Charlatan

Free virtual analog synth plugin by BlauKraut Engineering

Charlatan Screenshot

Charlatan is a polyphonic, subtractive virtual analog software synthesizer plugin whose design focuses on sound quality and easy usability. The design philosophy was to provide a feature set just large enough to cover a wide range of sounds rather than an infinite number of parameters and modulation options cluttering the user interface and distracting from the creative process. That said, Charlatan's synthesis architecture is flexible enough to create all kinds of sounds, from conventional classic leads, basses and pads to weird blips and noises.

While making no compromises about sound quality, the algorithms have been optimized for efficient CPU usage making Charlatan well suited as a ''bread and butter'' synth even in projects with a large number of plugin instances.

Best of all, it's FREEWARE! Enjoy!

Feature Summary

2 oscillators with triangle, sawtooth, rectangle and noise waveforms
oscillator pulse-width modulation (PWM) and slew rate modulation (morphing between triangle and sawtooth)
oscillator hard synchronization and ring modulation
2 ADSR envelope generators
LFO with host tempo synchronization
3 filter types modeled after classic analog hardware: 4-pole (24 db/oct) and 2-pole (12 db/oct) lowpass, bandpass
filter code based on nonlinear zero-delay feedback technique for accurate emulation of analog counterparts
3 voice modes: Monophonic with retriggering, Monophonic Legato and 8-voice Polyphonic
low CPU usage
100% coded in C++
native 64-bit support

Latest Version

1.3 (2013-1-11)

Velocity Sensitivity for both envelopes
GUI: darker background color along with other refinements

Download

Charlatan 1.3 Windows 32/64-bit VSTi (ZIP file)

User preset banks

Please note that many of the presets are already included (maybe slightly modified) in the official releases.

ZN_Classics_for_Charlatan.fxb (Zorniko)
ZN_Classics2_for_Charlatan.fxb (Zorniko)
Charlatan_Bank_NedK.fxb (NedK)
Charlatan_Bank_2_Tek.zip (Teksonik)
alvfaria_charlatan_banks.zip (Alvfaria)

More banks can be found at the KVR database. If you want to share your presets, please upload them there.

Demo tracks

Solidtrax - Charlatan 21 by Solidtrax

Also, many exciting songs made using Charlatan exclusively are the submissions for the KVR One Synth Challenge (OSC) 33.

Support

Discussion about Charlatan takes place in the official forum thread @ KVR audio. If you have questions or suggestions, post them there. You can also contact me at KVR via private message (username karrikuh).