New Software Review: DS Thorn by Plugin Alliance
Plugin Alliance takes the not-so-common approach of spectral shaping to generate sounds with DS Thorn. Should this gritty synth find a home in your arsenal?
There are a many categories in which a soft synth can excel. It could be in providing trendy sounds, intuitive workflows, or unique approaches to harmonic manipulation.
It could offer the kind of expressive inspiration that just makes it fun to play with, ensuring that it actually gets used in the studio.
DS Thorn by Plugin Alliance, with its one-of-a-kind glitch sequencer and inventive approach to sound design, aims to deliver on all of the traits above.
Thorn is the second soft synth release from Dmitry Shces’ eponymously-named company, the first being his “Diversion” synthesizer back in 2011. Diversion garnered some very positive reviews, and was quickly hailed for its rich sounds and programming flexibility.
In addition to the praise, there were occasional complaints about Diversion’s toll on processing power and its multiple window interface, which may account for the much more scaled-down and streamlined nature of Thorn. Let’s take a closer look.
Features
Thorn employs spectral shaping to build and restructure sounds, as opposed to the more common additive or subtractive methods of synthesis. This allows you to draw in (or blot out) any harmonic shapes within the tones generated by its three oscillators.
Amplitude and phase adjustments can be made through a variety of options, such as selecting only odd or even harmonics. (One feature I was tickled by was the “organ” option, which allows for the addition or removal of the same harmonics that organ drawbars would control).
The a harmonic filter uses allows for the same sonic adjustment options as the oscillators. This is in addition to the typical filters (low pass, band pass, hyper comb), which are provided in a separate panel. The harmonic filter is unique in that it allows you to attenuate or reject certain frequencies within it—almost like an equalizer—depending on how you have it set up. There are dozens of presets available, and controls to adjust overall shape and balance.
The noise oscillator adds in another layer of dissonance. In addition to the presets available here, you can also load in your own WAV files and add them to the sound. If you engage the loop feature and route it through a filter from here, you’ll get a sample within a synth sound—a super slick trick.
We can’t get too much further in without covering the glitch sequencer. Almost all soft synths give you step sequencers and arpeggiators, but this feature twists up patches in an unrivaled fashion. It offers 6 different “glitch” effects which can be applied to 16 cells across a sequence. The effects all mirror the standard glitch arsenal: a repeater that stutters the signal to re-create CD skips, a bit crusher and sample rate reducer to replicate software bugs, and high and low pass filters to give you that system-error squelch.
Within the same window, Thorn has a separate arpeggiator that lets you choose the note values for every step, allowing for more complex melodic sequences than those offered by most soft synths. It has nine fairly common effects (phaser, distortion, EQ, and the like) that can be added in pre- or post-glitch sequencer.
Thorn’s mod matrix is the standard signal router, but it can function more as a reference than a starting point if you prefer the hands-on approach. This is because Thorn offers two additional ways to set up signal chains: either right-clicking on the target and selecting from a drop-down menu, or simply clicking and dragging to connect any of the envelopes or LFOs across the bottom to connect the source and target. This is then displayed in the mod matrix, and can be adjusted from there.
Besides the LFO and AMP envelopes, Thorn gives you two multistage envelopes to play with. These can be created or modified in either a step or curve mode, and follow the synth’s overall model of giving you a lot of extra opportunities to modify the final sounds.
In addition to all of this, Thorn comes with over 600 preset patches and sequenced progressions for the plug-and-play crowd. This assortment of pads, plucks, bass growls, and arpeggiated centerpieces sound phenomenal, and make it a valuable resource for even the casual user.
The display is broken up into 16 frames, all of which can be edited independently. If you choose to only edit two or three of the frames out of sequence, Thorn will automatically adjust the frames in between those edited to smooth out the transition. Similar to the wavetable importing feature of Serum, you can import your single cycle wave forms, or even full WAV files into the patterns.
In Use
Synthesizers, to me, have always have been largely about experimentation. If you’ve ever sat down with an exclusively modular synth and Ma Bell’d the parts together, you may share in my excitement for the process of constructing new sounds from simple waveforms.
Thorn gave me exactly this kind of thrill, especially in two different areas. The first was just the construction of the sounds themselves. Much of my writing doesn’t necessitate the re-creation of specific patches for a composition, but rather creating a composition based on the inspiration the patches provide.
That being the case, taking the presets and slicing up the spectrum tables in the harmonic editor linked to the oscillators and the harmonic filter was extraordinarily fulfilling. In general, the amount of wild, random fun to be had by blind trial and error was worth a ton. I can safely say that the completion of this review took much longer than anticipated, due to all of the rabbit holes I consistently had to climb back out of after getting sidetracked with another new Ableton Live set full of custom-made shiny plucks and gritty bass patches.
The second came from the glitch sequencer and arpeggiator—most notably, the opportunity to “lock in” the patterns created there and audition different patches through the warping they create. This really created some electrifying new shapes! The randomization feature for each of the glitch effects worked well to stoke the creative process too. It’s worth noting that you’re also able to re-order the sequence of effects by dragging them back and forth, and lock them in as well.
I noticed that drag-and-drop and right-click routing really makes it easier on the brain after extensive hours of screen time. Setting these paths up and staying organized is key, as one forgotten move can sometimes leave you scrambling to figure out a way back to the sound you had set perfectly just a moment ago.
And again, the presets sound good. Really good.
To Be Critical
While my experience with DS Thorn was outstandingly positive, and its sound banks were better organized than some soft synths I’ve used recently, I would welcome the addition of a search bar to show me everything available in a certain category within the presets. When I’m angling for ideas, simply typing in ”star” may help bring up the sparkly lead I’m looking for.
Other than that, I didn’t find anything to dislike about Thorn.
Summing it Up
The current soft synth market is just as exciting and full of innovation as the music it helps to create. Even within this field, Thorn is a standout—easy to use, fun to explore, and full of inspiring sounds and sound manipulation methods.
If you’re producing within the glitch or noise genres, it’s a no-brainer. If you’re writing anywhere in the pop or electronic landscape, it’s definitely worth a spin. There’s a 14-day trial available through Plugin Alliance, where the full license sells for $199. It’s also available through their MEGA Bundle subscription service, along with over 100 other plug-ins.
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