Sonata is a VST soft-synth for strong single-shot leads and pads. Adept at stringy things and lots of simple subtractive sounds, but specializing in sparkly and glassy mallet sounds, deep basses, and warm and rich mid-range chromatic inventions, Sonata is a one-trick pony with distinctive character.

Sonata features two separate but similarly controlled generators, one for the sound's immediate attack and another for the fundamental tone. Both consist of rich harmonic spectra which are filtered to provide desired overtones. Each possesses an exponential decay envelope for amplitude and another for the filter, as well as a normal ADSR envelope for one or both. The output from these is then fed into a little magic black box (a complex setup of delay devices set relatively for each note) that shapes the sound, emphasizing desired frequencies and providing richer post-filter overtones, similar to the way an instrument's body will influence its sound. There are three global effects: a cross delay, distortion, and a dense reverb meant to accent near-field reflections.

Sonata is meant to produce sounds with consistent timbres in both high and low registers for better two-handed performance and ranged melodies. As a result, many of its interior units exist on a per-note basis and each note can get a little cpu-hungry. Since Sonata's polyphony is limited only by your computer's processor power, a slim 2.5GHz PC should handle about 20+ note polyphony without much else going on. More meager 1.6GHz laptops running other VSTi's moderately should expect only about 8. Polyphony is limited in a manner meant to sound most natural, but is of course never perfect. We therefore highly recommend using a host with the freeze function, especially on less-powerful machines.

New in v1.1 alpha

• Sonata is now Free
• Optimized to run more efficiently