KeySolutions Sounds has released Traveler, a hybrid synthesizer plugin built by Mike Martin. It shipped on 1 September at an introductory price of $99, rising to $149 on 30 September.
Martin is not a new name. He spent years at Casio, TC Electronic and Yamaha, and started his career running his own sound design firm, KeySolutions Sounds. Traveler revives that brand after a long hiatus, and it is his first synthesizer under it.
Traveler is a hybrid rather than a pure virtual analog, and the vintage weight comes mostly from the filter section.
You get dual stereo filters with two model families. Ladder low-pass runs at 6, 12, 18 and 24dB per octave. An NJM2069-style model, the chip behind the Korg DW-8000, covers 12 and 24dB per octave. Both include low-end bass compensation, which matters because steep filters usually thin the bottom out.
There is also a fully independent high-pass with linked low-pass cutoff tracking, a mixer feedback loop and pre-filter drive. A Vintage parameter adds subtle oscillator drift and non-periodic behaviour, which is the other half of why it reads as analog.
The engine runs three continuously variable oscillators across six octaves with real-time waveform modulation. Each one is specialised rather than identical.
Oscillator 1 is the conventional one, with sync plus linear and exponential FM. Oscillator 2 is a seven-voice unison stack with detune and stereo spread. Oscillator 3 switches to wavetable mode with 85 tables, support for importing your own, and Duo stacking with stereo spread.
All three feed a mixer alongside a noise source. Voicing covers mono, poly, legato and up to 16-voice unison.
The name is not decoration. Traveler is built around movement through the stereo field, and that is what separates it from the many capable synths already competing at this price.
Filters carry left and right frequency spacing plus a per-voice Spread that alternates filter offset per note. A Low Frequency Width control keeps bass locked to the centre while treble expands outward. There is per-oscillator panning, per-key alternate panning and assignable voice-pan modulation.
“Nothing has to stay static,” Martin said. “Sounds can evolve, pulse, change character, and move across the stereo field as you play. The destination isn’t fixed. The musician decides where the sound goes.”
Three polyphonic LFOs offer 21 shapes plus random motion, each with a dedicated modulation envelope. Three envelopes cover filter, amp and mod, switchable between ADSR and ADBSSR with customisable stage curves, and they can be triggered by a mod controller or an LFO cycle.
Routing runs through a 21-slot modulation matrix with 92 destinations on its own page. A dual 16-step sequencer adds variable length, smoothing, swing, gate control and ping-pong modes, while a 20-mode arpeggiator can be routed to a specific oscillator with per-step envelope shaping.
Effects cover a 3-band EQ, three-mode bucket brigade chorus, modulation delay with dual and ping-pong modes, and three-mode reverb.
Traveler ships with over 400 presets built by Martin alongside Venus Theory, David Helpling, Scott McAuley, John “Skippy” Lehmkuhl, Drew Schlesinger, James Dyson, James Terris, Tom Hammer and Jerry Kovarsky.
The introductory purchase also includes KeyTIME and KeySPACE, two standalone effects plugins that package Traveler’s delay and reverb engines. They normally cost $49 each, which puts the regular combined value at $247.
Two caveats worth knowing. MPE is not supported yet, which will rule it out for some players. And the interface puts almost everything on one large flat panel, so on a smaller screen the controls become hard to read once scaled down. It is a lot of instrument in one window, closer to the deeper end of the tool spectrum than a quick-preset synth.
It supports mono and polyphonic aftertouch, polyphonic glide, separate up and down pitch-bend settings and full MIDI CC learn.
Traveler is $99 until 30 September, then $149. A free 14-day demo is available.
It runs standalone and as VST3, AU and AAX on macOS, with native Apple Silicon and Intel support, and on Windows. Producers weighing it against the plugins they already reach for have until the end of the month to decide at the lower price.
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