There are collaborations that make commercial sense and there are collaborations that make cultural sense. The one just announced by Native Instruments and A. G. Cook clearly belongs to the second category, though it doesn't turn its nose up at the first. The result is called Super*Saw, a software synthesizer named after one of the most iconic — and most overused — waveforms in the history of electronic synthesis: the supersaw, that wall of slightly detuned oscillators that defines everything from nineties European trance to the maximalist aesthetics of contemporary hyperpop. The fact that A. G. Cook is the creative signature behind this instrument is not a minor detail: he is the producer and composer who has done more in the past decade to turn that squeaky, almost broken-toy texture into a legitimate and recognizable musical language. PC Music, SOPHIE, Caroline Polachek, Charli XCX — his sonic fingerprint is on everything that sounds simultaneously weird and brilliant.
Super*Saw is not simply a preset pack or a generic plugin with a celebrity name slapped on top. According to available information, Native Instruments developed the instrument in direct collaboration with Cook, which implies that the sonic architecture responds to a specific aesthetic vision, not a generic marketing brief. This matters because the plugin market is saturated with "collaborations" that are really disguised endorsements: someone signs a document, appears in a photo, and that's it. Here, the promise is different. The instrument starts from the classic supersaw concept — multiple oscillators in detuning, generating that dense and almost abrasive chorus — but takes it toward territories Cook has explored in his own work: granular synthesis, distorted textures, that space between the synthetic and the organic that makes his production sound simultaneously futuristic and nostalgic.
From a technical standpoint, Super*Saw operates within the Native Access ecosystem, meaning integration with Komplete and compatibility with NI's standard workflow. This is relevant because it democratizes access: you don't need specialized hardware or an exotic setup to get your hands on the instrument. Any producer with an active license can download it and start working. NI's distribution model, which has been migrating toward subscriptions and bundles in recent years, means that plugins like this reach a much broader user base than an independent software house could achieve on its own.
What is analytically interesting is the timing of this release. Hyperpop as a movement has already gone through its hype cycle, its backlash period, and its mainstream absorption phase. Artists like Charli XCX have long been reviewed in publications that would have previously ignored them, and the aesthetic that Cook helped build now appears in television commercials and streaming series soundtracks. In that context, launching a synthesizer that codifies that aesthetic into an accessible instrument carries a double reading: on one hand, it is a canonization, a way of saying "this sound already has enough cultural weight to deserve its own dedicated tool." On the other, it is an opening, an invitation for producers at any level to explore that language without having to reverse-engineer years of Cook's production from scratch.
The name itself, Super*Saw, is a deliberate nod. The asterisk — that typographic symbol indicating a footnote, an exception, something that requires clarification — fits perfectly with the PC Music aesthetic, which has always played with the idea of the synthetic as something that needs quotation marks, that presents itself as a conscious simulation of something else. It's not a supersaw. It's a super*saw. The difference lies in the layers Cook and NI have built on top of the original waveform.
For producers in Mexico and Latin America, this launch has an additional practical dimension. Native Instruments has real penetration in the region, with active users in independent studios across Mexico City, Monterrey, Bogotá, and Buenos Aires. A plugin of this nature, integrated into Native Access, arrives without physical distribution barriers and with technical support within the platform. That's not trivial in markets where sourcing specific hardware remains complicated and expensive.
Super*Saw is available now. If you produce electronic music and haven't yet dug into what A. G. Cook does with an oscillator, this is a good moment to get up to speed.