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Oatmeal

Synth (Analogue / Subtractive) Plugin by Fuzzpilz
MyKVRFAVORITE136WANT6
No Longer Available

Oatmeal has an average user rating of 4.00 from 5 reviews

Rate & Review Oatmeal

User Reviews by KVR Members for Oatmeal

Oatmeal

Reviewed By MaliceX [all]
March 18th, 2008
Version reviewed: 38-1 on Windows

Oatmeal is by far one of the most versatile 2+1-OSC synthesizers out there in the FREEWARE market. (And it recently had an addition of unison!)

Tone-wise, it's quite simple to create simple sounds such as sinus basslines, but once you begin to investigate its options, it's a fully fledged VA under the hood. Various filters to choose from, a semi-modular distortion effect unit, onboard EQ, Reverb, Delay, Chorus, as well as an extremely flexible arpeggiator system.

One of the special nuances of Oatmeal is its wavedrawing mechanism. Now while one can draw whatever the hell they want in this screen for either OSC or LFO, right-clicking will reveal there's even morphing options of sorts for it, which expands the possibilities even more! Then there's the two other oscillator modes, hardsync and FM. Very nice touch, though the FM part is a bit limited due to some pitch limitations, if not a noticeable degradation of quality when one goes down pitch too far for OSC-1.

Anyway, the inbuilt modes for the included effects are amazing. There's so much to choose from. I like how it handles certain parameters with its ouwn modulation routings. My only caveat is it's quite confusing to work with at times, being the uniquely-constructed synth it is. I think this is also one of the only synthesizes that have a routable distortion. (Most synths act how GLOBAL mode does. Pre/Post filter? Sweet!) Now with the inclusion of a 15-voice unison, this can now sound very much like those big supersaw synthesizers. The only current limitation to the new unison is, it hasn't been properly implemented for HARDSYNC and FM as it modulates both OSCs or just OSC1 rather than simply the final shape combination. (ie: Post-generator stage) If this can be fixed, sync/fm unison heaven!

The main pinnacle of Oatmeal is its rather interesting randomizer unit. Comes up with some humorous, pre-programmed name combinations with the odd question (How it affects randomizing, probably nada.) Easy textures it can generate although you'd be better off making your own once you understand its limitations to randomizing.

Oatmeal is also skinnable too!! There are already some high quality skins out there for OAtmeal which not only get around the rather hard-to-read default GUI (single colours), to something more fancy, readable and appealing to work with.

Stability has been so far, excellent. While sometimes skins 'freeze' with some hosts, I have yet to experience any crashes using Oatmeal. It's always been relatively nice to my CPU however the more effects going, the more gets used. Now with unison added, long release, reverb plus multi-voices equals potential CPU choke; nothing strange, it's normal. Fares quite well with both a 1.7GHz AMD Sempron 2400+, and a 1.42GHz Pentium Dual Core.

All in all, it's a great synthesizer. Easy to create presets on-the-go, as well as a great creative-block randomizer for a good starting point. Great included effects, and is now capable to sound as good as anything. From vintage retro keys, to fat basses, to growling leads, to sparkling pads akin to a Fairlight, you can't go wrong with Oatmeal!

It's great nutrition for your workstation, at no cost to your savings account!
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Comments & Discussion for Fuzzpilz Oatmeal

Discussion
Discussion: Active
laertes1a
laertes1a
18 May 2014 at 12:54am

So far I don't seem to be able to get Oatmeal to see these lovely patches. For example, I put the Snow&Rust folder in the same folder (vst plugins) as I have my oatweal.dll file, but Oatmeal shows the original 17 programs. The rest are shown as 'init17' and numbers up to 63. I'm sure it's a simple adjustment. I just don't know what it is. Can anyone help me out?

THIS POST HAS BEEN REMOVED

BlackWinny
BlackWinny
4 July 2014 at 10:18am

In your DAW, choose "Open bank". Then choose the bank that you want and load it in memory. Immediately you now can browse within the patches of the bank you'ce just loaded in memory.

I have made for you an example in an animated gif.

Have fun.

Elclouter
Elclouter
4 December 2014 at 12:00am

Hi there.

I downloaded oatmeal (all versions i found) and tried all, but each time I try to use the vst, it says 'vst bridge connection lost'. Then the VST is unusable. I tried after to tweak the default skin, no succes.

I'm using cubase 7.5 64-bits on windows7. Is any one has any ideas to solve the problem?

Regards.

BlackWinny
BlackWinny
4 December 2014 at 12:09am

Oatmeal is 32-bit, not 64-bit. It is on your 32-bit version of Cubase that it must be used, not on 64-bit version of Cubase.

Elclouter
Elclouter
4 December 2014 at 12:27am

I kniw, but cubase has a bridge to make 32-bits VST working in 64-bits. It's the only VST not working, and i cant fix that issue! Cubase forum sent me in oatmeal forum. In like a ping pong ball right now.

BlackWinny
BlackWinny
4 December 2014 at 12:51am

Ha Ok. I didn't know that there is an internal bridge in Cubase. My bad... But, perhaps that the bridge doesn't warranty a good work with very old plugins. The last time that Oatmeal has been updated was in 2008 if I recall correctly. So maybe this plugin is not very optimized for the memory managements of today, so it leads to incompatibility in the memory allocations. I think seriously that it's a problem of that kind. You should perhaps see if the internal bridge of Cubase allows some tweaking for some very old plugins having a weird memory management. I can't affirm, being not a Cubase user, so it's simply a suggestion to look into the help manual. Otherwise I suggest you to ask directly on the Steinberg forum, Oatmeal being a widely known plugin it is certain that on the Steinberg forum (I think that it is certainly more exactly here) someone will tell you with precision what happens and how to address that issue.

Elclouter
Elclouter
4 December 2014 at 12:57am

Thank you so much for you help. Yep looks to be in 2008 for the last update. Do you know if I can tweak the default skin? because I tried to change the default skin, oatmeal loaded, but it was all whit window. I could play and change patches, but didn't have acces to knobs and oatmeal interface, if i can say that. I will chanllenge on cubase forum as you suggested.

Thank you.

BlackWinny
BlackWinny
4 December 2014 at 1:29am

Yes, and Oatmeal is by the way very known to have already many awesome skins. I think that they all are made with the two freewares SkinMan and KnobMan (both quite easy to use, and very funny to experiment, spending hours to discover these two free gems is not time lost, it is a real hobby to enjoy).

Elclouter
Elclouter
4 December 2014 at 1:39am

So I just have to swap skins in the default folder in the oatmeal folder?

Regards.

BlackWinny
BlackWinny
4 December 2014 at 1:59am

It's exactly that. You can also take this file in my web space, it contains Oatmeal but also many banks, patches, and skins for Oatmeal. You have just to unzip it in your VST directory and discover all that. And I highly suggest you to read all the pages of this thread, probably that you'll find yet other nice informations on Oatmeal, its patches and skins. The thread began in 2006 so of course many things are old (but interesting to read)... but the last pages of that same thread are just of a few weeks ago, meaning that the thread can remain still alive.

You're welcome.

BlackWinny
BlackWinny
6 December 2014 at 1:12am

A video which will help you to understand how you change the skin on Oatmeal:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwJtdF6FwzM

MoogyPark
MoogyPark
26 February 2021 at 9:53pm

BlackWinny- thanks so much for uploading that combo of all things Oatmeal via your "this file" link above. Takes forever to get all that stuff put together and the default skin you picked is just great too... no desire to change it yet. Only thing I wish was that had been done was a pop-up preset browser, so you can see all the presets in the bank at once. Oh, well... beggars can't be choosers (hah). Still, I gotta admit this old synth still sounds good to my ears here in 2021. Thanks for making this available, since the dev has decided to let it be washed away by the tides of time. Thanks again for keeping it alive in a very friendly combo pack. Cheers.

mvrasseli
mvrasseli
28 December 2015 at 5:27pm

I made a track featuring this amazing Synthesizer:

https://soundcloud.com/analog-waves-traveller/wip-groove-wonderland-instrumental-free-download.

MoogyPark
MoogyPark
24 February 2021 at 1:36am

Looks like the link to this track is now without the "wip-":

https://soundcloud.com/analog-waves-traveller/groove-wonderland-instrumental-free-download

gabgue
gabgue
22 October 2016 at 5:53pm

Link is dead.

pauleamca
pauleamca
23 October 2016 at 6:08pm

http://www.groovelastig.de/files/fuzzpilz/buzz.htm.

blatanville
blatanville
24 October 2016 at 12:36am

thanks.

almazbur_snosbeton
almazbur_snosbeton
22 February 2023 at 1:00pm

Я отремонтировал один skin MrM-Blue на своё усмотрение. Может, вам понравится.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/mvk9pffa54uoyc5/Skins_MrM-Blue_Repair.zip

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