The Usual Suspects Xenia is a free synthesizer plugin that emulates the Waldorf Microwave II/XT with the DSP56300 plugin.
In recent months, the DSP56300 Emulation Blog has caused quite a stir in the synthesizer world. Behind it are the community-driven developers of The Unusual Suspects, who have set themselves the goal of emulating various vintage synthesizers based on the no longer available Motorola 56000 chips.
The first three are great successes: the Access Virus A/B/C, the Waldorf microQ and the last, the Access Virus TI. Behind the scenes, further developments are underway. Xenia, another emulation of a Waldorf classic, is now available as a beta version.
The Usual Suspects Xenia
Xenia is a free plugin that emulates the Waldorf Microwave II/XT from 1997/1998. Unlike the Microwave I, the II and the XT had no analogue filters, but digital ones, which gave them a different character
It is important to note that this plugin does not emulate the vintage digital synth engine, but the Motorola 56300 chip. The plugin is currently in beta, so you may still encounter issues.
The usual suspects have given the plugin a very authentic interface. Here you will find all the features of the original hardware spread across five different areas: Main, Mod, ARP/FX, Multi and Browser.
As with the previous emulations, installation is a bit tricky. First, you need to download the plugin, which is free for macOS, Linux, and Windows.
In the second step you have to insert the ROM (firmware) into the plugin folder. The developers don’t offer this as a download, though. I won’t do that either. I won’t accept comments with links to the ROMs in the comments either. Sorry. You have to search for them yourself, otherwise it won’t make any noise.
In addition, The Usual Suspects deliver Xenia without any presets, so you will have to get those as well.
First impression
I’m glad that another emulation is now available. I installed it on my second system and it sounds very good again.
The Usual Suspects Xenia is a free download. The plugin is now in beta and available via the Discord server.
More information here: The Usual Suspects
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