Spitfire Audio once again teams up with BT on Phoenix, a hybrid synth built from the producer’s private archive

Spitfire Audio has released Phoenix, a hybrid synthesizer made in collaboration with Grammy-nominated composer and producer Brian Transeau, aka BT. It’s the third collaboration between the pair, following Phobos in 2017 and Polaris in 2022.

Phoenix combines material from BT’s personal archive of vintage synthesizers, samplers, cassettes and vinyl with recordings from Spitfire’s orchestral libraries. It runs two complete synthesis chains per voice, one for each stereo channel.

Contained in the synth are 50 sampled instruments, covering strings, brass, woodwind, choirs, guitars, pianos and tuned percussion. Spitfire says the selection leans toward the unfamiliar, including frozen strings, quarter-tone clusters and bowed textures at the edge of pitch. Spitfire intends the recordings to be resynthesized and reshaped inside the instrument rather than played back as-is.

Under the hood

Each side of a sound can be shaped independently, so movement, detuning, spectral modulation and phase warping happen as part of the synthesis itself, rather than in post-processing.

The synth has six engines: spectral wavetables, FM, a sampler, 2OP FM transients, sub generation and a noise oscillator, all capable of cross-modulation. The FM engine offers six operators and 34 algorithms and its eight-voice unison can stack up to 48 operator-oscillators into a single note.

“This is a dream inspiration engine fully realised,” says BT.

Built for movement

The synth has eight multi-segment MetaSequencers, four random generators loaded with 636 handmade rhythm patterns and a probability arpeggiator drawn from the rhythmic language of BT’s StutterEdit plugin. The modulation matrix has no slot limit and there are 37 bespoke effects, each with its own interface, ranging from spectral smearing to granular reverbs to lo-fi vinyl emulation. A real-time 3D renderer displays the waveform being synthesized at each stage. The instrument supports 16-voice MPE.

“Phoenix gives composers brand new ways of combining and transforming source material,” says Spitfire Audio co-founder Paul Thomson, describing a range from subtle evolving textures to aggressive tones and cinematic soundscapes.

Pricing & availability

Phoenix launches at a price of £199 from 29 September until 25 October, and will then rise to £249. It is sold exclusively through Spitfire Audio’s website as a perpetual licence.

The synth is to be demoed at ADE (Amsterdam Dance Event) from 21-25 October, where BT will be available for demonstrations.

Learn more at Spitfire Audio.