The Crow Hill Company has released its latest addition to the free Vaults collection – Vintage String Synth.
The Crow Hill Company’s Vaults collection is an absolute treasure trove of incredible sounds.
Although I’m a big fan of cinematic and atmospheric sounds, which is where the Vaults shines most, one of my favorite things about the collection is its wide and diverse selection of instruments.
If you’ve ever assumed that Vaults instruments are all about cinematic scoring, and that’s not your thing, give them a try; it’s a versatile collection, and even the more traditionally cinematic sounds are great for many genres.
That brings us to the latest addition, Vintage String Synth.
Vintage String Synth comes from sampling the Wersi String Orchestra, a vintage 1970s ensemble-style synth.
The Crow Hill Company was inspired to create Vintage String Synth by musician and YouTuber Hainbach, who discussed the vintage analog string synth and its place in his studio in an old video.
The Wersi String Orchestra utilizes divide-down string synthesis and lush chorus to create sweeping orchestral textures that, much like the ARP Solina (heard on Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here album, Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles, and many more), make it perfect for various genres.
As highlighted by The Crow Hill Company, it became a hallmark of prog rock, disco, and early electronic music.
As always, the plugin features the standard Vaults GUI with two large dials and four small.
The first is X-Fade, which blends between the high-end violins and violas, and the lower cellos and basses.
What I like about this ability to blend or isolate either section is that the character remains largely context-dependent. For example, the violins/violas alone can sound quite chilling, but can be equally whimsical, depending on what you play.
Similarly, the cellos/basses alone can sound ominous or warm.
The second large dial is the almost omnipresent Expression control.
The first small dial is LPF (low-pass filter), and if you want to remove some of the high-end harshness and craft a more rounded tone, it sounds lovely.
The next is Chorus, which is standard for any good analog string synth, but the Wersi Chorus is a little different. You get the shimmering texture you’d expect, but at high levels, it manages to drift quite dramatically without ever losing the defining pitch/character.
You can add more obvious movement with Rotor, a Leslie speaker emulation.
The last of the small dials, as always, is Reverb.
It’s instant nostalgia from classic films, classic rock, the golden age of disco, retro-futuristic electronic music, and more.
The Vaults plugin is available in AU, VST, VST3, and AAX formats for macOS (11 or later) and Windows (10/11).
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Last Updated on June 29, 2026 by Tomislav Zlatic.
