- GPL 3 (source code)
- Website
- vital.audio
A free wavetable synth from 2020 that made paying for Serum noticeably harder to justify.
Matt Tytel, who had previously written the open-source synth Helm, released Vital in November 2020. It is built on wavetable synthesis in the same spirit as Serum, with one new trick: spectral warping, where the oscillator bends the waveform in the frequency domain rather than in time. Everything that can be modulated is animated on screen, and the interface is drawn on the GPU — for once, eye candy that actually helps you see what is going on.
The business model is a free basic tier with paid tiers for more presets and wavetables. The source is published under GPL 3, but the name Vital is not, which is why others distribute their own builds as Vitalium. The sound is identical; the only difference is who you get to complain to.