Matrix-12 in the Blind Test: Close to the Original, Faster to the Sound

With the triangle, Vulture Culture hears a bit less top end in the plugin, but with the pulse, a bit more. With pulse width modulation, the difference becomes more pronounced for him; he brings the timbres closer by adjusting the filter modulation. He describes the noise as the first substantial difference: his hardware sounds more like pink noise, the software more like white. So, this round doesn’t deliver a blanket verdict of the plugin being fundamentally brighter or darker.

With the triangle raised by 36 semitones, he also identifies aliasing in the plugin using the spectral display. At the same time, he warns: YouTube’s compression can swallow such differences or even create artifacts itself. The video here provides his diagnosis, not an unadulterated listening test for every playback system.

Even the original isn’t an unchanging benchmark. In his hardware comparison with the Matrix-6 and Chroma Polaris from October 29, he regrets calibrating, because before that, there was more movement than with the Matrix-12. That’s why, for the plugin, there’s an important caveat to his enthusiastic conclusion:

Vulture Culture doesn’t stop at the bare oscillator. He works through all 15 filter modes, adjusting envelopes and resonance values by ear. Identical numbers don’t always deliver the same behavior. He also notices deviations in LFO rates. For animated patches, this matters: not just the timbre, but also the tempo and contour of the movement count.

Filter FM is especially rewarding: he removes VCO 2 from the audible signal and changes its frequency to carve out a talking filter character. Here, the emulation convinces him. At extremely high cross modulation, he describes digital artifacts—but also doesn’t hide unwanted dirt from his analog hardware in these extreme ranges.

Programming reveals the clearest practical advantage. In the plugin, Vulture Culture drags LFO 1 onto pulse width; the matrix routing is created automatically. Out of habit, he prefers the classic parameter selection, but when setting up a second PWM connection, he admits: the software is faster.

How much access matters was already described by Jonray Higginbotham of Moonlab Studios in Syntaur’s 2021 conversation. He praises his Matrix-12 sonically but admits he hasn’t fully learned it yet. His reasoning is refreshingly unromantic:

Higginbotham’s musical preference is very concrete. On the Oberheim Four Voice, he assigns different LFO speeds to the voices. That’s a different instrument, but a compelling musical decision: movement doesn’t just come from as much detuning as possible.

Vulture Culture’s final plugin patches also go beyond the uniform chord sound. For Arboretum of Galatea, he explains that each voice can play a different patch. In Voyager’s Last Light, he combines PWM with cross modulation and noise; voices eleven and twelve form wind-chime-like textures in unison. That’s where the comparison becomes music again.