There is a special place in my heart for synths that sound wrong in the right way, and remaincalm just shipped one. Sunfish came out on November 1, and it is what you get when a bunch of half-dead home organs, chiptune gear and 1970s string machines get mashed together into a flagship synth from an alternate 80s that never happened. The devs call it a more demented Korg Trident, and honestly that is the best sales pitch I have heard all year.
The thing that hooked me is the Morpher. It is a big touch panel in the middle of the interface, and with that plus a few category buttons you are steering over 100 synth parameters without ever opening a modulation matrix. For someone like me who would rather play than program, that is exactly right. Twist it and the sound just moves.
Under the hood there are two oscillator engines. One is a 1970s divide-down engine built for big organic bass and strings, and the other is a hotrodded low-res 1980s wavetable engine inspired by the rare Gleeman Pentaphonic. Then there is the ghost control, a per-voice lo-fi pitched reverb that sits before the VCA, so it can add shimmer to a pad or turn a bassline into an explosive meltdown. The filters are just as strange: a subtractive engine with five crunchy models, and a formant vocal filter with seven personas that adds this weird talking quality to bass in small doses and full-on 1970s pad drama when you push it.
The devs are upfront that this is not a normal synth. It does not sound like a Juno or a Moog or a Prophet, and they left all the quirks in on purpose. Oscillator three is apparently really weird, and the filters are weird too. Good. I have enough polite synths already. The 150 plus presets lean into retro bass and glowing pads, and the built-in ensemble chorus with nine crossfadable modes plus the lush reverb mean you can get a finished sound without reaching for anything else. This is the kind of instrument that would sit perfectly under a distorted vocal or a grinding industrial bassline, adding a layer of woozy 80s grime that no clean modern synth can fake.
It runs on Mac and Windows as VST3, AU and AAX, and there is a free demo to try before you buy.
Price is $25 on intro, with the regular price $49 after the launch offer ends. Grab it from remaincalm: https://remaincalm.audio/plugins/sunfish/