Nambu - AUv3 Plug-in Synth 4+

I’m a huge fan of IceWorks with ‘Cassini’ being the very first iOS synth I ever bought (over a decade ago) and I still love and use it to this day (a beautifully designed synth)! Now it’s 2023 and the iceGear portfolio has expanded like a universe unto itself! Naturally I really *adore* crunchy phat FM sounds but Nambu takes FM to the next level by combining other features of synthesis and sound design with a unique approach allowing you to explore new unchartered sonic territories. The design is lush (as always) and it’s feature rich; yet intuitive to understand and explore. It also runs on Apple Silicon too! I’ve been teasing some wild experimental sounds out of Nambu as it’s capable of generating a wide gamut of sonic nuances, shapes and textures (in addition to more classic forms like bass, pads and leads)… a very cool modern FM synth!

Not an expert on synths, being a self-dubbed ‘Mr Preset’ but have quite a few iOS/iPad OS Synths, and once owned a ‘real’ Jupiter 6 by Roland. Some features I explored, like the delay effect built-in, have ‘pop-up’ dialogue boxes where you can refine subtleties, and the Developer was responsive when I asked why the echo disappeared as I went up the scale. It’s because there is an adjustment knob in the dialogue for HPF ie High Pass Filter, deliberately to give you control over this.

So although there were adjustments to be made in order to sort presentational issues of the fascia on the 12.9” iPad Pro M1 screen of mine, the Dev was already fixing them even as I emailed. ‘Iceworks’ have a solid track record of step-by-step synth creation, and solid AUv3 designs. I already owned ‘La Grange’ and it’s clear that Iceworks have cherry-picked features from several synths certainly La Grange, and parachuted them into this new bigger project.

The Sequencer/Arpeggiator, is very good and Iceworks were one of the first synth makers I noticed, to make separate, the business of the Arp pattern from the sound/voice/patch. With some synths, it’s still bound up and invisibly locked together. I call it ‘the peg board’ because it reminds me of that ‘Battleship’ game or something. There’s accenting of the notes in the sequence, you can make them hard-truncate, or chop-off at the end of one particular note being struck, and so on.

All I can do is give a flavour here. The actual sounds are really good, and you can alter the audio waveform with the visual window giving such impressively clear indication of what you’ve done…well, there’a lot here and I didn’t even mention the matrix which I partially grasp now, and in any event of course, have just had a stab at and tweaked and gotten sounds I like from, despite not having done my full homework on that.

Have at it, it’s good, and it’s incredibly well thought-through, and has this solid Audio Unit pedigree of previous synth builds behind it. I no longer own an individual hardware synth, because unless I could buy some exceptional model, nothing is good enough to beat the software and a powerful Apple Silicon iPad for me anyway - I sold one of those little synths because I couldn’t see any way it surpassed the good stuff on the app store that my GarageBand or Cubasis could run. Take care all.

This synthesizer fuses FM, traditional Subtractive, and non traditional synthesis elements into a infinitely connectable and expressive melting put of genius and inspiration. If you love synthesis but need to go beyond the traditional in a highly expressive manner, then this is a go-to synth of pure beauty. It is so well though out and highly flexible.
I would definitely recommend checking out Jakob Ham’s feature overview and feature tutorial by searching YouTube for ‘my Nambu one synth app Jakob Haq’