Synapse Audio The Legend HZ Review

Long-Term Evaluation

Synapse Audio has carved out a nice niche in the cinematic audio space with their sophisticated synthesizer plug-ins and sound sets for Mac and PC. Many musicians took note of the German company when they debuted their Minimoog emulation, The Legend, which instantly became a favorite despite the competitive offerings. When the time came to upgrade The Legend, they decided that the product needed to live up to its name by collaborating with one of the greatest movie composers of all time, Hans Zimmer.  Good choice.

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If you’re not familiar with Hans Zimmer, he was the musical force behind some of your favorite movies, including Gladiator, The Lion King, Pirates Of The Caribbean, The Dark Knight, Inception, Dune, Interstellar, Dunkirk and many more. He’s received 12 Oscar nominations and has taken home the prize two times. In addition, he’s won four Grammy’s out of 20 nominations. (Plus a whole lot more! —Ed.) He was also a member of the Buggles, who’s track “Video Killed The Radio Star” made history as the first music video to play on MTV. Even better, he’s currently on a World Tour that turns his incredible music into a spectacular live event with 100 musicians on stage with him.

Hans Zimmer is the musical force behind some of your favorite movies, including Gladiator, The Lion King, Pirates Of The Caribbean, The Dark Knight, Inception, Dune, Interstellar, Dunkirk and many more…

Therefore, when Synapse said that they were going to work with Zimmer to dial their Minimoog emulation, The Legend, to eleven, we took notice. In a world filled with Minimoog soft synths, The Legend stood out on its own. Developed with Bigtone Studios, The Legend ended up surpassing Arturia and others with a bigger sound stage, a very detailed filter, beefier bass tones and an architecture that didn’t tax your CPU into poverty.

Plenty of circuit simulation attributes allow temperature drift, power supply fluctuations and even model year differences to affect the sound.

Synapse and Bigtone spent considerable time and resources to model the Legend’s three oscillators and the voltage controlled filter to nail that vintage sound while adding a few choice features to make it their own, including Unison and Polyphonic modes, Delay and Reverb, and the ability to switch between early and model Mini’s to “account for part tolerances typically found in hardware.” Yeah, as you can see, they went deep. What also set them apart was the simple, yet efficient layout that emulated the look and feel of the original, without being cluttered.

Using the Legend as their foundation, Synapse and Zimmer set out to make the soft synth more cinematic and larger than life. Of course, the design was with film scoring in mind, but they didn’t forget about electronic musicians who are always looking for tasty, organic and evolving sounds to enhance their productions. The team added three more oscillators, for a total of six at your disposal, a filter bank modeled after Zimmer’s personal Vintage 914, a modulation matrix, a 32-step sequencer, expanded effects, and an awesome MSEG section to create movement.

All this action definitely makes the interface much more dense, but Synapse did an excellent job not making it too overwhelming. The additional oscillators now provides Unison, Mono, 4, 8 and 12-voice Polyphony modes, allowing The Legend HZ to go into deep Vangelis territory with a viscosity all its own. There is also support for MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE), so if you have an appropriate controller you can wrestle even more inflection out of the Legend HZ – Native Instruments’ NKS is also supported.

Synapse and Zimmer set out to make the soft synth more cinematic and larger than life…

Toggling the Orbit Icon in the top right corner provides access to Simulation Options, Filter Bank and Effects. The effects include Delay, Reverb, Chorus, Phaser and Compression, which all sound amazing and help add just right amount of flavor. That said, our reviewers found Zimmer’s 419 Filter Bank to be the addition that set the HZ apart. The ability to sculpt individual frequencies with an emulation that rounded the corners, instead of the very limited and digital sounding modulation you find in may plug-ins will certainly be attractive to sound designers. The robust, versatile and powerful Modulation Matrix allow you to route almost every parameter to another in twelve distinct slots. It may seem limited compared to other products such as Serum, but you can stack modulations to have a single controller affect multiple parameters.

Close-Up Of The 419 Filter Bank Emulation

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Synapse Audio The Legend HZ Features:

• Six Oscillators
• Unison, Mono, 4-,8- and 12-voice Polyphony modes
• 8x Oversampled Engine
• 419 Filter Bank Emulation
• Delay, Reverb, Chorus, Phaser & Compressor
• MSEG Modulator
• Arpeggiator/Sequencer
• Support for MPE (MIDI Polyphonic Expression)
• Available in the VST, Audio Unit, AAX and NKS Flavors

Another standout feature is the MSEG section to create movement and evolving textures. All our reviewers found it intuitive, fun and musical. There are a ton of presets available, including some for genres you wouldn’t immediately think of when entertaining a cinematic synth, such as Dubstep and Techno. We would have liked to see a Forward/Back arrow system on the presets instead of having to mouse click every time you wanted to make a new selection. You can Sync the MSEG to MIDI clock, change the length from 1 to 32 bars, and set the action mode, as well as set the rate from 1/1 to 1/16T. When you come up with your own creation, you can save it as a preset.

Considering the high standards of the rest of the interface, a couple of our reviewers were less enamored by the Sequencer/Arpeggiator section. It’s quite versatile and allows you to work via MIDI or as a Step-Sequencer, but it’s just not as impactful and stimulating as some of the other features.

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The Legend HZ comes with 200 factory presets developed by Hans Zimmer and sound designer Kevin Schroeder, as well as the original factory presets that came with its predecessor, The Legend. You’ll find many recognizable patches from The Dark Knight, Interstellar and other films. The only downside is that some of these entities are serious processing hogs, often topping 40% on Ableton Live’s CPU meter. In fact, The Legend HZ doesn’t run nearly as efficiently as the original, but that’s to be expected with the additional oscillators, effects and features.

Conclusion

If you’re a fan of Hans Zimmer, and who isn’t, then The Legend HZ should definitely be on your radar. Not only does it give you an insight into how Zimmer achieves his distinctive sounds, but it also allows you to use the presets as a foundation for your own creations. Better still, if you’re looking for one of the best Minimoog emulations on the market today with twice the features of its competitors, not to mention a $20 price savings, then it’s an even better choice. Now combine the two, and you have your next soft synth. Highly Recommended.

Synapse Audio The Legend HZ Rating: 96%

Synapse’s The Legend HZ costs $179 / €179.

The Future: One of the best Minimoog emulators on the market just got a significant upgrade. Synapse did a stellar job upgrading the features and adding some delicious Hans Zimmer ideas and presets to the equation. We’d love to see Synapse have another go at their Sequencer / Arpeggiator paradigm to see if they can make it even more musical.