The Synth Factory Horizen v2.6.2 [WiN]

Initially born to serve the demands and requirements of composer/producer Andy Hodgson, Horizen 2.6 is a true breakthrough in terms of sonic capability and workflow. Having worked on countless Netflix/Amazon titles and with artists from Bryan Adams to Katie Perry, Andy often dreamed of a synth that would aid his professional workflow while sounding phenomenal. After a chance meeting with veteran audio developer Lindon Mulcahy-Parker of Channel Robot, it was clear they shared the same vision. In fact, Lindon was already working on the original concept that would become Horizen.

A joy for sound designers and producers alike, Horizon’s 10-voice architecture allows for combining 4 sample engines with 4 voice dual OSC/wavetable synths plus 2 loop player engines. The resulting sounds are lush, extremely detailed and with a depth not often heard. Horizen will effortlessly fit to any genre – from Rock to EDM to Lofi and everything in between, it also offers a LOT for those working in Game/Film. A synth made by composers for composers!

“I now use Horizen in almost ALL of my productions and will do so going forwards. I hope others find it as inspiring as I do” – Andy

Lose Yourself in Sound

The deep yet intuitive XY pad design lets you drag & drop any of Hoizen’s 10 sound sources to any of its corners. Simple movements and gestures allow you to blend the different sources together with creative and exciting results. These X/Y gestures can be recorded so you can take your hand off the mouse and focus on performing. You can even save and load gestures into another patch should you wish.

Ultimate Control

At the heart of Horizen you’ll find its Modulation panel. Simply choose from the LFO preset menu or design your very own before dragging to designated targets around the instrument. Up to 6 LFO modulators can be used, covering a wide range of shapes/speeds that support any sound design need. A single LFO can be assigned to as many targets as you like. As of 2.6 you also get a scrolling display of the LFO shape, so you can visualise the effect it will have, and depth CC control, that allows you to assign any CC controller to affect the depth to the LFO – Andy uses channel aftertouch (CC129) amongst exclusively but its up to you.

You’ll also find two Key modulators to be used alongside two Velocity modulators, and as of 2.6 two CC modulators, so you can refine your control even further… if you so wish.

Each modulator allows you to create fantastic user-drawn shapes to be run over various time sequences. You can lock time to the DAW tempo, run free or even make your modulation run in oneshot mode. The Synth Factory has included some interesting and useful shapes to get you started.

Complex Performances Simplified

Horizen offers several tools to add instant movement and harmony to your sounds. A classic arp is on hand which allows you to define its number of steps, adjust swing, tempo sync and octave movement. The velocity, note length and pitch can be adjusted per step and playback is offered in 6 different directions (including chord playback). Each of the voices in HoriZEN can be routed to one, both or none of the arps, allowing for voices that can play freely and arpeggiated at the same time. As of v2.6 you now have a Pattern Generator to allow you to build easy, flexible and most importantly usable arp patterns.

And speaking of Chords, Horizen has you covered with a dedicated player featuring sixteen MIDI keys. It’s set up to play back one of a wide range of chords based on a user-defined root note, one of 12 popular chord types and the octave range. The augmentation options easily facilitate more complicated chord structures.

23 Glorious Voice & Master Effects

A huge amount of time and dedication was spent by Lindon on the 23 onboard effects and the results speak for themselves. The idea was to eliminate or reduce dependency on ‘better’ 3rd- party plugins by offering a range of high quality, producer-friendly options within Horizen. The effects system is both comprehensive and extensive, with a dedicated Send and Master Effects section. Each Horizen voice has 4 dedicated Sends to the 4 Send Effect Slots, and these Sends are targets so you can modulate the amount of each voice going into each send effect slot. It’s quick and easy to set up your own sequence of effects and where appropriate effects have dedicated LFOs for further control.

Drag & Drop Loops From Anywhere

Horizen’s Loop players allow you to load, play and blend your very own audio files. Simply drag & drop wav files from anywhere directly into the Player window, or even set your own user defined library within the Loop Browser. The latter will ensure your existing loop collections are automatically loaded and ready to be processed with the tools available. Audio can be played as a loop (hence the voice name) or as a one-shot per note press. You can have the loop play forwards or reverse and pitch-track the keyboard or play a constant pitch, and as of 2.6 you can expand the loop display to set your loop points even more accurately.

Over 400 Beautifully Crafted Presets

You’ll find over 400 presets designed by Andy himself. While they fit a multitude of genres and production scenarios the driving force behind them all was to inspire! To help you navigate a vast library with ease, we’ve introduced a tag-based retrieval engine for sounds, loops, and presets. Each sound and preset comes pre-tagged with carefully chosen keywords, ensuring you can quickly find exactly what you need. Plus, you have the flexibility to add or remove tags to suit your personal workflow. Effortlessly explore and organize your sounds with Horizen’s intuitive tagging system, and let your creativity flow without limits.

A witch said,

Due to the bug, offline Factory Content installation does not work. We wrote

the instruction to perform the manual installation but we witches are sure

that 60% of people would vomit before completing.

Apart from that issue, you can find lots of strange things in this product

(file structure, code, data etc). Another HISE work by inexperienced dev ;(