Native Instruments SuperStarSaw [WiN]

• Product: SuperStarSaw
• Developer: Native Instruments
• Version: 1.0.0
• Format: VST3, AAX
• Requirements: Windows 10 or later
• Source: native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/synths/superstarsaw

SuperStarSaw is a stacked-sawtooth synthesizer plugin from Native Instruments, co-created with producer A. G. Cook, running as a standalone app or VST3, AU, and AAX plugin for Windows and Mac. Two independent Swarms each run an 8-voice oscillator layering up to 16 additional detuned saws, with a multimode filter and envelope shaping per Swarm. A 4-corner Morpher captures four patch states and interpolates between them continuously during playback. It answers searches for a supersaw synthesizer built around real-time morphing.

Key Takeaway

The Morpher activates once a patch has at least two contrasting corner states captured, letting a performer move between them with one XY gesture instead of automating several parameters separately. It displaces manual automation for timbral shifts. Only four corner states can be stored per patch. Producers building one static, unchanging tone get no use from it.

Eight Voices, Sixteen More Saws Each

Each Swarm runs an 8-voice oscillator that layers up to 16 additional detuned saws on top of those voices, so a single Swarm can stack as many as 24 sawtooth layers before the second Swarm engages at all. Running both Swarms together doubles that stack, giving one held note or chord access to a dense, continuously detuned sawtooth mass rather than a fixed handful of unison voices.

Each Swarm carries its own multimode filter — 2-pole or 4-pole, switchable between low-pass, band-pass, and high-pass slopes, with keytracking available — so the two Swarms can be shaped into different tonal ranges instead of sharing one filter across the whole patch.

Polyphony runs up to eight voices, with mono, unison, and poly-unison assignment modes available alongside standard polyphonic play, so one patch can switch between a monophonic lead and a stacked unison chord without reloading a different preset.

The instrument is fixed at two Swarms — there’s no third oscillator bank to add within one instance, so a layered sound built from three or more detuned stacks needs a second loaded instance instead of an additional slot in the same window. Producers building dense supersaw leads or pads from a single instance get direct use from stacking both Swarms at once; producers who only need one clean sawtooth voice per note are running the instrument well under its built-in stacking capacity.

Corners That Blend Instead of Snap

The Morpher is a 4-corner XY pad, with each corner capable of capturing a full patch state — every oscillator, filter, envelope, and effects setting at the moment of capture. Dragging or clicking anywhere inside the pad interpolates continuously between whichever corners are nearest, rather than snapping between four fixed presets.

Interpolation between captured states runs without audible clicks or pops during the crossfade, so a live XY drag through the pad produces a continuous timbral sweep instead of a stepped transition between settings. A dice icon beneath the pad generates a new random patch state on demand, which can then be captured into any of the four corners.

Morphing through the pad replaces what would otherwise require automating each changed parameter on its own lane — a filter cutoff sweep, an envelope shape change, and an effects mix shift captured across four corners become one performer gesture instead of several separate automation lanes.

Only four corner states can be stored per patch — building a fifth distinct texture means overwriting one of the existing four rather than adding a fifth slot to the pad. Performers building elaborate multi-stage transitions within a single patch get the most use from the Morpher; performers who only need one static tone captured per patch have no reason to fill more than one corner.

Spread Applied Per Swarm, Not Per Voice

Voice offset applies a per-voice value spread across whichever modulation target it’s routed to — routed to pitch, for example, it staggers each of the stacked saw voices to a slightly different value rather than moving all voices in the stack together. Voice glide works the same way, so a pitch glide can smear across the stacked voices at slightly different rates instead of every voice sliding in lockstep.

Applied together, voice offset and glide produce the smeared, drifting pitch movement across a dense Swarm stack rather than a single unison chorus effect, with each of the up to 24 layered saws per Swarm landing at a marginally different pitch and glide speed instead of tracking the root note identically.

Voice offset and glide are each controlled by a single spread amount per Swarm rather than independent per-voice sliders — turning up the offset fader spreads every voice in that Swarm proportionally along one curve, rather than letting one specific voice be detuned or delayed independently of the rest.

Leads and pads built for stereo width and drifting pitch motion get the clearest use from voice offset and glide; a patch built for a tight, in-tune unison stack gets more predictable results leaving both controls near zero.

Quantized Notes With Room to Drift

Chord, scale, and quantize tools constrain incoming notes to a selected harmonic framework before they reach the Swarm oscillators, so one played note or a drag across the keyboard can output a full chord or scale-locked interval set rather than the single pitch physically played.

Off-grid deviation can be dialed in against the active scale or chord constraint, letting notes drift outside the locked framework by a controlled amount instead of either strictly quantizing every note or leaving pitch fully free. This produces intentional dissonance on demand rather than requiring the constraint to be switched off entirely to reach an out-of-key note.

Chord, scale, and quantize constraints apply across the whole patch rather than per Swarm — both Swarms receive the same locked or off-grid note input, so contrasting one Swarm’s harmonic behavior against the other has to be built into the patches themselves rather than into the constraint settings.

Performers building chord-based leads or pads who don’t already think in specific voicings get the clearest use from the chord and scale tools; producers programming exact, pre-composed harmony from a DAW piano roll get no benefit from a constraint layer applied on top of notes they’ve already written.

Chorus, Delay, Reverb — Nothing Else

Three effects run inside the instrument — chorus, delay, and reverb — positioned after the Swarm and filter stages in the signal path, so a patch can reach a finished, mix-ready texture without routing out to external plugins for basic space and width.

Modulation runs from an amp envelope, two auxiliary ADSR envelopes, and one multi-wave LFO, each freely assignable to filter cutoff, pitch, effects mix, or other targets rather than being hardwired to one destination per source.

Both the effects and modulation sections are fixed in count — three effects, one amp envelope, two auxiliary envelopes, and one LFO — with no option to add a fourth effect or an additional envelope or LFO beyond what ships in the instrument.

Patches that need space, width, and basic movement built in get full use from the onboard chorus, delay, and reverb; a mix engineer building a fully custom effects chain per patch will still route out to external plugins once those three are exhausted.

Only Two Swarms, No Third

Each Swarm tops out at 8 voices plus 16 layered saws — a third detuned stack means opening a second instance of the plugin, not a third slot in the same window.

FAQs