Odin 2 synth gets a UI revamp

Odin 2 is a free (GPLv3+) 24-voice polyphonic semi-modular synth with a modulation matrix and microtuning support (imports Scala files). The initial release happened almost 5 years ago. Everyone got pretty excited, and for a good reason: it was a good synth.

Not just that—it also came a few years after the initial release of Surge, which kinda solidified the feeling that things are really getting better for musicians who stick with Linux.

TheWaveWarden kept releasing updates until three years ago when he started working on another synth (Spline), and it felt like this was the last update of Odin. I mean, we’ve seen it with Helm and Vital before, right? But no, here we are with a brand new version of Odin 2.

The main change is a full revamp of the user interface.

The old one was a bit clunky, scaling didn’t work properly, various other things would sometimes go *boing*. So while working on Spline, TheWaveWarden developed a whole new UI engine. Once he fleshed it out, he moved it to Odin and got a dedicated team to do the new design:

It was a costly investment, as the UI assets were created by Voger Design team. I hope Spline will bring back those costs at least. Even if not, I always wanted to give the Odin UI the love it deserves, since it’s still a community favourite. Lets see! :)

The scaling does work much better now, and redrawing after selecting a different zoom factor doesn’t take much time.

One caveat I’ve noticed so far is that the developer has swapped the modulation wheel and the pitch bend wheel in the UI to accommodate for the pitch bend range widget. But that means that the position of controls now doesn’t match what you typically get on a physical MIDI keyboard. Messes up my brain a little. The developer replied (#474) that he’ll listen to more feedback and then decide if he changes things back.

Apart from that, it’s still the good old Odin with its warm sound. The new version is available for Linux, Windows, and macOS. The Linux version is available in LV2, VST3, and CLAP.

If you want to support the developer, I can’t think of any better way than buying Spline. It’s his new baby, a wavetable synth with spectral wave morphing and spline modulators. Not free/libre, but then again, if the stories of Vital and VCV Rack 2 have taught me anything, it’s not like there are business models for FOSS plugins that work for everyone.

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