Product Reviews by KVR Members
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Sonik Synth
Reviewed By stogie21 [all]
January 12th, 2003
Version reviewed: 1.xx on Windows
For any person making up a budget on how much it will cost to have a DAW up a working, they should include the $250/$300 for sonic synth. Before you buy anything, except for your sequencer of course, you should buy sonic synth.
Where to begin. Well, the strings are amazing. The first time I heard the tremolo strings I couldn't believe how good they sounded. There is so much expression and such realism that will you never hear in any free soundfonts.
All the pianos sound so good as well. I could just play with the grity rhodes and wurlitzers for hours.
I really can't say enough about almost all the sounds ranging from ethnic to huge variety of pads and synths. The only sounds that are somewhat lacking are the brass instruments. The saxes sound good, but some of the trumpets are kind of thin. Brass instruments are pretty hard to play with a keyboard and/or program, so that doesn't help the situation. This is the only "weakness" I can see, but you get soooo many quality playable instruments that it really doesn't matter in the end.
About everyone on KVR knows how great squids is and how quick he is to answer your questions.
I could really caretheless about sampletank being red. Its a darn good interface and player for being free with sonic synth. It has crashed on me a few times in fruityloops, but these have been few and far between.
No other vsti or rompler or sampler gives you this variety of instantly usuable sounds. I can't imagine what I did without it...Read Review
Where to begin. Well, the strings are amazing. The first time I heard the tremolo strings I couldn't believe how good they sounded. There is so much expression and such realism that will you never hear in any free soundfonts.
All the pianos sound so good as well. I could just play with the grity rhodes and wurlitzers for hours.
I really can't say enough about almost all the sounds ranging from ethnic to huge variety of pads and synths. The only sounds that are somewhat lacking are the brass instruments. The saxes sound good, but some of the trumpets are kind of thin. Brass instruments are pretty hard to play with a keyboard and/or program, so that doesn't help the situation. This is the only "weakness" I can see, but you get soooo many quality playable instruments that it really doesn't matter in the end.
About everyone on KVR knows how great squids is and how quick he is to answer your questions.
I could really caretheless about sampletank being red. Its a darn good interface and player for being free with sonic synth. It has crashed on me a few times in fruityloops, but these have been few and far between.
No other vsti or rompler or sampler gives you this variety of instantly usuable sounds. I can't imagine what I did without it...Read Review
pHATmatik Pro
Reviewed By stogie21 [all]
November 27th, 2002
Version reviewed: 1.0 on Windows
This is the greatest tool I have ever used in working with beats. pHATmatik is truly an amazing tool. I played with the demo a lot and finally purchased it yesterday and love playing with it. I don't know if I can add much that hasn't been said before, so i'll try to just mention a few points. First, this program does not make you inherently lazy when it comes to programming drums. It really inspires me to tear up the loop and rearrange everything.
I love that you can pan individual slices in order to make the drumming sound more open and realistic. The asdr, pitch, filter, etc for each slice are also great. The universal effects are just icing on the cake in my opinion. I would pay $99 if all it had was the individual panning, amp, and filter feature.
The gui is very easy to navigate and just about one of the nicest ones I've seen. The easy export of a midi sequence and individual slices makes life very easy.
The only thing i would like too see added would be having the individual amp feature go to +6 db, but that's my only "complaint."Read Review
I love that you can pan individual slices in order to make the drumming sound more open and realistic. The asdr, pitch, filter, etc for each slice are also great. The universal effects are just icing on the cake in my opinion. I would pay $99 if all it had was the individual panning, amp, and filter feature.
The gui is very easy to navigate and just about one of the nicest ones I've seen. The easy export of a midi sequence and individual slices makes life very easy.
The only thing i would like too see added would be having the individual amp feature go to +6 db, but that's my only "complaint."Read Review
This synth has grown on me over time. I liked it very much when i first purchased then i went for about 3 or 4 months without using it. Now i've come back to it, and it is indeed a very nice synth. I don't really use it for bass or for leads; I use it mostly for "incidental" sounds. I love tweaking this thing. The filter is great and all the fx are very good.
The presets are kind of hit and miss in my opinion. The one thing i wish it had was adsr functionality. I seem to fairly regularly wish this when I'm playing with it.
In the end, this synth fulfills it role in my case, and was a very good purchase for the money...Read Review
The presets are kind of hit and miss in my opinion. The one thing i wish it had was adsr functionality. I seem to fairly regularly wish this when I'm playing with it.
In the end, this synth fulfills it role in my case, and was a very good purchase for the money...Read Review
In the beginning i was not too impressed with junglist, but once i got past the presets, this thing absolutely rocks. Once you start playing around and making your own sounds you can really tell why they call this thing the junglist, it just makes some sweet crazy sounds.
Of course you can make some great bass with this, but I love it for making some really awesome sweeps. Its perfect for my downtempo/ambient style. The best feature on the junglist in my opinion are the filters. The filters are the best I've heard on a softsynth.
I've got Pentagon 1 also, and junglist may not be able to make the same variety of sounds, but I think the junglist sounds fuller and richer.Read Review
Of course you can make some great bass with this, but I love it for making some really awesome sweeps. Its perfect for my downtempo/ambient style. The best feature on the junglist in my opinion are the filters. The filters are the best I've heard on a softsynth.
I've got Pentagon 1 also, and junglist may not be able to make the same variety of sounds, but I think the junglist sounds fuller and richer.Read Review
One of the best bargains out there. I probably would have bought it if I already did not get it free for buying the soundfont player at the last fruity update. The presets in the vsti are simply excellent. The user interface is very well layed out, and the edition of the para eq is really nice. Its great for piano, bells, kicks, knocks, and about anything else percussive.Read Review
Pentagon I
Reviewed By stogie21 [all]
January 29th, 2002
Version reviewed: 1.1 on Windows
Utterly amazing. This really opened up a whole other world in music making to me. Unbelievable tweakability with all the filter options just to mention a few things. Presets are quality, not just quantity. I had square 1 before and luckily they gave all square owners a chance to upgrade for $69. Sqaure 1 just doesn't cut it compared to pentagon 1.1. If you are thinking of getting square 1, don't bother. Get Pentagon 1.1Read Review
