Free Alpha Version Of U-He RePro-1 Set To Launch On Monday!

Earlier today at Superbooth16 in Berlin, Urs Heckmann of U-He has announced that the “researchware” alpha version of the forthcoming RePro-1 virtual synthesizer will be released as a free download on Monday, April 4th.

The wait is (almost) over! The free, stripped-down alpha version of the highly anticipated Sequential Circuits Pro One emulation (first announced in January this year), currently in development by the brilliant U-He team, will go live in just a few days. They played it at a rather short (but also quite fun!) live event at Superbooth16 today, and it sounded fan-tastic. Urs later talked about the synth, sharing some interesting info about the initial alpha version which will be released on Monday. Check out the video below to see the raw footage from the event.

Much like the previously released Protoverb plugin, the free alpha version of RePro-1 will be “researchware”, meaning that the U-He team will continue the development of the product based on the users’ feedback. The main focus of the alpha release will be on the filter emulation. The alpha version will include five different variations of the same filter, with different levels of emulation accuracy. Based on the response from the community, the team at U-He will decide if they might implement less CPU hungry algorithms in future products without a negative impact on the sound quality (again, from the user’s point of view). The final version of RePro-1 will (probably) be released later this year).

Urs described the Pro One as a synthesizer that is “very hard to emulate”, more so than the Minimoog, partly because of its crazy twelve-octave modulation rate. It’s interesting that they are also researching other synthesizers that have the same oscillator module as the Pro One, in an attempt to make the emulated version of the synth sound as authentic as possible. They are also thinking that, in case that naming the final product RePro-1 turns out to be a problem (probably due to potential trademark issues), the synth might also be called RePro-DC (or ReProdyssey) or something like that. If you happen to visit Superbooth16 in the next two days, don’t miss the chance to visit the U-He booth and take RePro-1 for a quick spin.

Anyways, it was quite an exciting announcement here at Superbooth16, and I couldn’t resist sharing it here in the news section. This could easily turn out to be one of the greatest freeware releases of the year. Looking forward to Monday! :)

YouTube video: click here