Baby Audio’s first flirtation with software synths is a modelled version of the 1982 Yamaha CS01. It’s a surprisingly fun, fat and fruity monosynth that you would have ignored back in the day.
Baby Audio BA-1
Baby Audio make some of the best-looking, cool and most innovative plugins on the market and so I can’t figure out why they’d take on something quite so dodgy. But they’ve decided this is the one that deserves their expertise, and frankly, who are we to argue?
It looks a lot like an SH-101 – I mean I guess it’s the sliders and stuff. The idea was “evolution not emulation”, and so Baby Audio has built a lot of extras on top of the original simple design. Consequently, this is a two-oscillator synthesizer with cross-modulation, side chaining and effects. It has loads of polyphony, FM and more to augment the lo-fi grittiness of the CS01. They’ve also built in some nice flourishes with a battery drain emulation, and you can make use of the inbuilt speaker for authentic sounds.
And how does it sound? Flippin’ fabulous! Check out the launch video for all the best 80s vibes packed into a forty-second track. It’s a strange choice, but you’ve got to trust Baby Audio to come up with something fun and fantastic. It’s on a special for $49 at the moment and could well be worth it.
- Baby Audio website
