This chipsynth is a unique two operator FM synth with a very quirky feature set.
The late 80's 'PSS' series was cheesy and made of plastic but had a very unique sound which was lost to time. Some of the most well known examples of synthesizers in this series include the PSS-140, PSS-270 mini keyboards and the SHS-10 keytar.
On home computers, the iconic AdLib and Sound Blaster lines of sound cards used the same line of chips to give a musical voice to the PC, becoming the core of the sound of 90's DOS games.
Not willing to just copy the past, we designed a NEW synthesizer that features the same sound generation found in these synthesizers, but this time with much more processing power to control and modulate its features, all in a convenient virtual instrument form.
PortaFM uses a pair of cycle-accurately emulated FM chip cores for its main synth engine, switchable between OPLL (YM2413), OPL2 (YM3812) and OPK2 (YM7129). Another core is dedicated to the the drum sounds, and all of this can be layered creatively.
The unique 'lofi' quality of the OPLL, OPL2 and OPK2 chips was never recreated this accurately before. Plogue's experience of more than 15 years studying vintage digital sound generators was pushed to its limit. Brand new mathematical models were built using our custom Hardware-assisted systematic testing procedures by our in house reverse engineering team in Montreal.
Oh, and of course, it does not use ANY samples!
