Microtonic (µTonic)

If you like electronic percussion then this is the VSTi for you! MicroTonic is like the best of every vintage drum box rolled into one, and then some. In a word, it's superb. The interface is very intuitive, and it is capable of producing a wide range of sounds from abdomen-thumping bass, crisp vintage x0x cymbals, snares, etc., blips, bleeps, bloops, hisses, statics, clicks, boings, atmospheric washes, and general distorted electronic mayhem. You will not get bored. In addition, it comes with a huge selection of presets, both individual percussion sounds, and entire kits including preprogrammed sequences. The sequencer has 16 steps, each with an "accent" and "fill" switch. You can adjust the measure (1/8, 1/8t, 1/16, 1/16t, 1/32), swing, and fill rate. The patterns can be linked to play sequentially, controlled using MIDI keys, or you can turn off the sequencer and use it as a straight sound generator. The sound generation is simple, but very broad. There is an oscillator and a noise generator, which can be mixed together. The noise generator can be filtered, while the osc has an eq slider. Various parameters can be affected by velocity, which can make for some interesting variations. There are 8 pads, each of which can contain one drum patch. Each pad has a mute button (ctrl+click to solo) Pad muting can also be controlled via MIDI keys.

There are lots of ways to work with MicroTonic, which is a great strength. It's easy to navigate between patches, cut, paste, and exchange, so editing is a breeze. The one quirk about this plugin is its method of saving patches. You can save each individual drum hit as a patch (.mtdp), or you can save an entire kit (up to 8 hits plus 12 sequences .mtpg). In having its own patch formats, it does depart from the traditional VSTi patch saving paradigm, but once you begin using it you will realize this makes it far more versatile. Depending on your host, you can also save programs traditionally (for example, Cakewalk users can still save complete programs using the VST wrapper's patch management facilities, although individual drum patches must be saved as .mtdp files directly from MT).

This is a top-quality plugin, and an excellent value for the money. It has never crashed on me, and I've been using it since its release day (Sonar3 and Project5). I've never had the need to contact tech support. It is super-efficient with CPU usage. The documentation is fairly basic, but good. I didn't have to refer to it much because it really kind of documents itself. The documentation does contain an excellent technical explanation of how the thing works, and all basic features are covered.

If you enjoy electronic percussion, this truly is the VSTi for you.Read Review