Free Software Friday is our regular Friday feature here at the dBs blog. We dig the depths of the music production and media webosphere and discover what downloadable plugin freebies are worth double clicking each week.
It's impossible to search for a free software synth and come up empty handed, yet unlike many of its counterparts the u-he Tyrell N6 has not only stood tall over the years, but has an interesting origin story to boot.
The name Tyrell comes from a project started by German online magazine Amazona.de. After asking their community for ideas for a low-cost hardware analogue synth, the foundations for the N6 were laid. Soon into development it was realised that the project would take years to complete, so Urs Heckmann (u-he founder) took the core design and turned it into a freeware soft synth. After beta testing, bug-fixing and fine tuning the final version was released in 2011 and continues to be included in top freeware lists to this day.
What you have to play with is a virtual analogue synth with a similar design to the Roland Juno 60 that's armed with two oscillators, noise generator, ring modulator and two LFOs to broaden your sonic palette. There's also close to 600 presets and the ability to skin the UI to your preference.
Tyrell N6 is available to download for Mac, Windows and Linux using the link below.
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Tyrell N6
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