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Awesome, glad you like them! I agree that Altitude is the most capable and best sounding synth of the ones you've listed.

You'll be happy to know that I've been hard at work at creating an ambitious gigantic preset bank for hard dance electronic music covering basses, leads, chords, pads, effects, and screeches - aiming for well over 500 patches! This will be coming sometime next year, but unsure when as I'm balancing other work and life as well. Just know that it's coming - I advise you hop into nakst's Discord server (https://discord.gg/aHnUxztsVe) if you haven't already. I share presets there for Altitude and Apricot every now and then.

I can assure you that Altitude is well worth its weight in gold. It has quickly become the sole primary synth in all of my music, only reaching towards my Virus TI or Serum every now and then for specific sounds. The no-VST situation is a non-issue (see here: https://github.com/free-audio/clap-wrapper), and even though there hasn't been any *public* updates for quite some time, I assure you that nakst has been working on Altitude beta updates that I have been testing and giving feedback/suggestions on. As I consider Altitude as a very stable and mature piece of software, I rarely ever feel the need (or even the want for that matter) to implement large changes. If there's a bug to be fixed, rest assured that it will be attended to - so as long as it's reported properly!

Further addressing the concerns of a lack of updates - it's quite normal for good software and hardware not to receive updates for extended periods of time. Just look at the Virus TI - although it hasn't been updated in several years (also feeling very unsupported in recent years) and people have their issues with it, many producers and sound designers STILL hold it in high regard and use the synth every day in their work. As a professional producer and sound designer, I could get by with Altitude as my sole synth with not only confidence but comfort as well. Its workflow speed and flexibility are quite unmatched in my opinion. You won't be disappointed with the investment.

For those of you who wish to use this synth in a host that doesn't support CLAP on Windows, visit here for a guide.

This synth has hands down replaced every single workhorse subtractive synth in my workflow.

To preface this, I am a sound designer of well over a decade and a half's worth of experience and have beta tested this software for a good while before its release. I've used pretty much every subtractive synth under the sun that you've seen make rounds: be it Sylenth1, Spire, Rapid, or even the various models of the Virus. Every synth has its own character, and Altitude is most definitely no exception.

With different detune models, several samples to choose from, the ability to add your own samples, an absurd amount of modulation, some VERY delectable effects, and an intuitive skinnable UI with a UX that flows like a river, this synth has been the first tool I reach for in my sound design toolkit. Rumbling reese basses, gritty dubstep growls, plucks with envelopes of any shape or size, trance leads that send you straight to euphoria, galactically huge pads, and hardstyle screeches so sharp you don't even need to mix them, Altitude has pretty much every ground you need covered.

Sound Unison in different tastes, oscillators in different flavors, effects that are out-of-the-box usable, and modulation that's easily musical. There's nothing not to like here. With the ability to add multiple filters in the effects stage and route them pretty much in any way you need them to, you could practically pre-mix your patches before it even hits the mixer effects. Not to mention all the in-oscillator modulation you could have, which could turn Altitude into an 8-operator FM synth with ease.

Interface Everything is laid out in an intuitive way. Navigation is not complicated at all. Some may not like that there are tabs and pages, but nakst has done his best to ensure that there is as much you need visible as possible on each page. You won't get lost if you take a quick glance at where everything is at. Modulation is always at the bottom. The stock skins are clean, elegant, readable, and have good contrast. The fact that you can add your own skins to your taste is a big plus. I'm looking forward to seeing what the community comes up with.

Modulation There is an absolutely insane amount of modulation you can have going on in Altitude. The question is not what can you modulate, but rather what can't you modulate? You can use modulators to modulate other modulators and their modulation amounts. Altitude takes this to a whole new level with the Math modulators. This is one of the biggest highlights of the synth. It's very intuitive to modulate: just click a modulation slot, then click its destination in the synth's UI. Simple as that.

Performance Altitude generally performs better than Serum, Spire, Vital, and Rapid from my experience. It's on par or better than Sylenth1 and Viper, especially on the heavier patches. It has a much better rendering time than the others mentioned as well. Due to its complexity, it does perform worse than Apricot (the little brother to Altitude) and Synth1 from my testing. I'm very pleased with how it performs.

Content Altitude comes with a very generous bank of samples and patches. I won't comment on my own patches I made during beta for the factory bank, but the others have done a spectacular job showcasing what they can do with the synth. Pretty much any patch is usable in a track. Many of the samples used for the sample oscillators could be patches of their own, which gets you some pretty awesome results when you stack them up or modulate them.

Overall, if you're looking for a subtractive synth that will get you the best bang for your buck, then Altitude is a very strong contender. It's intuitive enough to teach synthesis on, yet complex enough to keep you coming back as a seasoned sound design veteran. Although it is a new synth and there aren't countless and countless of preset banks available quite yet, I have a feeling that we're not very far off from a lot of content being made for this. With the amount of depth that Altitude has, I'm sure that the presets will be far from the typical ones you see being remade and resold over and over again. I'll continue releasing patches for this beast, and I encourage everyone to get creative.

Happy synthesizing.

Here's a YouTube playlist full of some of my Altitude showcases: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQpM3AzNXx561nOxtvgKHX90Fu4HEm2iM

Since this synth has recently taken over as my go-to draft (and sometimes even my main) synth, I'll be creating plenty of presets for this in the future to be released as either Factory ROM expansions or additional expansions. Feel free to post your ideas here and who knows, you might see it come into fruition in a later update! ;)