The Riser: Transition Designer Synth by AIR Music Technology

Each of The Riser's three oscillators has its own filter send and a graphical display of its parameters. The sweep oscillator sets the volume, frequency and shape of the transition, which is how you create rises, falls, stops and swells. The noise oscillator adds texture, with volume, shape and pitch controls. The chord oscillator lets you tune the synth's sound to your song's key or a contrasting one.

The filter section offers 23 types, including multi-pole and phase shift filters. Combined with the LFOs and oscillators, these give you a wide range of tonal shapes for a single transition.

The Riser includes 300 editable presets, which you can use as starting points or deconstruct into your own patches. A randomizer generates patches with one click, and Invert mode reverses the transition direction, so a rise becomes a fall and a swell becomes a fade. The Swap button applies those inversions to your current setup, which is useful for building complementary patches.

MIDI-Learn mode lets you assign parameters to a hardware controller by clicking a control in the plugin and turning a knob or fader on the controller. The delay, four reverb types, panning and master stereo width controls are built in, so most transition work can stay inside one plugin.