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Matt Tytel Releases FREE Vital Wavetable Synthesizer

By 59 Comments3 Mins Read
Vital by Matt Tytel

Matt Tytel has released Vital, a freeware spectral warping wavetable synthesizer in VST, VST3, AU, and LV2 plugin formats for digital audio workstations on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Vital was announced two weeks ago (click here to read our previous coverage). It is the second virtual instrument released by Matt Tytel, the developer behind another popular freeware synthesizer called Helm.

UPDATE: The plugin download is now live! Visit the product page, sign up for a free Vital Audio user account, and download Vital.

There’s no doubt that Vital is the biggest freeware VST plugin release of the year. Chances are that Matt Tytel’s latest plugin will be considered the best free synthesizer in the years to come.

Vital is available in four differently-priced editions:

  • Vital Basic – Free
  • Vital Plus – $25
  • Vital Pro – $80
  • Vital Subscription – $5 per month

The core functionality is the same across all four editions of Vital. This means that you can make the same sounds with Vital Basic (free) and Vital Pro ($80).

The difference is in the amount of included presets and wavetables. All things considered, this is an incredibly generous pricing system. Users of the free version can take full advantage of the software. Users who want to purchase the full product will receive a large amount of additional content and bonus perks.

Here’s a closer look at the differences between Vital Basic, Vital Plus, Vital Pro, and Vital Subscription.

The free edition of Vital comes with 75 presets ​and 25 wavetables. Upgrade to Vital Plus and you’re getting 250 presets, along with 70 wavetables. The most advanced version called Vital Pro comes with over 400 presets, 150 wavetables, text-to-wavetable functionality, and exclusive perks.

Vital Subscription costs $5 per month and it adds exclusive first access to new features, subscriber-only perks, priority support, and monthly credits.

In terms of functionality, Vital rivals (and in some cases surpasses) the most popular wavetable synthesizers on today’s market.

Vital displays all active modulation routings in one place.
Vital displays all active modulation routings in one place.

The highlight, though, is Vital’s user interface. For such a complex synthesizer, it is hard (if not impossible) to imagine a more intuitive and well-organized GUI design than this.

Vital is a modulation beast of a synthesizer, but it’s easy to keep track of all the modulation routings and settings. The wavetable editor is intuitive and the color scheme is fantastic.

To download Vital, visit the product page linked below and click the “Get Vital” button in the top menu. After that, click one of the four available options, register your Vital Audio user account (or log in to an existing one), and download the installer.

Vital is compatible with VST, VST3, AU, and LV2 plugin hosts on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Only 64-bit digital audio workstations are supported.

More info: Vital (product page)

More articles:

Tomislav is a music producer and sound designer from Belgrade, Serbia. He is also the founder and editor-in-chief at Bedroom Producers Blog.

59 Comments

  3. Masked tiger

     on

    its not available yet i was waiting from the morning and now its like 9:20 PM of 24th the release is on 25th for me :/

    Reply

  6. Big Al

     on

    You can’t get it unless you set up an account and then download it from your product list. It looks like you should be able to get it in the front page of the site – by clicking the button – but no!

    Also note that the first time you load it, it’ll ask for your username and password and then download the presets.

    It didn’t take long and all seems to work okay. Reaper – Windows 10 – VST3 version.

    I’ve downloaded it and am wading through the presets now!

    Reply

        • Igor

           on

          I wouldn’t call 50% CPU killer :) I thought it is 80%-90%. Matt says that user interface is processed by GPU, maybe that’s a problem.

          Reply

        • MRG

           on

          50% for one instance is a lot, indeed. Still, for a 4th gen i5/i7 I’m a bit surprised you get such usage. But it’s a U, so mobile cpu. Maybe a better profile for it, if you’re not on battery, there might be a ‘performance’ mode in your OS and/or BIOS for an extra oomph.

          Reply

    • Tomislav Zlatic

       on

      It’s not a CPU killer over here, the performance is pretty decent. I’ll do some testing comparisons later today.

      Reply

      • Igor

         on

        It depends on how the plugin is programmed. If it uses advanced CPU and GPU features (Massive X wont work on CPUs without AVX) and replaces them with pure CPU processing on machines that don’t have them, then performance will vary on different hardware.

        Reply

  9. rex roll

     on

    Amazing,you can use 3rd party wavetables in free version without limits,which means you can use thounds of wavetables for serum(a lot of them are free),that makes free version almost have no difference than paid version.

    Reply

    • Jamie M.

       on

      True, but buying the pro or plus version means supporting Matt, and he deserves all the support in the world for this synth.

      Reply

      • Numanoid

         on

        Is then like beggarware? Don’t give us a bad consciousness because we are using free software. If he wanted money he shouldn’t have released a payware version only. Matt isn’t the only person who is skint these days.

        Reply

        • Jamie M.

           on

          Perhaps, but I feel like the paid versions of vital are just ways of upgrading the experience, and supporting him of course. I doubt the free version was introduced as a method of guilt tripping people into paying up. But that’s just my opinion – it may well actually be that.

          Reply

        • Origin Makers

           on

          If you are getting bad consciousness of using Vital free synth then buy yourself a Serum brother… No one is stopping you…

          Reply

          • Tyler Brown

             on

            My least favorite part about music is the overwhelming lust for absurdly expensive and hard to get instruments and it goes all the way back to stradivarius violins and such.

            Now I am not denying the fact that beatiful unique instruments are awesome, but they are worthless dirt in comparison to the immense good unleashed upon the world by making powerful, professional instruments available for cheap/free to the whole world. Honestly, when people like Tytel release stuff like this I think we really need to stop and think about how beautiful that is.

            Who cares about rich kids playing their super rare guitars and analog synthesizers. I want a world where everybody who has a laptop can open up an entire universe of musical possibility without having to have an immense amount of disposable income, and everytime somebody releases something like this we inch one step closer to that dream.

            Reply

  10. kyle

     on

    I been using vital for two weeks via the in the mix early access offer. I enjoy it so far. I just wish there was a user manual to iron out some of the small detail.s

    Reply

  11. Fotis

     on

    This is perhaps the first synth where, instead of flicking through the presets, I actually wanted to play with settings and make sounds. Its design is incredibly brilliant. To say it was worth the wait would be an understatement. Thank you, Matt Tytel.

    Reply

  12. Rafael

     on

    Completely unusable, can’t use my png files as wavetables.

    Just kidding, it’s very good. Having a lot of fun trying out different things, and it sounds huge1 And that price tag is hard to beat too

    Reply

  14. Jacob

     on

    For other folks having trouble with an absolutely massive GUI, the controls to scale the window are accessed by clicking on the V logo icon on the top left corner.

    Reply

  15. Randym

     on

    Can’t download it. Windows Defender detects a Trojan in the file. Is it a false positive? :(

    Trojan:Win32/Spursint.F!cl

    Reply

  17. Origin Makers

     on

    This is the first edition so let’s not be too picky on Matt’s work.. This is “The most” advanced freeware synth you can get by this time… Yes it needs some CPU optimization… But the functionality surpasses even lot of paid synths out there where you have to pay more than $100… I got it via “In the Mix” early access not because I’ll get lot of wavetables and presets just to support Matt for his 3 years of hard work… And Vital is the only synth I wish to program by myself other synths I only use presets… Truth be told if you can thoroughly understand Vital you can program a Sound beyond your wildest of imagination… Such a beast…

    Reply

  20. Arthur Mosswwood

     on

    First and foremost if you are going to use this software I highly recommend you have a system with 8 GB RAM at a bare minimum, 4 GIGs or less won’t cut it, you’ll get sound degredation no matter how well you adjust your soundcard drivers for buffer size etc. otherwise. with that said this is a brilliant synth and has been compared against the likes of serum. Try the free version first, if you like the workflow I would definitely recomend going ahead with one of the paid versions, Matt has really done a good job with this synth. Explore this beast intelligently, you’ll find it is in fact a very deep synth indeed, all without sacrificing ease of use!!

    Reply

  26. Atme

     on

    Vital is brilliant! It will give the commercial wavetable synths a very good run for their money! Thank You very very much Matt Tytel! <3

    Reply

  27. Linux User

     on

    Vital is a legend. But I wish Matt would be gifted a Linux computer to test it on because it crashes Reaper no matter what.

    Reply
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