New Substantia Physical Modelling Laboratory (Sneak Preview)

Developer Giorgio Sancristoforo – known for his unique virtual studio instruments, like Berna and GleetchLabX – has announced Substantia, a new macOS application described as an ‘electroacoustic physical modelling laboratory’.

Substantia pairs modal synthesis software with an integrated euclidean sequencer and recorder.

Here’s what he has to say about Substantia:

“Many modal synthesis tools, so far, have a limited number of options and models. Some instruments give you just inharmonicity and dumping controls over a bank of resonators, some other offer few models like a pipe, a plate, a box, and usually a very small selection of materials: metals, plastic, woodโ€ฆ

Substantia has 16 different models and 23 materials, ranging from Aluminium to Nickel, Glass, Marble, Sapphire, Platinum, Gold, Nylon, Uranium and more, for a total of 368 resonant models. (The list will grow with updates).

For unparalleled precision, Substantia uses 100 Resonant Band Pass filter for each voice, for a total of 800 filters (8 voice polyphony).

You can excite the resonators with contact microphones (2 for stereo sound), samples, or white noise and experience a new exciting way to make digital sounds with human gestures. Substantia is a powerful tool to create new hyper-real sounds, from amazing bongos to luxurious glassy and metallic textures.

A must have for experimental musicians, lovers of new frontiers of sound.”

Pricing and Availability

Substantia is available now for 14.99โ‚ฌ.

29 thoughts on “New Substantia Physical Modelling Laboratory (Sneak Preview)

  1. I don’t like softsynths per se, I will make exceptions: ANS, Synclavier, CMI, etc… I love physical modeling and this looks nutty.

    1. Wow! While the video is a headache generator on headphones, I was just jamming with it on the Mutable Elements port on my Prologue. ๐Ÿ™‚ definitely adding Substantia to my select list ๐Ÿ™‚ … and chromaphone2 too, thx ST Dave!

  2. I’m a physical modeling fan and I love things like Sculpture, Chromaphone, EaganMatrix, Derailer and the new Plasmonic synth from Brian Clevinger also sounds promising. Substantia sounds great and the price is very reasonable.

    1. Thanks for mentioning Derailer and Plasmonic, which I’d not heard of.

      I completely agree, this looks very flexible, and the price is great!

    1. I second that.
      I would purpose the developer maybe get this into the Propellerhead Reason rack also, if not just PC at least
      Cool sounding and also nice to see a round sequencer

      1. Some devs seem anti Reason. Not saying this one is but it would certainly solve issue have having it on all platforms if it was a Rack Extension.

  3. Stating the obvious, but It’d be great if this and the other plugins created by Giorgiosan Cristoforo were available as plugins.

  4. yeh the Korg Z1 was one of the first synths I owned… and it was quite wonderful for pads and funky sounds…

    this is really reminding me of that

  5. Ok, the software is now available for purchase, and I just bought it for $17 USD.

    It appears that Substantia is stand-alone ONLY. For the price, I have no complaints! They include a nicely placed link to a PDF explaining in detail how to use Blackhole (freeware) and creating an aggregate device in order to use it in a DAW. It also includes additional instructions for routing audio and MIDI to & from the instrument.

    Perhaps they’ll develop a plugin version down the road, but this wasn’t specifically mentioned.

  6. Mac only….Drats!! But I have my VCV Rack on PC, n my MiRack on IOS…so Iโ€™ll be ok!!

    Nice physical modeling Software….nice layout

  7. I play Chromaphone, so this caught my eye. I’m drawn to the larger number of models & materials, because physical modeling has its own slot, just like VA and FM. Euclidean is rockin’ the house lately. That sequencer would be worth the money alone. Excellent work.

  8. This looks very nice. People are giving shout-outs to other physical modelling stuff. I am enjoying Respiro at the moment. The experience of playing a physical modelling synth with an expressive controller is amazing.

  9. Logic’s synths are good, but I found Sculpture’s GUI to be a navigation nightmare. I was able to learn what PM was about, but more playable over time, it wasn’t. ๐Ÿ˜› Substantia has a more forthcoming GUI in common with Chromaphone 2, which includes a direct subtractive-style Amp ADSR. The musical FEEL is better. When Yamaha added other waveforms to the TX81Z, it lifted FM up for real-world players. This is a bit like that for end-user modeling.

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