Cherry Audio Brings the Rare Italian Crumar DS-2 to Modern Studios

For nearly five decades, the Crumar DS-2 existed at the fringes of synth history: a quirky 1978 Italian instrument with a distinctive "digital control / analog soul" architecture that fewer and fewer players could actually access, as working units grew rarer and increasingly dependent on specialist servicing. Cherry Audio changed that on March 31, 2026, with an officially licensed software recreation priced at $59.

What made the original DS-2 so unusual was its split personality. The hardware paired a monophonic Synth section with a paraphonic Poly section, and its DCOs produced stair-stepped waveforms that gave the instrument a gritty, idiosyncratic texture unlike anything coming out of Moog, Roland, or ARP in the same era. That combination of analog warmth and digitally-stepped edges defined a sound that was difficult to replicate any other way. Working hardware examples today are genuinely rare and often require expert servicing to stay playable, placing the DS-2 well outside the casual reach of most producers or sound designers.

Cherry Audio's plugin preserves both the Synth and Poly sections as independent, configurable parts. The monophonic section gains configurable unison and multi-voice modes; the Poly section opens up to full polyphony options the original hardware never offered. A contemporary modulation matrix, envelope looping, modern effects, and an arpeggiator round out the additions without obscuring the core architecture that makes the DS-2 sound like itself. Preset management and full DAW automation support come included as well.

The launch was staged as a live YouTube premiere timed across regions at 10 AM PDT, 1 PM EDT, and 6 PM UK, accompanied by designer walkthrough videos and a curated preset library published simultaneously to the Cherry Audio store. The company partnered with content creators CatSynth and The Sampleist for multi-episode demonstration series unpacking both the original signal flow and the plugin's practical use cases in modern production contexts.

Early coverage and user responses praised Cherry Audio's capture of the DS-2's authentic character, particularly the stair-stepped DCO behavior and the mono/poly split that defined the hardware's personality. For the vintage restoration community, a commercially viable recreation like this may help relieve pressure on scarce originals by giving players a credible digital alternative and preserving physical units for collectors and museums.

The DS-2 release fits a broader pattern Cherry Audio has been pursuing: mining the periphery of synth history rather than revisiting the same canonical instruments. Film scorers, sound designers, and producers hunting for genuinely uncommon textures now have a $59 route to a machine that, until this week, most could only read about.