Worth the HYPE? AIR Music Technology’s New Plugin

Being the huge synthwave crack addict that I am I always cream myself a little when a cool new neon lights plugin comes out. Or at least I used to until everyone and their grandma’s start releasing synthwave plugins. Well guess what my friends, a new one just dropped!

Today we’re going to take a quick look at Air Music Technology’s “new” $125 plugin called Hype.

It’s not super new, they initially made this plugin exclusive for Akai MPCs but they’ve just now turned it into a VST. To be honest though I don’t know what all the Hype is.

This comes as a drop along with 6 other synths that AIR just released but their product pages don’t really show a lot of great detail with each one and Hype is the only one with an extensive video about it. All these plugins are a bit expensive considering these all have much cheaper alternatives on the market. You can download demos of each and that’s what I’m going to be looking at here.

The GUI

So this is Hype. It’s pretty simple and has a pretty slick interface.

The first thing we’re going to talk about is the geometric elephant in the room and that’s these 6 arbitrary shapes. I thought these shapes might change with the presets to make it visually easier to tell what the parameter does but that’s not the case. They stay the same shape no matter how you have Hype setup.

The far left shape is a venn diagram dry/wet knob which blends together the 2 synth engines you have loaded up. The rest of them do different things depending on which synth engines you’re using, of which there are 4. This includes Analog oscillators, Wavetables, Samples, and FM Synthesis.

When you’re on a preset you drag each of these shapes up & down to change them and some of them such as a sampler will allow you to click them to see their full contents to make it easier to find what you need.

There are INIT (preset lingo for Initial/default presets) presets which load the raw oscillators so you can create from scratch, however there is no way to save presets. This is super bizarre to me and I hope they add that feature in the future because I usually like to design my own presets. The flip side of this is there are over 1500 PRESETS to choose from so a lot of your bases are covered.

So essentially, Hype is just a preset pack with minimal controls.

I think some of the reasoning for this is it was initially made for APCs so sound designing wasn’t first and foremost on their mind since working on an APC is more limiting than a DAW. But considering they converted existing software into a VST and are charging $129 for this, they could have added in that feature.

Some of the presets aren’t too bad but a lot of them are generic and I don’t think add anything else new from other VSTs you might already have in the arsenal. Listen to the video above for a full preset preview.

Envelopes

In the middle of the plugin you see filter and amplitude envelopes with standard settings.

One point of note is this Spike setting that adds onto the attack of the amp envelope. When you have attack set all the way down (fast) you can use this spike which adds it’s own unique sonic characteristic, almost like a spikey, stab sound. Though honestly the end result can be quite unpleasant unless tamed.

Also the Sustain has a “Fade” knob to further accentuate a fade, though for most cases decay and release will get you the results you’re looking for.

Otherwise the envelopes are pretty standard.

Modulation Section

The main, central LFO can be synced to your DAW and note triggers or choose your rate in Hertz. It only modulates the filter and doesn’t do anything else which is underwhelming.

Modulating some of the preset parameters would actually be really cool. You can do this through your DAWs automation but having everything work internally is also nice and super common, especially at this price of plugin.

On the left you have Aftertouch and Mod Wheel destinations which can be further attenuated by the control LFO and depth knobs. The aftertouch works great with Pitch but I have a hell of a time getting anything other than really extreme responses out of it. It’s really hard to control even with the depth knobs turned to minimal settings. I’m using a Launchpad Pro and I’ve used it for plenty of other plugins with Aftertouch and never had these problems.

Effects Section

There’s also this FX section which has a bunch of built-in effects with about as minimal settings as you can get with each one.

Aside from these limited parameters, one of the biggest drawbacks is you can’t change the order of these effects and how they feed into one another. They’re laid out in a logical matter however some tweaking would be nice such as moving the compressor earlier in the line and using the limiter as a later stage compressor or moving the pumper in front of the reverb to control transients without choking the ambience of the reverb.

Verdict

So that’s sort of an overview of my initial experience with Hype.

This is basically just a preset library and I don’t even think a very good one at that ESPECIALLY given the fact that it’s $129.

The good news is that AIR often does insanely steep discounts on their past products. Hybrid 3, Xpand, and Vaccum get up to $150 but I often see them on ADSR Sounds and Plugin Boutique for under $15. I don’t know why they do this, but they do and it’s a huge f*** you to those who pay full price which is why I’ll never pay more than 90% off on any of their plugins. (This is great as a $10 plugin)

But fear not, I won’t leave you completely hanging and unguided because that’s not how I do things!

So if you’re looking for new VSTs that give you more bang for your buck then I’d recommend checking out 2.

Suggestion 1: Cherry Audio’s Dreamsynth - $40

It’s a similar engine concept in that you can choose from a variety of oscillator types (analog, wavetable, FM, samples, etc). However Dreamsynth has 3 oscillators which can each have 2 wave types on them which you can modulate in between (think Wavetable synthesis on steroids) This opens up WAY more sound design and modulation shenanigans.

I know it’s not all cool and neon-synth-hipster looking (but instead looks like a real synth) and that for those who aren’t avid knob-turnders you might be overwhelmed by Dreamsynth’s GUI, but know that it loaded with over 1100 presets so you can just use those and learn more about synthesis design later.

But it sounds dope, is much cheaper, and has way more sonic capability, including 3 oscillators each with the own A/B you can blend between. Ultimate control!

Suggestion 2: Arturia’s Analog Lab V - $200

On the flip side, if you want to spend a little bit more money and get WAY more functionality than HYPE then checkout Arturia’s Analog lab.

This is basically a preset library on steroids and comes with thousands of presets with a really great search feature.

This is the lightweight version of their V Collection which unlocks all of the synths in Analog Lab and gives you full control over more than a dozen classic analog and digital synthesizer. This is basically a preset pack made from using very accurately, legendary synths and is an amazing addition to any software library. Super fun stuffs!

But anywho that’s Hype in a nutshell.

Take it or leave it. I’m leaving it. If you still want to buy it though and think it will inspire you to make awesome music, then please don’t let me stop you. Here is the link to Hype