Product Reviews by KVR Members

Live started as application for live performances. I never did live performance, but I can imagine you need everything as quick and as agile as possible. With that in mind, they developed pretty unique app that was reliable and well suited for this purpose. (Thanx to it's clever session view thing.)

I believe it was around version 5 or 6 when people started to use Live for classic production as well. I guess main reason was unification of user interfaces used inside and outside of their studios. Around version 7, Ableton implemented better EQ, more cool devices and suddenly people found out, that it's in fact really good and solid DAW.

That quickness of performance tool just reminded. Everything is right under your fingertips and pretty much everything happens in one single window. That's what created Lives amazingly quick workflow. For example setting sidechain compression is question of 3 mouseclicks.

Next thing, that wows you, is its modularity. It's not pure modular DAW, but it has this racking option, that makes it really easy for you to get creative. Wanna layer X synths in one track? No problem. Wanna have several effects on one track working in parallel? No problem. There is not much of possible craziness you couldn't do with it.

Drum racks are amazing too. It's so logical. One track on outside and new track inside of it for every single hit. Easy, clear. Group tracks (available from version 8 I think) allows you to buss several of your tracks completely. If you need some conventional bussing or effect tracks, classic sends also available. ...and everything still happening inside of the one very window.

Unfortunately version 8 went a bit wrong as well. It's great version, best yet, but it has been around for three years or so. Other DAW developers worked hard on new versions. Some functions like vector automation curves, 64-bit instruction code support, or creative stuff like integrated pitch correction are painfully missing in Live. It's great on it's own now, but development should speed up a bit. So point down for that.

Anyway, I'm using Live as my one and only DAW for few years and having no intentions to change that. May be Bitwig can shake this opinion a bit, but that's question of future. Lot of DAWs claim they're quickest way from your brain to the finished track, but imho Live is only DAW you can really agree on that.

Jeroen had some tape-ish simulator before. Called Ferox. I loved it. It didn't have this huge PSP-like effect making everyrthing bigger, no. It was little subtle saturation when your drums were too digital and neded just tiny bit of tasteful colour.

So ... when I heard about this one, I had to buy it. Especially for that sweet price.
Goal of this plug is straight and clear. Make it like it was recorded on tape. As far as I know from some Pensado's place episodes, lot of people likes the new UAD tape emulation for this purpose. I guess UAD nailed it pretty good. Unfortunately I have no means how to AB it to the ReelBus, but
when you don't think about manufacturer and just listen, ReelBus does quite a good job.

I remember really active usage of MC tapes from childhood. I know, it's not the same as working with highclass studio recorders, but that taste, that "smell" is just reckognizable. ...and ReelBus definitely has it! Warming really good imho. Just listen to demos on the website, it's really cool.
I've used it so far on few lead instruments. It really kind of shifts it few years back colour-wise. Exactly what it's supposed to do. It's also amazing on too dull sinewavy kicks or bass. It adds little (may be sampled?) noise layers to the signal, that makes it sound cooler.

If you drive it hard, it distorts. Exactly the way I remember old cassete players did when recieved bad tape. It wasn't pleasant for me back then, isn't too much now either, but it's still much more analogue then classic digital clipping/limiting/crazy-over-compressing...

Bad side is, that damn UAD could buy a real Studder to meature. Jeroen had access to Studder too, but had to emulate it's behaviour on Teac recorder and then meature it that way. I can't tell how well he matched it as I don't own UAD, but there always will be certan courioustiy about how that UAD plugin sounds. On the other side ... ehm ... 350 dolars against about 12 bucks. BARGAIN! :)

Conclusion: This is really good and really precise emulation. You need to not overuse it or you end in 2001 again in a minute. :D But for coloring it's really cool. I can't compare it with UAD, but I'd guess it would stand up really well! :) And for 10 euros? For price of 2 or 3 launches...? No-brainer.

Lot's of free compressors these days. Every single one of them has it's own trick. Point is, that in most cases, those payware ones will be always a bit better, more analog. Big companies have resources for real hw units, possibility to meature them. Not much of freeware developers can do that, so they read about behaviour and then mimic it in some way that kinda works, but it's not that precise most of the time.

Is there way out of it? Yes. F*ck them all, make it simple, but solid! Exactly what jsCompShaper does. It features internal sidechain EQ, paralel functionality, ability to continuously switch between compression and waveshaping and last but not least, crazy oversampling.

All you need really is throw it on drum buss and play with settings to hear the sound. In some settings I swear it reminds me of SSL sound. (Didn't even touch real console, so can't tell "for real", but from internetzz.) It doesn't have HP filter though, so it's better for drums where you don't want kick completely low-endish.

That shaping is interesting. Some cool character can be achieved, but especially on the drum buss it does just a little changes, even smaller when used in paralel.

Another thing is versatility. I didn't work with voices that much lately, but i believe it's great on vocals. That EQ and some special voclal presets suggest it. Or knee for example. On some compressors you turn that knob and almost nothing happens soundwise. Not here at all. Hard or soft as you like.

What I love the most is the oversampling. I believe it's one of the things that define sound of those big payware plugins. It makes it haeavy on CPU in jsCompShaper, but result just sounds good. Defined. Smooth. I guess not much far from simplier Waves plugs.

Conclusion: I guess old HW companies have spent ages and milions to make their compressors behave as ideal as possible. SW companies just as much to make it behave as not-ideal as possible to get close to products what HW companies made. As a result there is so much of different coloration in the world that no ordinary listener can really tell. That means on budget, only thing we should be really concerned about is, whether it sounds good or not in general. ...and this compressor definitely does. It won't sound exactly as any HW particularly, but really good anyway! :) I don't mean that emulations are meaningless. I just mean (and hope) nothing to worry about using plug like this. :)

What I love about free plugins is that there is not much of decription needed now, just go and try it for yourself. :) For me, this is discovery of the year so far. Love it!

I LOVE when some free plugin kicks a**es of big payware. :) Have already few of them, rewieved few and probably will keep doing this, becouse I can't afford pretty much nothing else. :D

This EQ is example of that. So musical. I swear I heard character it adds in one YT tutorial where they gloryfied some Softube emulation.

In usual cases, especially with acoustical instruments, all you want to do really is low/high cut them and do little simple boost anyway, so I can't tell I don't miss something featurewise, parametric EQ is still parametric EQ, but as far as usability goes, you won't be limited that much. Hey, hear the sound, see missing pricetag! That's the main thing here! :)

Distortion is graeat. Really cool sounding. As always you need to watch out not overdoing that. Freeware plugins sometimes tends to behave crazy when overdriven too much, but can't tell here yet, didn't test it that long.

I usually cut basses too much so I didn't like it on (synth) basses too much. Could be different with acoustic though. But its great for all different leads, plucks, stabs, can imagine it on vocals too. Everything you can imagine runing through the Pultec in your dreams, you can run it trough this with good results. :)

Point down as a dev-poke, couse I'd love to see much more from them, seems like they know their way around DSP. :)

Loving it, love it too, download it and be happy! :)

If you have ever wondered how they made that high frequency digital "shimmering" layer in Transformers hacking signal, I'd say answer is spectral mangling.

Few ways how to do it. Pricey Alchemy can do a bit of that, but not much. There are some manglers like SpectrumWorx, but they are expansive and doesn't allow some precise "grabing" and "shifting" of content, which is imho coolest things on spectral mangling. Then you have gadgets like Photosounder that are cool featurwise, but you have to process things off-line and import it. Not what you'd like for music production.

And then you get this plug with name you can't pronounce in any other way then spelling. :D

First you need to get used to GUI. Especially sliders that uses mouse position in creative, useful, but unusual way. Once you get it right, you find it HILARIOUS. All passible digital robot voises and stuff in minutes. Amazing. Great for modernising percussion, sound effect. Really creative and cool.

...aaaand then you find that latency. It's horrible! FFT introduce some sound change based on qualitty based on latency setting. One could live with that, but not if there is no support for host's latency compensation at all. SO you need to shift the material, or use Voxengo latency plugs, then your automation needs to be shifted.... That side of this plug is absolutely horrible and i BEG developer to implement that compensation. PLEEEASEEEE.

Summary: Cool amazing and creative plugin with not much of a competition even in payware sector. Wierd GUI and really shame about it not supporting any latency compensation, which makes it hard to use. But still better then exporting like crazy with other softwares. I like it! :)

"My bass is too sinewavy, I can't hear it when testinng mixdown on set of cheaper speakers and have no money for crazy expansive Waves bass enhancers!" ...if you reckognize yourself in this statement a bit, you'll like this plug.

Obviously as Waves plugins are iLocked, I wasn't able to demo and A/B it, but from YT videos and stuff XBass can be used in pretty similar manner. It's not exactly the same. XBass saturation adds a bit more of higher harmonics then just 1st and 2nd as Waves enhancers do (I think). That could be good or bad thing depending on material, so no point in judging that. When you turn "Soft enhance" knob, in low values it nicely soften the bass area. In higher values it punches it up pretty hard. Watch out though, when fatiqued, you can mudd your mix by that in a second.

I find it great when something needs some more bass care. You shouldn't get fooled by volume. Sometimes all you need is good EQing, but sometimes it's not right no metter what magic you do on EQ. Then this plug comes really handy. And for that price...

Bad side is GUI. Knobs lacks range descriptions, but I would like to be helpful and becouse developers are Slovaks and Czech and Slovak languages are almost the same, I contacted them and asked. So that frequency button: Low value is 50 Hz, value of 5 is 200Hz and value of 10 is 1kHz. :)

Summary: It's pretty cool plug. I guess Waves plugins are more quick to use and pleasant to have, but if on budget, this gadget can do lot's of things in similiar way. Amazing for weaker basses or kicks when used gently.

Budget musicians life is kinda tough. I try to fit into the "you can make good song with cheap things" category as much I can, but truth is, It's not always like that. There are dozens of free or cheap plugins that do the job, even plugins inside your DAW do the job quite well, but good mix is all about fine tuning. About that little nuances. About those tiny detials that makes end results amazing.

That brings some problems... For example in definition of "what is good". When you've got $$$, then you try some real gear emulation by Softtube, Waves. Sound Toys or such, make a choice and live forever after. If you've got less money, you concetrate on "do it all" variants like things by DMG audio. (Would LOVE to have those. :/) But if you're even more pathetic, like me ... you need pretty much miracle to tune your mixes good.

Equalizers create big part of overall sound of the mix as they're most important device you use. Problem is that when you use just one for every track, your mix gets certain flavour characteristic to particular EQ. You can call up few freeones, but out of Melda and VOS teritory, not much of them will bring smile on your face. So where to next?

...exactly here! :) This dev pretty much perform the miracle you need. IIEQ is famous for being cheap, but amazingly smooth and it's absolutely true. Everything with IIEQ on it sounds a little bit nicer, slicker. Somehow it preserves low mids really well. ...and becouse this area is responsible for warmnes, you get really nice warm cuts.

Featurwise amazing too. Classic filters sound great and it also features bunch of Butterworth filters that I've met during my electrotechnic highschool, but am not sure about their benefits in music production. But just from listening, they sound really clean. Great for hihats sometimes.

Some bad sides? Well GUI could be bit more precise. But that's nothing compared to what you get fo your 30 bucks.

I compared it directly to demo of Equality. And yes, Equality is still a bigger beast. But soundwise, they both brings good qualitty to your recording. Slightly different but both good. Point is that with this pricetag you won't be ashamed to call back some DAW or free EQ when mix needs some other flavour. ...and if on budget, you'll be able to afford it! :)

I'm tired of giving tens, wanted to find something and give this 9, but I just can't. For that price, I just can't....

Conclusion? Go to watch 3 or 4 episodes of Pensado's Place. I'll guarantee you, if on budget, you'll get back with "I'll never be able to afford gear for those great mixes" depression. .... in this state, IIEQ is really "thank you, god!" kind of plugin. :)

Version 2? Oh boy, it's good! FM8-like matrix is there! (Behaves a bit differently, but anyway!) All OSCs have all possibilities now as CPU power is higher nowadays. It has some nice samples in OSC's and it can use them to modulate or be modulated! Proper stereo unisono. More FX slots, more FXs. I can play with this thing for looong hours.

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It's quite time ago when I've got copy of Blue from second hand. I didn't understand it back then, so I wasn't using it untill about four months ago. Then I rediscovered it and love it! :)

I want to start with a sound of it. At first sight it might seem a little bit "unstable", "not thick enough" and it's true for some uses. Imho It's not the best synth for subbasses for example. But when you dig in and use it's FM engine, you discover amazing sonic pallete. Someone somewhere called it cinematic. Can't agree more. It has some richness, something that just "tells the story" you play. It's especially handy when you have big track full of background layers and no freaking clue what to give on the top of it.

Another use is as really pleasant substitution for FM8. Especially now when Dubstep is wub-wub-wubbing everywhere, FM8 becme known again. Blue can do lot of similar sounds and it has it's own "extra" charater that diverse it from FM8 pretty well. Again, it just can tell the story. Emotionally. Can't describe it well. Just demo it. :) And as a bonus, it's sawtooth sounds much better then FM8's.

Handling of this synth is bit confusing at first, but when you get yourself around what FM is and how it works, it becomes pretty clean and quick. (Unless you're not preset hunter. Then it doesn't really matters...)

Featurewise also crazy. Not many synths alows you to tune precission of every single OSC's for example. :) Modulations are also great. Those multimode envelopes are really cool. ...and so on and so on. :)

Support is amazing. I've found a little bug it was performing with Ableton Live. Contacted guys, Jon opened those 6 years old codes and fixed it for me in literally no time. (2 days for bug fix like this is really a lightspeed) Bugfix was also included in next update.

Only bad thing is unisono engine that is oldfashioned and mono. But I've got a little "oficial-ish" roumor that version 2 is in planning, so no "dev-poke" point down thistime. :) (but it was close :p)

Summary? Well I believe it's one of most overlooked synths ever. It can really bring colours to your songs, which is amazing complment for all this "sometimes too clean" NI synth stuff everyone's using lately. Great sound, great possibilites, great FX, great developers and amazing potential to the future. Can't go otherwise than full score.

Once a while, when mixing and especially when sound desigining, you come to the point of: I wonder, what it wold sound like if I applied little ramp shaped EQ response with crazy steep end. Or: What if I just grab this band strictly from frequency to frequency and low it down?
...and such. Problem is, that you have no chance to do it. Classic parametric EQ offers you lots of sound shaping but responce is not so chirurgicaly precise as you'd need.

Developer of this plugin told himself in this situation: Naaah, I'll do my own EQ for that. ...and he did. And it sounds awesome.

One may say: So what? But think about it really...It's not that easy. EQ's as far as I know are bulit either by DSP (sometimes analog) filter modeling or by some FFT mangling. Nature of this idea kinda excludes any other then FFT way, so they needed to concentrate on that.

Now I don't know about you guys, but my expirience with FFT is kind of bad. These plugins always contain qualitty setting that sets length of window that plugin operates on. I often get wierd sound artifacts or "not so sharp" sound when turned down. This EQ? None of it, sounds absolutely cool even when qualitty turned to lowest. (Low and too steep filters loose a bit of definition when qualitty is set to low, but you're informed about it in very pleasant and non disturbing graphical way by "alternative curve".) Whole sound really tells you they have lot's of FFT expiriences from Photosounder.

One thing that's really a question is: How do you tell if it sounds good, when concept is so new? Well I don't know, but what I can tell is, if you draw some really crazy curve, it doesn't sounds harsh, aliased or with digital artifacts, but like some equally crazy sound alternation you hear in wierd nature conditions. And that is good. Really good.

I can also imagine it could be amazing for fixing these responses on recorded material while mixing. When something sounds like from coffe cup, it could be pretty nicely cured by exactly that ramp I described at the beginning, just inverted.

It has bad sides of course, every plugin has. Firstly, for casual mixing, it could be bit of overkill. Especially when some slope shaping demands two filters to model (in vector-spline way). Secondly, few more curve handling functions would be nice. I can imagine shift of selected filters or free hand drawing whith automatic filter position solving. Point down for that, but just as a little cheeky motivational poke. :) On the other side this "whole reponse shifting" is feature I'd like to see in some other EQs. :)

All and all this is really a breath of fresh air. Amazing for experiments and in some specific situations it can really save your ass I guess, becouse classic EQs could be too solid for some tasks. Sound is pleasant and without a single problem. Not you'r bread and butter EQ and handling could be still a little bit improved, but really fresh little plug.

Me recomend really much! :)

Lo-fi processors seems to be simple devices, but it ain't right. Becouse they're basically donwgrading the signal, it's easy for them to make it unlistnable. It's interesting when you see one that is actually very musical. :)

Time Machine sounds musical and it's nicely featured also. All kind of bit reductions, samplerate reductions are available. Aliasing knobs are really fun!

Great feature is that highpass filter that stops your low signal from alering the effect too much.

I personally miss Jitter (Yeah, but really just becouse Deadmau5 said in one video it's important feature. :D) also low pass filter and dry/wet buttons could be handy, but If you're in Ableton, simple rack solves this problem right away so no hussle here.

All around great sounding and free, I recommend! :)