What if your could mix your most convenient and best-sounding synthesizer with your sample-loaded keyboard? What if you could re-shape the sound obtained from mixing 3 of the world's most valued organ sounds? And what if you could do all this in real time and using one single location?

Well, no more thinking "what if?" but rather "why not?". KeyToSound did it in the shape of the NEXSYN. Period, because I really can't think what it is exactly: an instrument, a synth, a multi-instrument bank... it's more than these all combined, actually, so that's why we'll refer to it form now on as the NEXSYN.

Since the NEXSYN is such a complete and complex piece of code, writing here about everything it does or can do would mean transforming the piece of news in a manual or review and it's definitely not the case. Instead, I'll briefly point at some of the coolest things such as:

NEXSYN blends two of the major type of sound-/music-generating contraptions: the sample-based mapped keyboard and the oscillator/synthesizer. It runs in true stereo modes as the sound can be independently adjusted, synthed, shaped and overall processed on the two channels. The NEXSYN will allow an infinite number of combinations between the innumerable parameter setups possible and will at the same time offer a very hi-quality output signal. As well as letting and stimulating the user to create his own sounds, the NEXSYN's intimate architecture is very easy to understand and use, thus being suitable for newbies as well as for the pros.

NEXSYN is the way to interact with NETNOTES: a revolutionary system for sharing presets for the digital instruments. NETNOTES comes in as a future-oriented technology which allows music creators to find, audition in-the-mix and only then download the presets they need for a certain job. Technically, NETNOTES is all about people sharing their presets in a non-monetary valued online system: you earn NETNOTES as people download your preset(s) and spend NETNOTES as you actually download someone else's preset(s). This also stimulates creativity and development of more and more sophisticated sound... which is damn good!

NEXSYN comes in with an initial 4GB of XWM (eXtended Waveform Memory) stock library crafted by Big Fish Audio specifically for NEXSYN. The WWM format has been designed to accomodate perfectly the modulation NEXSYN uses to get the right tone: these files will thus support whatever you think of doing to them using NEXSYN and they come in a complete array of instrument samples: pianos, organs, synths, guitars, basses, reeds, brass, percussion and SFX.

NEXSYN is available these days for the decent price of $339 in shops and online stores and it will run as a standalone application on both Mac and PC systems and is Audio Units (AU), VST, and RTAS plug-in formats- compliant.

Find a lot more on the KeyToSound website; you can download a manual here. Unfortunately the evaluation version is still under development but checking in on Softpedia.com will provide info on its availability as soon as it is released.