Native Instruments SuperStarSaw – Dual Swarm Supersaw Synthesizer for Rave and Hyperpop

Every scoring composer eventually needs a sound that is deliberately too much. SuperStarSaw, co-created by Native Instruments with producer and artist A. G. Cook, takes the stacked sawtooth, one of electronic music’s most recognisable gestures, and builds an entire instrument around its extremes. Instead of layering, detuning and automating several synth tracks to fake a supersaw, you play it directly. The result can be a euphoric chord stack, a rave-inspired lead, a gliding harmony line or a metallic, atonal cluster, and it can move into controlled chaos without leaving the patch. For trailer, game and electronic scoring work, that immediacy is the point.

Two Swarm Engines at the Core

The instrument is built on two oscillator stacks called Swarms. Each Swarm combines a fundamental saw wave with up to 16 additional saw oscillators, and you control pitch, pan and amplitude across the stack. That architecture explains the range on offer. Tighten the detune and you have a dense, chorus-like wall. Spread the oscillators and you get wide, detuned stacks or unusual clusters that sit closer to sound design than to conventional synthesis. Because both Swarms can be shaped independently, contrasting layers can coexist in one preset, which is useful when a cue needs a stable harmonic bed and an unstable edge at the same time.

Performance control comes from the XY Morpher, an expressive control for moving between different sound states in real time. Rather than drawing complicated automation, you reshape timbre, transition between contrasting settings or introduce unexpected variation while the part plays. Modulation is equally deep, with an LFO, two envelopes, mod wheel assignment and Voice Offset controls that add variation between voices, so repeated notes do not feel mechanically identical.

Scoring With Supersaws and Space

Built-in chorus, delay and reverb, together with glide controls, take a dry saw stack into wider and more spacious territory. In a score, glide is more than a lead effect. Slow glides under a string arrangement can create unease, while fast, euphoric harmonies can lift a montage or a game menu into something celebratory. The Morpher is especially valuable for picture, because a single sustained chord can be morphed across a scene change instead of being cut, letting the harmony stay continuous while its character transforms underneath the edit.

The factory library supports that workflow with 235 presets. Starting from a preset and then pushing the Swarm spread, Voice Offset and Morpher position is a far faster route to an original cue sound than building a stack from silence. Trance, hyperpop, rave and broader electronic styles are the stated home ground, but experimental composers will find the atonal and textural end of the instrument just as useful.

Formats, Requirements and Facts

SuperStarSaw runs as VST3, AU and AAX. Native Instruments lists Windows 10 or 11, and macOS 14, 15 or 26, with an Intel Core i5 or equivalent processor, or Apple Silicon, which is supported natively. Memory is 4 GB minimum with 6 GB recommended, the download size is 162 MB, and an internet connection is required for installation and activation. Those modest requirements make it an easy addition to a scoring laptop as well as a main rig. If your template already covers strings, brass and piano in depth, SuperStarSaw fills the opposite corner, a bright, stacked, unapologetically electronic voice that can carry a cue on its own.

It also earns a place in hybrid scoring, where an electronic element has to sit against orchestral material without sounding pasted on. A restrained Swarm layer beneath strings can add brightness and forward motion, while the reverb and delay inside the instrument help it share a sense of space with the sampled parts. Because the Morpher changes the sound continuously, a single sustained patch can follow a build in the arrangement, growing more aggressive as the orchestration thickens and settling again when the scene releases, all from one performance gesture rather than a stack of edits.