Beetlecrab Audio has pushed the first beta of firmware 3.0 for Vector, its 16-voice desktop synthesizer, and the headline feature is a big one: Vector is now bi-timbral. Two patches, playable at the same time, on one instrument. The changelog isn't public yet, but the feature itself is live and already in users' hands.

For anyone playing Vector from an MPE controller, this is more interesting than a typical "two patches at once" feature — because it hands you a split without a second synth.

What Vector actually is

If Vector hasn't crossed your radar, it's worth a minute. The Czech two-person team released it in 2019 as a modern reimagining of Prophet VS-style vector synthesis — not an emulation, but a rethink of the idea.

Each of the four corners holds two additive overtone generators, each with its own filter and blend stage. The blend stage is where it gets unusual: it offers amp modulation, phase modulation, combinations of the two, phase distortion and more. Play a note and an orbiter starts moving through the 2D corner space, either freely or along a path you've drawn, and the resulting morph between corners is what gives Vector its character. Think Animoog's X/Y idea, pushed considerably further into digital territory.

MPE arrived on Vector in firmware 2.8, putting it in the small club of hardware synths where per-note pitch, pressure and timbre are first-class citizens rather than a retrofit.

What bi-timbral mode gives you

Development on Vector slowed considerably after 2023 while Beetlecrab concentrated on the Tempera granular synth. Firmware 3.0 is the first substantial return to the platform in a while.

Activating it is straightforward: go to the second main parameter page and switch from polyphonic to dual. A new timbre section then appears in the corner area, where Timbre A and Timbre B each get independent volume and octave control, plus access to the full parameter set of each patch.

On voice allocation, Beetlecrab hadn't published details when the beta dropped, but a developer comment in the community indicates the 16 voices split evenly — eight per timbre — and either layer can be run as an 8-voice unison with detune. Treat that as unofficial until the changelog lands, but it's a sensible allocation and matches the hardware's voice budget.

Why MPE players should care

Here's the part that matters if you play a LinnStrument, a Continuum, an Osmose or an ERAE Touch.

Most expressive surfaces are large — two, three, five octaves of continuous playing area — and most players end up wanting to divide that area rather than treat it as one monolithic instrument. Bass region and lead region. Sustained pad under a melodic line. A percussive zone next to a bowed one. On a conventional rig, that means two synths, two MPE zones, and a host to keep them in sync.

Bi-timbral mode collapses that into one box. Set your controller to send two MPE zones (or simply split the surface by note range depending on how your controller handles zoning) and you have two genuinely different Vector patches responding to per-note expression, sharing one voice pool and one set of outputs.

There's a real trade-off, and it's worth saying plainly: eight voices per timbre is not many when you play expressively. MPE playing tends to consume voices faster than keyboard playing, because releases are longer and gestures overlap. A pad patch with a slow release on eight voices will steal notes. Plan for it, and use the unison option deliberately rather than by default.

Getting the beta

Updating is refreshingly painless. Connect Vector to your LAN router and pull the firmware directly from the instrument's OS — no computer, no installer, no driver.

This is the first beta, with a second already announced; an arpeggiator bug is on the list for the next round. If you rely on Vector for live work, it's reasonable to wait for beta two. If you're curious and have a spare afternoon, the update is low-risk and easy to revert.

Beetlecrab coordinates beta releases and bug reports through its Discord, which is the fastest way to know when the next build lands.

Vector remains available exclusively from Beetlecrab's own shop at €1,128 including VAT. That's not an impulse purchase, but it buys a genuinely unusual synthesis engine from a team that — as this update demonstrates — keeps coming back to its instruments years after release. In a market where hardware is frequently abandoned two firmware revisions in, that's worth something.

More information: Beetlecrab Audio Vector · Vector manual