FireBird features:

• A new, unique sounding synthesis: Harmonic content morphing (HCM).
• High-end sound quality
• 84 oscillator types containing 18,000 morphable waveforms.
• 38 different analogue modeled filter types.
• True stereo mode, 4x unison mode, and up to 8 oscillators per voice
• Can sound like other synthesis methods - additive, subtractive, AM, FM, phase distortion, supersaw, vocoder, sync.
• Can sound like natural instruments like piano, brass, organs...
• 23 spectral manipulations or “modifiers” can be applied to the oscillators.
• IQM - intelligent micro tuning for cleaner chords.
• High-end quality DSP algorithms.
• Alias free oscillators, alias free FM, anti-aliased distortion, oversampling.
• Sample accurate timing.
• Digital precision as well as analogue warmth.
• Easy to program and easy to use.
• 21 arpeggiator types.
• 13 effect types.
• 300 hand picked presets included.
• 11 skinable user interface
• extensive midi support

What is Harmonic Content Morphing (HCM synthesis)?

Picture this…
In a studio somewhere, a musician picks up an acoustic guitar and strums a note. As the string vibrates through the air and the sound reverberates through the guitar chamber, this seemingly simple act generates a very complex sequence of harmonic spectra which change over time. In other words, the essence of the guitar sound changes over time, which makes an acoustic guitar sound like an acoustic guitar. It is possible to make a sequence of “snapshots” of these spectra at given times, in essence to capture that change in basic sound over time. And this is where Firebird comes in…
Tone2 has analyzed the spectras of natural instruments and synthesizer sounds, to produce harmonic content snapshots of various sounds which have been included in the synthesizer as waveform morph-tables. Each snapshot in a morph-table is equivalent to a traditional single oscillator waveform, and each morph-table has 256 snapshots! In Firebird, these morph-tables can be loaded exactly like traditional oscillators in subtractive synthesizers, but then you can:

• Modify the morph-table spectrally by changing the harmonic structure of the sound - you can make a fat sound become thin for example, a thin sound become fat, or you can multiply the harmonics… and much more!
   
• Control the playback of snapshots in each morph-table, over a chosen time period. In other words, you can change the sound over time, however you see fit.

Harmonic Content Morphing gives you the ability to mimic the sound of real life instruments like guitars and pianos, but also gives you the opportunity to create unique sounds by morphing harmonic content in interesting ways. The possibilities are endless. Unlike traditional synthesis methods like subtractive and additive which for the most part have only static single oscillators, Firebird allows you to alter your basic sound over time because of the inclusion of 256 snapshots per morph-table. Firebird includes over 84 morph-table oscillators, so that means a total of 18,000 snapshots are contained in the synthesizer. Welcome to the power of Firebird!


What is intelligent micro tuning?

IQM (intelligent micro tuning) is a feature of Firebird which automatically tunes the notes that you play so they play in a different scale and sounds more “fat”. For example when you play C2 and C3 on your keyboard, Firebird will detune both notes slightly which results in a fatter or thicker sounds. IQM also allows chords to be processed to make them sounds more clean. For example a major chord has the frequency relationship of
Note 1 : Note 2 : Note 3 = 1 : 1.2599 : 1.498
But after being processed by Firebird, after each note has been detuned slightly, the new frequency relationship would be
Note 1 : Note 2 : Note 3 = 1 : 1.25 : 1.5
This intelligent micro tuning results in cleaner chords, and it happens automatically - you don’t even need to turn IQM on, it’s always working!