Cherry Audio at Five: Looking Back at 2023

Not only was 2023 Cherry Audio's fifth anniversary, but it was also a banner year for new releases, initiatives, and awards! Here's a recap of this extraordinary year, with just a hint of what's to come.

Cherry Audio launched in 2018 and was assembled by an innovative group of developers, synthesizer designers, sound programmers, and musicians to turn a dream into reality. The first product, Voltage Modular, has become a thriving virtual modular platform supported by an expansive community of Module Designers. With the launch of later instruments, Cherry Audio has evolved to offer an extensive catalog of high-quality virtual instruments and effects, many inspired by classic synthesizers with expanded features and others realizing visionary new concepts in synthesis.

2023 started with a bang when Computer Music magazine and MusicRadar selected Cherry Audio's "10 out of 10" rated GX-80 and Sines synthesizers from 2022 amongst their Top 10 "Best Synth Plugins" for 2023. GX-80, based on the fabled GX-1 and the renowned CS-80, was lauded as "the best vintage synth emulation." Sines, an innovative original polysynth that uses diverse waveshaping methods, was praised as being "the best synth for less than £50/$50."

Of course, the fifth anniversary of Cherry Audio also marked the anniversary of Voltage Modular, the most feature-rich, sonically flexible software modular platform in the world. By coincidence, the Voltage Modular platform grew this year to include 2023 modules from over 50 extraordinary developers and grew more prominent through the year.

In March, Cherry Audio launched Mercury-6, a meticulous recreation of the Jupiter-6 analog polyphonic synthesizer. Mercury-6 was overwhelmingly welcomed by users and reviewers alike, with Computer Music rating it a "10 out of 10," MusicTech another "10 out of 10" along with their "Excellence Award," and a 5-star rating from MusicRadar.

April saw the introduction of a new product line, the Cherry Audio Preset Packs. Created by its sound design team members, Preset Packs are loaded with professionally crafted sounds for individual Cherry Audio virtual synthesizer instruments. Over 2023, the line grew to eight Preset Packs of 100 presets, featuring the phenomenal talents of James Dyson, I AM SNOW ANGEL (Julie Kathryn), and James Terris. Check out the releases to date, with many on sale now through the end of the year!

In May, Cherry Audio looked way, way back with the release of Novachord + Solovox, a collection of two virtual synthesizer instruments emulating the exceedingly rare forerunners of mass-produced synthesizers. The collection was awarded "Editor's Choice" by Computer Music magazine, was selected as one of MusicRadar's "Best New Plug-ins of 2023," and cited by FutureMusic (along with Mercury-6) in their 2023 "Gear of the Year" piece.

In July, Cherry Audio unleashed Octave Cat, emulating the duophonic CAT synthesizer released by Octave Electronics in 1976. Developed in partnership with The CAT’s original designer, Carmine Bonanno, Octave Cat retains the original hardware’s fat, savage sound, replicates its aggressive resonant filter, and extends it with expanded polyphony, a robust integrated effects suite, and a versatile dual-step sequencer. Octave Cat swept the awards this summer with Computer Music rating it another "10 out of 10" (along with their "Editor's Choice" and "Value Awards"), MusicTech a "10 out of 10" (along with their "Excellence" and "Value" awards), and received a 5-star rating from MusicRadar.

Over the summer, Computer Music magazine featured an interview with Cherry Audio CTO Dan Goldstein, in which he discussed Mercury-6, Novachord + Solovox, and revealed, "We've had a lot of fun creating original synthesizers, like our Sines and Dreamsynth instruments, and we have a new original synthesizer concept in development that we're extremely excited about." Readers wouldn't have to wait long to find out!

In August, Cherry Audio released Harmonia. This wildly innovative virtual instrument has been designed to easily create rich, evolving polyphonic tones through additive synthesis, with each oscillator simultaneously producing up to eight pitches, individually tuned to harmonic series or semitone pitches. Once again, this latest original design snagged yet another "10 out of 10" and "Editor's Choice" from Computer Music and a 5-star rating from MusicRadar. Harmonia was also selected by Gearnews as one of their five "Best Software Synthesizers of 2023."

Another notable leap forward in 2023 was with Cherry Audio's video content on YouTube. After raising the bar high in 2022 with the GX-80 teaser video, More than a Replicant, Cherry Audio set loose the team of Creative Director Mal Meehan, Lead Designer Mitchell Sigman, and Director of Sound Design James Terris to make every teaser and release video an event worth attending and watching over and over again. Just as -- if not more! -- engaging was Tim Shoebridge's enormously popular series of introductory tutorial videos for a number of the year's releases. One of the most compelling videos of 2023 was October's stunning teaser video, Return of a Giant Monster Synth, foreshadowing both Godzilla Minus One and Cherry Audio's next release, the PS-3300.

PS-3300 is the exactingly faithful virtual analog emulation of the colossal and ultra-rare semi-modular analog polyphonic synthesizer released by KORG in 1977. Cherry Audio collaborated with the Electronic Music Education and Preservation Project (EMEAPP) to meticulously study and reproduce the exemplary PS-3300 in their collection to celebrate the legacy of this preeminent piece of synthesizer history. Its authenticity and breadth were praised in the review by MusicTech, saying, "(T)he crazy depth of editing you can perform makes it suitable for a wide range of applications, from electronic music to scoring and contemporary sound design," and helped PS-3300 capture another "10 out of 10 Excellence Award" from the site.

With no signs of slowing down, November saw the release of the often requested Pro Soloist, the latest in Cherry Audio's roster of ultimate "what if?" virtual instruments. Featuring the precision-crafted and circuit-modeled DSP designs of award-winning developer Mark Barton (MRB), Cherry Audio's Pro Soloist goes beyond emulating the treasured, preset-based monophonic analog synth originally released by ARP in 1972. It not only exactingly reproduces the expressive controls, 30 presets, and the unique underlying architecture of this classic, but breaks it out of its cage by making it fully programmable and expanding it with full polyphony, splits and layers, a mod matrix, integrated studio-quality effects, and more. Pro Soloist was cited by Gearnews as one of their five "Best Software Synthesizers of 2023," along with Harmonia.

As has become traditional with Black Friday Week, Pro Soloist and other 2023 releases joined Cherry Audio's unbeatable virtual instrument collection with the release of Synth Stack 4, the biggest and best-selling Stack to date. Synth Stack 4 assembles Voltage Modular Core + Electro Drums, DCO-106, CA2600, Surrealistic MG-1 Plus, Polymode, Eight Voice, PS-20, Memorymode, Mercury-4, Quadra, Dreamsynth, Miniverse, Lowdown, Elka-X, Sines, GX-80, Mercury-6, Novachord + Solovox, Octave Cat, Harmonia, PS-3300, and Pro Soloist.

While many would have been content with the release of seven new instruments, Cherry Audio couldn't resist giving a gift back to the music producer community as the year came to a close. On their fourth appearance this year on the brilliant Pro Synth Network show, Dan and Mitchell surprised everyone with the LIVE release of Synthesizer Expander Module, a free emulation of an all-time classic self‑contained synthesizer module. Synthesizer Expander Module possessed a unique tone quality, courtesy of its state-variable filter with lowpass, bandpass, highpass, and notch modes. Cherry Audio precisely recreated it with a filter section and Phasor effect programmed by Mark Barton. And best of all, it's absolutely FREE!

And speaking of gifts -- just in time for the holidays -- Cherry Audio's web development guru introduced gifting to the Cherry Audio store, along with a host of other improvements to make the Cherry Audio site and backend the equivalent of The Six Million Dollar Man: better, stronger, and faster!

What's coming up in the future? Cherry Audio may have one more trick up its sleeve for 2023; one last present under the tree, so to speak. Stay tuned! As for 2024, expect even more surprises with new types of products, other classic revivals and inventive solutions, and additional supporting content to excite, inspire, and inform.

The entire team at Cherry Audio wishes you a very happy holiday season and a peaceful and prosperous New Year!