Product Reviews by KVR Members

Etheric Fields.

This intriguing free program makes dense, complex, slowly evolving soundscapes, no two quite the same. Many are beautiful, some are disturbing, others unnerving.

Unfortunately, this innovative program appeared just about Black Friday, so everybody's mind was focused elsewhere. And still is.

OK, but let's not let Etheric Fields slip under the radar! Especially since it's creator is Boris Kovalev, well-known for thinking outside the box. You may still be making creative use of some of his earlier metamusic generative tools, such as Ambitron, Spheres, PsyBOX and PsyGEN. Absolutely nothing else is quite like them.

What would you do with Etheric Fields, exactly? Well, besides enjoying it as music to relax or study by, Etheric Fields could be very useful creatively, collaborating, for instance, with resonator effects such as Tritik's Moodal and 2CAudio's Kaleidoscope, or integrating within Inear Display and Glitchmachines effects chains. Explore its complex audio webs in detail a hundred times slower with PaulStretch. Possibilities are endless!

Etheric Fields is very good news, indeed.

Confiblahuter
Spectral Mangler Mono Synth
by mistakeartists.

This is a very useful and user-friendly sound-design tool. Its interface is very intuitively laid out, so just by testing its features with a few different samples, you can quickly learn how to use it.

Apart from its being able to slow down sounds extremely, I find Confiblahuter quite different in aim and approach from Paul-stretch. Neither tool sets out to do what the other specializes in.

Details: Confiblahuter comes in both stand-alone and vst3 formats.

From the first screen of four, accessible by buttons at the top left, you can load in samples. You can adjust the sample area you want to listen to by sliders, which also are available to control input / output levels, mix and pan, side-chain synthesis, pitch and in, main in / out, pitch bend, MIDI controllers. As well, there are buttons for enabling old-note, reverse, jump to loop, and note continuance. If you like what you hear, once you have made all your fine-tuning choices, you can live-record output to a file.

A second screen is dedicated to filter controls: Two sliders control mix levels of two free form filters, For either, you can draw your own filter shapes according to the real time spectral display and grid. As well, three curve types are available, with a reset button, also two sliders to adjust smoothness and curvature as minutely as desired.

The Settings screen provides sliders for FFT options (size, overlaps, window type and mode), amplitude scale, pitch bend depth and tuning. There are handy check boxes for correct phase, smooth phase and normalize.

The final screen is dedicated to the modulation possibilities of the synth: Four LFOs with dedicated wave shapes, also a whole range of different types for type 4, which has buttons for sync and reset. A very comprehensive modulation matrix is available, as well as one for assigning MIDI controllers.

In getting familiarized using this spectral mangling synth, after fifteen minutes or so, I found myself getting rather nice results - detailed ambient textures, from unexpected "noise" samples. In a way, the synth can function as a sound microscope, as well, helping bring out the hidden potential in everyday sounds. In my experience, it's a sound-design tool well-worth owning.

And for $10 USD, it's a bargain.

Aurora FM by Audio Nebula
http://www.audionebula.ca.

I nearly let this stunning synth slip under the radar. What a mistake that would have been.

Since I already had Dexed, I thought, "Who needs another DX7 emulator?" Recently, I took another look at Aurora FM, not expecting much in the way of surprises. Now that I've been getting to see and hear for myself what it can do, Aurora FM frankly has become my go-to synth for FM.

What did I discover? The user interface is brilliant. All controls are conveniently laid out before you on a single screen. This synth is all about you, the sound designer, and you, the player: efficient mouse-interaction, instant, meaningful visual feedback. With Aurora FM, it's easy to make live corrections on the fly, to think by ear.

Another shock: this synth is completely about FM, 21st century FM. It's about FM synthesis inspired by modern modulation synth legends like the Alesis Ion and Waldorf Q. So, when Aurora FM is able to load and translate Yamaha DX7/DX21/DX27/DX100/TX81Z/DX11 patches, it's not to emulate or recreate ancient history, but to use them as a starting point to going light years further via today's technology and programming.

Besides, nothing is off the shelf about Aurora FM. It is a very high-resolution, precision musical instrument. In fact, In the short time I've been using this synth, I've come across a whole FM world of beautiful new sound combinations that simply wouldn't have been possible in the mid 1980s. For example, how amazingly musical and fresh the many included micro-tonal scales sound in Aurora's sample precise FM colors.

PRO:
Rewarding to play, intuitive to program.

Currently with the introductory price of $14 US [$17 CAD].

CON:
The introductory exceedingly low price might cause some musicians mistakenly to under-value this fine synth.