Spire

I’m not sure if electronic dance music has ever been more popular than it has ever been today. Dedicated festivals and shows sell out quickly, and people from all over the world gather just so they can listen to their favorite DJ producers. Sure, there are also light shows and pyrotechnics and all that, but you can’t deny that electronic dance music has evolved into a better version itself, as far as the production quality is concerned.

This was undoubtedly made possible by the constant evolution of the software tools that producers work with. DAWs have become more powerful, yet somehow more accessible, and who can ignore the plethora of audio plugins that help many musicians shape and define their sounds. Spire is but one of the plugins that have become a staple in electronic dance music.

Spire by Reveal Sound is a polyphonic virtual synthesizer that allows heavy modifications to your sounds through the use of many parameters. The plugin comes with over 800 presets, and when you start exploring them you quickly understand why it is used by producers like Armin van Buuren, Hardwell, Da Hool, or Giuseppe Ottaviani. Many of the presets will seem like they were specifically created to be used in trance or EDM, but you’ll surely find sounds that belong in genres such as dubstep, drum and bass, hardstyle & hardcore, or psytrance, just to name a few.

One thing that can be said about most of the presets is that they’re crisp, well-defined, bombastic, and they have a sort of warm loudness about them. And if all these sounds aren’t enough for your needs, you can always get more packs directly from the developers' website.

In order to modify your leads, basses, and drums, you can start by using the plugin’s four powerful oscillators. These are versatile tools that can morph your waveforms in a multitude of ways; use all four oscillators at once if you want your sounds to really stand out.

Then you have four envelopes, four LFOs, two step sequencers, two arpeggiators, and a 3-band EQ among other things. While I’d love to describe them, my lunch break is coming up and I feel like playing with some industrial hardcore kicks. Also, this review is getting a bit too long, so I’ll just conclude that Spire is a great virtual synth if you want to produce some serious dance music.