With Prince back in synth mode on new album Art Official Age, now seems like a good time for a developer to release a plugin that's inspired by the Oberheim OB-X, one of the Purple One's favoured machines in the early '80s.
Said developer is Aly James, and his OB-Xtreme is available in 32-bit Windows VST format. Based on the original OB-X architecture, James says of his synth: "I have crafted a controllable diode clipping stage before and after the filter, which really brings some body and harmonics for a beefy result, especially in conjunction with the VCF. .It can be soft and warm or scream in a good way."
Rather than being a precise emulation of the OB-X, the OB-Xtreme takes its core elements and implements them into a stripped-down design that promises to make it easy to create brass, pad, lead, FX and percussion sounds. There are also extended features such as a FAT mode and multiple DAW outputs.
Check out the video preview and audio demos and find out more on the Aly James Lab website. OB-Xtreme is available for a minimum donation of €15. An OS X version is in the works.
