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Charlatan³
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Virtual Analog Synthesizer Plugin

(c) 2012-2023 Dominique Wurtz

Charlatan is a FREEWARE virtual analog (VA) synthesizer plugin with focus on sound quality and easy usability. It comes with a flexible, yet not overwhelming feature set which encourages artists to start tweaking instead of just relying on presets. Inspite of it's simplicity, Charlatan's architecture is flexible enough to create both classic sounds and rather experimental noises. While making no compromise about sound quality, the sound engine has been highly 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.


Feature summary
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* Two dual oscillators per voice with custom drawable waveforms, cross-modulation (Phase Mod, linear Frequency Mod, Ring Mod) and hard sync
* Two multi-mode filters per voice with 9 filter types each and flexible routing
* Oscillator unison with up to 7 unison voices per synth voice
* Four modulation generators with user-definable shape where each can operate either as LFO or envelope generator
* Four Modulation transformers (XFORM) allow reshaping any control signal through a user-defined mapping
* Arbitrary routing of modulation signals via Drag'n'Drop
* High-quality master FX section
* Very low CPU and RAM usage
* Optional internal 2x oversampling
* Preset browser
* FREEWARE

Version History
===============

3.0 Beta 2 (2023-10-31)
* BUGFIX: freeze / crash when adjusting parameters in UI in some hosts
* BUGFIX: Reverb FX sound broken (or even plugin crashing) after long session
* Windows: ask for confirmation before overwriting preset
* Linux: fix POSIX compatibility in install.sh

3.0 Beta 1 (2023-10-20)
* First public beta release

Known Issues
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* Crashes Cubase instantly
* Tooltips not shown in Renoise on Windows

System requirements
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* Operating System: Windows 10 or later, Ubuntu Linux 20.04 x86_64 or compatible distribution
* A CLAP or VST3 compatible host application
* An Intel x86_64 compatible CPU with support for SSE4.2 extensions

Installation
============

Windows VST3:
Copy .vst3 files into your system's VSTPlugins folder (usually C:\Program Files\Common\VST3).

Windows CLAP:
Copy .clap files into your system's CLAP plugin folder (usually C:\Program Files\Common\CLAP).

On Windows, you need to manually copy the factory presets from the ZIP archive to the preset folder (%APPDATA%\charlatan\presets).

Linux:
Run ./install.sh in a terminal and follow instructions.

Legal Disclaimer
================

Microsoft(R), Windows(R), and Windows VistaTM are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. 
VST(R) is a trademark of Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH, registered in Europe and other countries.
Ubuntu is a trademark of Canonical Ltd.
Other company and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners

License
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See license.txt

For licensing information of used open-source software, see opensource.txt
