Product Reviews by KVR Members

A relatively simple freeware synth with a real life and character of it's own. This freeware number can hold it's own around the supermodern VA's and new analog units coming out these days... and it won't let you down when it comes to bold analog-style sounds. The oscillators sound great detuned and the slew rate modulation going from triangle to sawtooth is always nice to have - I've no idea why this is such a rarity. Wheras PWM starts with a full spectrum and works a bit like a phased highpass filter as the pulse gets narrower, SRM starts with a full sawtooth and acts like a chalky, phased lowpass filter as the waveform approaches the triangle shape.

I kept wishing for more features, such as PWM on both oscillators, a wider detune range for wide octaved sounds, and the ability to have both envelope and LFO affect the filter. But I found creative ways around all of these problems. There are drawbacks, but that's part of the fun, I suppose.

Oscillator sync sounds very nice, as does the bandpass filter. In fact, the filter is very nice in general; It stays organic even in the high frequencies, which is usually where free VA's fail. It would be lovely to have a highpass in here, as well as a few extra odds and ends. But that doesn't detract from the vivid and lively sounds it produces, which don't need oversampling or effects to sound like something real. A must have for anyone into bread-and-butter analogue-style synthesis.

I'm working on a patch bank, also, because it's just one of those synths :)

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I've been approached about reviewing this synth, presumably because of my other numerous reviews on here. Will I gush as usual? ;) Synthmaster isn't something I particularly would have bought at the moment, seeing as I've spent a huge amount of money on my DAW setup recently and pretty much have everything I need and way more ;). However, if I were just starting out and needed a high value, high-quality way of covering pretty much the entire synthesis spectrum, I would probably go for Synthmaster.

First up the name tells us that Synthmaster pretty much does everything, and with additive, subtractive, vector and wave sequencing, unison (available both in the oscillator, or as a multiplying of the entire synth line including filters, with variable spread of pitch, filter cutoff, ect), AM, PM, PWM, FM, sync, audio input processing, and a healthy range of what are very high quality effects and MORE all available and combinable, I feel the name is justly deserved. This all works on a dual layer principle per patch, and each layer has two oscillators and two filters, all the ENVs and LFO modulation you could ever need, and even four modulation oscillators for each audio oscilllaor pair, meaning you can set up FM and similar functions without the fuss of connecting oscillators. All of these oscillators have all the waveshapes you could ask for, and you can bring in your own as single cycle waveforms or.SFZs!

I was disappointed to see little in the way of timbral morphing in the oscillators - PWM is for the square/pulse wave only, and the vector and wavetable oscillators are powered by crossfading, with no spectral morphing options between waveforms *(see note below). There are plenty of ways around this, as you have plenty of oscillator mangling power via the modulation oscillators, but I am a fan of being able to "animate" an oscillator right off the bat, before the modulation magic happens. Other than this, the oscillators have every single parameter you'd possibly need, and you won't go wanting in that regard. Particularly nice is ability to dampen high frequencies with an LPF before you've even got to the filter, and add pitch "slop" without having to set up a random LFO.

Tone quality of the oscillators is very present and well balanced across the spectrum, with the only real aliasing happening right at the very top of the range, in ultra-treble pitches. Clearly this isn't a problem as nobody creates riffs at stupidly high pitches such as these. This brings us on to the filters.

Each oscillator gets two filters, and they're some of the most well spec'ed and complete filtering solutions I've seen! Analogue-style (Moog ladder emulation) and digital-style (razor accurate) filtering is available in almost every filter mode you've heard of, you can change filter slopes smoothly, morph between filter modes, set up double "two in one" filters for dual-peak sounds and super complex filter profiles... Then there's drive and distortion, which can be customised with a designable transfer curve and placed before, after, or IN(!?) the filter. The latter tends to produce extreme sounds which are very interesting to me, and this is a very esoteric and desirable option to have!

The filters sound great - among the best you'll hear. My only gripe is that I couldn't find a way to do filter FM, but I'm pointing this out as a way of saying, this is pretty much the only hole in an otherwise perfect set of filters. And with all the other audio rate mangling going on in the oscillators, it's no biggie. The analogue filters in particular have a pleasing "life" to them, without going overboard in instability. The way the resonance backs off near the fundamental, avoiding those horrible "eoowwwWHUMP"s you get in simpler filters makes me happy. It's tedious callibrating filtersweep ranges so the rez doesn't crash into the first harmonics, so it's good to see this taken care of. Combined with the snappy and flexible envelopes and built in configurable overdrive/fuzz of the filters, a wide range of filter sounds from punchy to fizzley, clean to ripped open, are possible at the filter section. The ground these filters cover is simply huge! The distortions are musically useful, and quite inspiring in themselves, as well!

I'm not going to dissect every parameter in the synth, but rest assured, every other part of it is oozing the same quality and configurability. Overall the end result is a very professional sound which is versatile and dependable enough at extreme settings to be your only synth.

Visually, Synthmaster looks sleek and sexy. WYSIWYG displays for waveforms, filter profiles, envelopes and 2D envelopes, etc, are everywhere, laid out in a common-sensical way. Being new to the synth I found it all a bit overwhelming at first, since there are lots of pages and options crammed into each page, but I can easily imagine how the logical layout would soon become second nature. The modulation matrix felt a bit clunky with it's drop down menu leading off into a maze of options, but it is organized as well as it could be, and it's hardly it's fault - there are TONS of parameters on offer, and these seem to be growing as the synth is in active development with users playing an important part in that development. As far as I can see, pretty much every parameter can be modulated or automated, an impressive feat! To greatly tame this little modulation menu maze, matrix slots can actually be sorted via a few different ways - a very cool idea to add to the workflow streamlining. I also loved the option to switch each LFO between uni- and bi-polar, this makes, for example, pitch trills easier to set up.

In a funny way, Synthmaster could be Zebra's sister in a parallel universe. It covers the same huge ground, wide parameter range, and confident sound, yet operates on a completely different philosophy both in terms of workflow and sound. In this regard, I somewhat prefer, and am more used to Zebra's approach, but I can't dock points for this, because it's a matter of taste. Synthmaster and Zebra play in the same league, but play somewhat different games. If you didn't get on well with Zebra but was wooed by it's power, I'd especially recommend this behemonth of a synth!

This is one of the most powerful and versatile multi-purpose non-modular softsynths available, and for the asking price, it's a steal! If I didn't already have a ridiculous amount of synths in my VSTi folder, I would have bought this a while ago by now. Despite this, I can easily imagine Synthmaster working it's way into my production process, in part due to those lovely filters, and the possibility of using samples as oscillators.

* - EDIT: As of reading the review the developer is looking into ways to impliment some kind of timbral morphing and/or modulation at the oscillator level.

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WARNING: FAN REVIEW AHEAD

I used to underuse reverb until I heard the demo of this plugin. My reasons were that usually, I couldn't get 'musical results' or I was fearful of muddying up my mixes.

V-Room combats these symptoms by having a sound which seems to caress both your ears, and the dry source sound, whilst having enough controls to be simple to use, yet capable of anything from realistic ambiences, to pulsating walls of transparent sound, where time seems to stand still.

The modulation can be downright hypnotic. It's soothing and relaxing, and draws you into the soundfield, without ever sounding synthetic or obvious. As such V-Room is capable of chorus duties with minimal reverb times, and outperforms most chorus units in terms of sheer results.

V-Room is one of the few effect plugins that I would say feels like a musical instrument in-and-of it's-self. Parameters are easy to adjust smoothly in realtime, and you WILL play with the reverb depth, size, length, etc, while it runs, without the slightest hiccup.

I don't know how many algorythms this thing will finally have, but the latest addition, sulaco, is one of my favourites. It's mellow and 'woody'. Given the number of different reverb types, and just the right amount of parameters (which are common to each type), a lot of tweaking is possible. But if that's not your thing, there are an adequate amount of well chosen presets to get you where you need to be.

Resizable GUI is a big plus (good for freaking people out by suddenly exanding it while they're looking at it) and it's always plain to read and easy to tweak. Some may not like it's simple looks, but I don't mind them.Read Review

After buying the Mono/Poly, I was determined I wouldn't need this apparent simpleton. On paper, it's hardly even a cut down version of the Mono/Poly, with it's single oscillator, basic modulation and simple FX.

The thing is, this just has to be one of the smoothest, silkiest single oscillator synth I've ever heard. There's only one filter, but it's a filter you can never tire of. Sweeping it is like running your hand over smoothest silk. It sounds lovely over the full spectrum, and particularly in the low registers it just glows, which makes it ideal for those dark rich basses.

In fact, the colour of the interface is perfectly matched to the spirit of this synth, deep, dark, rich. It also helps that I'm a sucker for indigo/purple. If you're looking for harsh or saturated tones, you could try feeding the Polysix to a distortion effect, but it's not a strong point as it stands.

And I don't know how they do it, but the Korg synths all seem to have unison options which just sparkle and fill out the spectrum without the typical mud which is so commonplace in VST unison land.

From a pure sound design point of view, this synth doesn't do much, but every move it makes is pure gold. I just love it! The combination of sharp, simple, single Osc sounds and the organic and warm nature of the sound quality makes it a valuable asset.Read Review

Interesting instrument this one... I like G-sonique's sound. They're doing something right. I like their Twisthead ampsim for adding colouration, and if you've tried Alien303 you'll know they do a convincing warm analogue-style saturation.

This is a nice, cheap synth. The quality/price ratio is high. The oscillators can run several algos, some of which are digital and gritty (aliasville), others try to be more smooth (analogue) and do an OK job at it. There's a nice pick of waveforms, including some unusual types like rectified sine, but your variable pulse is the only "moving" waveform, and with no ring, sync, or symmetry powers over the waves, we're basically stacking, mixing and detuning here.

My biggest gripe with the oscillators is a lack of semitone tuning. We can set the octave, and we can detune. We can even set the starting phase (or initial PW for everybody's favourite, the pulse) but can we make fifth or fourth interval stack pads? No. That's a shame.

There are filters, two in number. One is multimode, the other is a less flexible lowpass. The filters and following saturation stage are where this instrument shines. They're just warm and pleasant. I appreciate the differences between the different algorhytms you can choose, beyond simply selecting low/band/high-pass, and I particularly like the "G" filters, I suppose it's... a "G" thing... *shrug*... The envelopes are reasonably snappy too, so there's lots of potential for moogey sounds which will no doubt cause much funking out at the keyboard.

Beyond the filter envelope, the other modulation option is a rather wimpy LFO, which doesn't go very fast (it's so slow they should call it a VLFO), but has a row of knobs for assigning modulation off to different parts of the synth. Sadly these only run positive, so we can't have, for example, one osc detuning up while the other detunes down. Modulating the filters can only be done as a pair on the whole, so while the two filters are flexible, getting the more wacky mods out of them is tricky. Mild is the word of the day for the modulation on this synth.

Finally there's the effects. The saturation is *lovely* and works with the filter resonance like a dream. This is the reason you use this synth. The chorus does a very good job also, and the delay sounds good to me. Once again, amp envelope is snappy like the filter one.

So there we have it. I'm a lover of abstract sounds, but there are none to be had here. However, not every sound in a mix can afford to be a stack of freaking out serial pulse/sine waves being phase modulated by eachother under control of a variable shape LFO who'se speed depends on the velocity. Sometimes you just want nice and convincing bread and butter sounds, and not only is Renegade cheap and capable of these with aplomb, but it's also VERY good with polyphony, and fares very well on my aging computer with pad parts and long amp envelopes.

Good job, G-sonique!Read Review

Sounds pretty much like a C-64 that's been thrown down several flights of stairs and stomped on, and that's why I love it! The waveforms at it's disposal are all gnarly polypulses and otherwise jagged curves. Some of the waveforms are a sample of several cycles, producing a glitchy rattling effect in the higher registers. In fact, this synth makes so many flavours of broken circuit-bent noise, that it's come to be one of my favourites for lo-fi!

Three oscillators with a large selection of unhealthy waveforms, ring and sync, a very cool resonant lowpass, an amp and filter/pitch envelope, and two LFO's are at your disposal. Modulation possibilities are not infinite, and you'll find things you can't do, but that's all part of the game. It's about what you CAN do, and how gnarled and ripped you can make it sound :)

Of special note to me is the oscillator sync option, which is interesting in that it seems to sync according to the zero-crossings of the master, not just once per cycle. This means that the master, as well as the slave, will have an effect on the resultant timbre.

After the main synth section several options are present to further humiliate the sound. Bitrate reduction is on offer in a few flavours, as is a long menu of 'dirt' modifiers for the waveform, which are all subtly different and consist of such wonders as saturation, wave rectification, clipping, and forcing the waveform onto a landmine. Ok, I just made that up, but certainly you can expect injury to occurr here if need be, and often you'll end up with a signal containing DC-offset. You might want to have a highpass filter on standby.

Furthermore there's a pitch destabilizer with variable speed and offset, which can produce analogue style drift or wretched buzzing, and my favourite, the 'messy contacts' emulation section. This can be mixed in gradually and produces a variety of effects from red noise to a pulsating shadow underneath the sound, to almost slapback room type effects. It's both dirty and dimensional at the same time, and can really give sounds a unique and interesting character, and used subtly, it will just add some randomness to the waveform which is very welcome.

If you use circuit-bent, glitchy, broken sounding synth tones, I'm sure you'll love this synth. There's a huge range of tones from straight to completely %#~£ed and a unique quality I've not heard anywhere else. It's also 'dirt' cheap! Ha!Read Review

Upon brief usage of ShortCircuit it becomes pretty obvious where the inspiration for the name came from. It's whole philosophy is geared towards the shortest route to being creative with samples. This is in stark contrast to the typical sample-players geared up to play back huge multisampled librarys we see today.

You see, back in MY hardware-sampler-owning days, samplers were these weird blocks of plastic and metal which people fed sounds into and did crazy s--t with. Sure, there were libraries (am I even spelling that right?), but they were an option among many choices. The sampler was a way of directly manipulating sounds and chopping, filtering, and distorting them into music with the aid of a sequencer.

THIS is what the freeware ShortCircuit is about! And that's a glorious thing. Take your samples, chuck them in, maybe set up some keysplits and crossfades, and from there-on in, we're in the familiar and wonderful world of creative synthesis. Of course, SC is said to respond to multisamples well, and will automagically map them where possible, not to mention chop up breakbeats and map them on command, but I've never tried it. I get this weird kick out of chopping up waveforms myself. Not sure why). Mainly I'm using it for breakbeats and oddball single shot samples.

Recently I've been using it to trawl through 70MB-worth of classic Amiga samples. They're 8-bit and sampled at a low rate due to the days of half-megabyte memory limitations, and so need to be pitched down in modern samplers. Thankfully, SC lets you audition samples within the context of your current patch, so once I had the parameters set, I was free to trawl through the mountain of samples with the cursor keys, with my other hand on the keyboard playing riffs from 90's computer games. This is also useful because you can audition samples with the envelopes and filtering you have set up, which aids the creative process of finding just the right sample for your arrangement.

Sound quality is impeccable. It really is. The effects use oversampling when needed, and apparently the sample playback engine uses some fancy maths... Personally sound quality isn't that important to me (a bit of grunge is always welcome as samples are not there to be 'real' in my world), but it's very much appreciated as another creative option which is there when it needs to be. And when it's not, there are myriad ways to dirty up the sound.

That pretty much sums ShortCircuit up. The fancy stuff is there, waiting like a well-spoken, skilled servant until it's needed. "Can I help you with that multisample, madam?" "Would you like a crossfade loop on that, or would sir prefer a spot of ping-pong?"

As stated in the tech blurb, you get two 'filters' (which can also be effects) in addition to the envelopes, slew generators, envelope follower, etc, and a 12-slot modulation matrix which can do things which would put a fully expanded Akai S3000XL in the asylum ("You're not a real sampler! You're just software! Look at me! I'm REAL! REAL DAMMIT!"). As well as controling filter cutoff and the usual synth fare, you can modulate the sample start and end points, loop points and length, envelope levels AND shapes, effect levels...

In otherwords, everything, basically. Because this is what sampling should be about. Doing creative manipulations on sound recordings. There are no flashy timestretch algos, no formant preservation, no.... um... whatever cutting edge widget is in the latest version of Kontakt... just good old-fashioned sampling fun :)Read Review

One of the essential giveaways of 2011! If you've read my gushing review of Zebra 2.5 you'll be aware of my awe and respect for U-he products, not to mention my love of the Zebra oscillators, which are pretty much fully fledged unique and versatile synths in their own right.

Zebralette is one oscillator, a couple of LFO's and envelopes (including one multi-segment, freely designable envelope capable of looping). ONE oscillator which can sound like 16, 20, 42 but forget supersaws and the like, in here we have huge tone clusters that can actually move in interesting ways, not just quantity for the hell of it.

In essence you have a freely drawable 16 wavetable morphing oscillator, capable of morphing between waveforms to create exotic and unheard of PWM and filtering effects, or crossfading smoothly for some PPG-style love. 16 waves per table may not *sound* like much, but like the best wavetable implimentations, they are essentially 'key frames' which are interpolated between to create a sweep consisting of what must be hundreds of infinitely variable waveforms. I kid ye not.

If that wasn't mind-blowing enough, you have an option of four different schemes to construct your waveforms, including freehand drawing, beizer curves and lines to build the waveform, and additive graphs allowing you to spray sinewaves all over the place like they're going out of fashion. What I like about this wavetable implimentation is that you can explicitly specify not just what will morph into what, but *how*. This is a serious boon to all sound designers and wave-freaks out there :)

You'll notice a lack of resonant filters, but instead of a gaping hole where they should be, the space is filled with two spectral FX slots capable of throwing your harmonics around in ways that can make a resonant filter seem somewhat boring. These spectral effects include phase distortion (several sine-bending varieties, and the CZ-style 'resonance'), spectral brickwall filters (highpass, lowpass, band stop and pass), spectral gates/boosters, spectral unison, phasing, geometric mangling such as PWM/wave symmetry shifting, wave wrapping (a sort of cross between FM and sync), fractal sync (the synched waveform is included in succesive repeats), and a shedload of others. These are all per-voice and modulatable, and with adjustable resolution (which controls how frequently they are updated).

On top of that we have a standard oscillator control section, featuring phase control, antiphase mixing (for another flavour of PWM), oscillator self-sync (yes, several simultaneous ways of making sync and PWM - stack them and see what happens!), unison up to 11 voices... everything you'd find on the finest 'normal' oscillator.

If by now you aren't salivating and already downloading this plugin, I suspect you aren't really a synthesist at heart. While many have found Zebra 2.5 slightly overwhelming with it's myriad multimode modules and ways to connect them, Zebralette is a good way to get the Zebra sound and creativity into your music, without paying a penny and needing a degree in audio geekery. And if you're wondering about sound quality, just try something: Create the most gnarled waveform you can, add a sync sweep and some FM or other dangerous technique, and play around the high end of the keyboard, using plenty of pitch bend. Do you hear any aliasing or loss of definition?

Ok, why are you still reading this? GO! Install this plugin and let your inner explorer into this universe of sonic possibilities!Read Review

The Roland TB-303, what a simple instrument... Just take a sawtooth or square wave, run it through a resonant 18 or 24 db/oct lowpass filter modulated by a decay envelope, throw in some accents and portamento, and there you have it, BAM! right?

It's only by listening to the evolution of the software 303, that I've come to realize how complex and 'alive' the sound of a 303 really is. Like an accoustic, or a well programmed and featured synthesizer, there are subtle movements in the sound, and proportions that change beyond simple filter modulations.

Love it or hate it, to see a 303 as simply a waveform going through a filter is to miss the point. And that point has not been missed by Audiorealism, makers of what must be the most accurate softsynth 303 in the world today. The sound spawned countless genres and contextualizations precicely because this subtle complexity creates a sound which is compelling because it sounds alive, tangible, like a physical process.

Having played with a real silver squidgebox a long time ago, there are very few simulations that take me back to that insta-grin moment I cranked the resonance and let the acid flow. Audiorealism ABL 2 nails all of the subtleties almost squarely on the head. The way the accents bob up and down slightly, as if on the surface of a liquid; the way the main body/character of the sound changes, and not just the cutoff point, when you up the resonance; the clear, wide variation of sound, from peircing high-pitched resonant bubbles to dark, chunky rubber... need I go on?

ABL even affords you the luxury of adjusting the internal pots of your simulated 303, allowing you to supercharge or tone down the sound to fit the flavour of your current project. You can make the cutoff range go out the top of human hearing, choose between overdriven filters, or pure liquid sinewave resonance, and even simulate flaws such as the VCA clicks which occurred on every sequencer step.

One feature I really appreciate is the resonance gain compensation. In a ladder filter, turning up the resonance causes a drop in volume of overall sound, as more energy is directed into the peak and none is added. This makes extreme tweaking cumbersome in realtime, and requires either distortion or a compressor to level things out - which may not be desired. Resonance gain compensation gets around this simply by causing the oscillator volume to increase, in proportion to your resonance. Simple, but SO effective, and a welcome break from 'warts and all' authenticity :)

Many software 303's sound amazing put through a suitable distortion, but what floors me with ABL is that despite having built in distortion, it sounds amazing totally naked! Warm and authentic are words that spring to mind. Subtle distortions such as simulated filter overdrive, and the internal clipping that is caused when the volume knob exceeds 75%, create an output signal almost indistunguishable from the real deal.

I like the new GUI. It's bold and iconic without being overly nostalgic, but the option is there to skin if so desired. Features such as pattern randomization, sequencer swing, and an audio detection routine to detect the notes from a source loop, round out an amazing acid experience!

I am not an acid purist, nor am I a pure acid-head. I just consider the 303 an invaluable tool in creating electronic music, and something with instant appeal, sort of like electronic music's version of the electric guitar. ABL is the best emulation out there at the moment, and in A/B tests I, along with most other people, can't tell the difference. Whether you think this justifies the price tag is up to you, obviously...

... After all, a 303 is just a basic waveform through a resonant filter, right? ;)Read Review

What originally started as a search to find the best sounding bitcrush/samplerate reduction solution, turned into me stumpling upon this little gem. Fell in love with the demo almost instantly, after feeding it several drumloops, 303's, chipsound riffs and basic synthesizer waves. Although I started by flicking thru the presets, within a couple of minutes I'd strayed from the beaten track and was tweaking away, moving from section to section and getting a feel of the range and quality of sounds this can do.

I'm very much into the lo-fi sound, I grew up with the crunch of both the Amiga computer's 8 bit sample-based sound system, and the 12-bit crunch of the Akai S950, tapes and record players. These systems are all flawed in a way the modern DAW is not, and recreating some of this old crusty, dusty magic is something I haven't seen an application for in the VST world so far, until now.

Because Sonitex is a collection of effects in one suite, it provides a holistic approach to adding depth and texture through imperfections. Because everything is so interlinked and many of the effects are dynamic or have the ability to change over time subtly in various ways, a true 'mulching' effect is possible, rather than simply 'filtering' or 'degrading' the sound. You can whip it up into creamy peaks or bring out certain characters of the sound in a way that working with single effects can't achieve. A freely assignable LFO and envelope follower is there to modulate virtually any parameters in any combinations, furthering the possibilities for creative, breathing effects. Furthermore, there are filters and gain stages EVERYWHERE, and because of the following effect stages, they can have a big impact on the timbral effect of the plugin.

Just about every effect required in lo-fi duties is provided, and there's no need for me to list them. I will say, however, that I frequently found myself creating effects far beyond simple muffling, noising and distorting! Mixtures of distorted flanging, enveloped or triggered-LFO filter sweeps, pitch instabilities, weird splatterings, formant effects, dymanic rhythmic effects, phasing, and generally exotic colouration jumped out at me, all with a delicious, crusty, musical character. Of particular note is the bit-crushing section (called "Sampling") which has a LOT of options to grain up and generally smash your pristine audio - one particular setting for the sample reducer is quite unlike anything I've ever heard on any effect section of this genre. This is gourmet filth, alright!

The creator has described his aims for this as both a sonic texturing plugin (hence Soni-tex, just call me Sherlock) and as a toolkit and playground (or laboratory) for lovers of the impure to cook up their own recipies for degrading, colouration and impact sweetening. In this I'd say he's succeeded triumphantly!

The last point I'd like to bring up is the GUI. It's just brilliant to look at, and to use. The little lights around the dials which show modulation, the 'traveller' style bandlimiting filter screen, the easy on/off switches for every section and some sub-sections, and the quick section-specific preset buttons all add up to making this a dream to operate.

No, this will not make you sound like a 70's rare groove band with the turn of a knob, as some might be hoping. It is simply a box of very well calibrated, musical-sounding tools. Apply imagination and talent as per requirements.Read Review