“At $99, this endearing plugin could easily become a firm favourite”: Wavea Flite review$99 for Creator version / free player version available, wavea.co 
Upon opening Wavea’s Flite plugin in your DAW, you will lay eyes on a pink and purple amorphous arm, the backdrop to Flite’s beautiful and minimalist plugin design. But is there more here than eye candy?
The answer comes quickly; beneath the slick exterior, Flite is a powerful hybrid multi-sampler and synth with a lot to give.

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Flite quickly delivers a swath of delicious sounds. Running underneath the title bar is a shelf of eight macros with useful controls that reflect the chosen preset — a promising start for finding inspiration. Lying beyond these macros is an elegantly designed sound engine that is expansive in features and encourages further creative experimentation.
The preset library has all the bases covered with polished, creative and diverse sounds in all the expected categories; pads, keys, bass, loops and so on. There are plenty of options that will instantly satisfy producers who want to get straight into playing this instrument. The impeccable quality of these sounds is courtesy of Flite’s creator, Sharooz Raoofi, who sampled his own collection of vintage synthesizers for the library. Think Yamaha CS-80, Roland Juno-106, Jupiter-8, TB-303, TR-808 and 909, SH-101 and Oberheim OB-8, just for starters.

Sifting through presets is a delight in Flite. Digging into the library, there is everything from thick, layered and enveloping sounds such as ‘Detuned Piano’ and ‘Jazz House Stab’ to lush, atmospheric pads like ‘Calash’. Extending into sound design and film, you have classic Hans Zimmer synths for sci-fi scores with ‘Duphonic Kaos’, or you can mess with ‘Gremlins’ for sequenced glitches and warbles in the experimental electronics department.
Unfortunately, navigating presets is rudimentary. You can filter by sound type, but can’t search for presets by name. So get ready for a lot of scrolling.
It’s difficult to get annoyed about this since the 200-plus included presets are free in Flite’s open-access tier. While the free version gives you access to 2.5GB of samples, it limits you to using a reduced range of macros to shape the sound and won’t let you save custom presets.
Expanded sampler. Image: MusicTech
The Creator version, on the other hand, takes the preset library as a start and gives you a tantalizing number of ways to edit, craft and experiment with designing a sound all of your own—all for a compelling price of $99.
If you’re one to crank the dials of a new synth to test its limits, you’ll be happy to find that switching to Create mode displays the full extent of Flite’s creative sound engineering. There are four samplers, a three-oscillator synth engine, a note and modulation sequencer, envelopes, LFOs, noise, filters and built-in effects.
Flite has a decent enough effects section, including delay, flanger, lo-fi, reverb and vintage chorus — but it’s the Granular engine that really stands out. Adding even a small amount of granulation pries open a sound to increase texture and depth. Pads start to shift and evolve, bass samples start to warble and produce tension, and sequences can be enhanced with an unusual rhythmic chatter. So, if you’re seeking to push your sound in a slightly different direction, the Granular engine is a great place to start.
Macro overview. Image: MusicTech
Modules are displayed in a neat array, with quick-access settings available up front, which keeps everything in the main view manageable and easy to navigate. Flite has been wrapped in a well-designed user interface which makes its powerful engine accessible from the get-go.
With a calm colour palette and beveled edges, an intuitive interface and easy workflow, it’s clear that Wavea has paid a lot of attention to designing an instrument that feels fun to play. For those new to samplers and synths, it makes for an approachable entry point. More advanced users won’t be disappointed either.
With four identical samplers, layering samples and combining them with the synth engine — with its FM, virtual analogue and wavetable oscillators — offers plenty of room for crafting custom sounds. Flite also supports even finer degrees of tinkering. In the Macro Overview you can customise macros and stack up to four parameters on one dial, Meanwhile, when using the Modulation Overview you can have up to eight modulation destinations.
Modulation overview. Image: MusicTech
Annoyingly, it’s not possible to drag a modulation destination to an alternative slot on the matrix. Instead, you have to delete the destination and re-add it to a different slot by navigating a small dropdown menu, and then readjusting your settings once again.
Another place to experiment is the expanded Sampler view, where you can drag sounds into the Sampler matrix, mixing and matching as many as you like across the keyboard range. It also supports velocity layers, with up to 26 samples for each note. You can also save multisampled instruments as monoliths which can be instantly recalled.
Support for user-imported samples hugely expands the sonic capabilities of Flite to something far beyond a mere preset machine. Loading a preset, opening an unused Sampler and dropping in any old sample was a simple process but it led me to some surprisingly evocative results, perfect for sound design. From there, building up an entirely new instrument was both straightforward and thoroughly rewarding.
Play interface. Image: MusicTech
Flite is a plugin with big ambitions and it largely delivers on them. Aesthetic design meets functionality in equal measures and the results not only sound great – they inspire you to go beyond the instrument’s well-crafted presets to take all manner of creative leaps. At the same time, a high degree of surface-level accessibility and under-the-hood power makes this plugin suitable for both newcomers and experts.
For a cool $99, Flite is great value for money and this endearing plugin could easily become a firm favourite in your kit.
Considering that this plugin is the maiden flight from Wavea, you might expect it to be a little rough around the edges. Instead, Flite is warm, inviting and packed full of fun.

Key features

AU/VST plugin (MacOS 10.13/Windows 10 or higher)
200+ presets
2.5GB library of vintage synth samples from Sharooz Raoofi
4 customisable samplers
3-oscillator FM/virtual analogue/wavetable synth engine
8 macros
4 assignable parameters per macro
6 built-in effects (delay, flanger, lo-fi, reverb, vintage chorus, Granular engine)
Note and modulation sequencers
8-destination modulation matrix
Toggle between Create and Play interfaces

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