Product Reviews by KVR Members

My Daily workstation for Bread and Butter sounds. Just love it.

Pro:

• Low on CPU resources.
• Good Organs, great Leslie.
• Great Brass.
• Wonderfull pads ands synths.

Con:

• Could use some sound upgrade.
• Bad acoustic piano's.
• Missing variaty of bread and butter sounds.
• low res editor with small buttons <>
• Very limited editing capability.

AIR, please update this plugin to 2024 norms ! Resizable and better GUI. Better presets folder location.

kv331audio promises it will deliver for version 3.0 a sample editor, wavetable editor and tons of acoustic content. This synth will be killer.

I got the synth for more than a year but just started working with it since i discovered it has sample and sfz import. I like the arp section and that it's CPU lightweight. Getting to like it allot.

What can improve the synth even more?

presets:
- a preset compare function (save in a temp when using SHIFT on the save button?)
- preset save without dialog (check the Pianoteq Preset save function, it's super)
- preset recall for a whole set on the FX (see avenger)
- more predefined preset settings, arp and fx. (also sync onine?)
- next/prev preset possibility to assign a cc to it
- put the 8 presets macros on top all the time !
- open the prest browser when left clicking the preset name (right click stays the same)

Layers:
- 8 layers with mute/solo buttons
- keyboard zones
- audio level meters ! (also signal flow meters on the OSC/filters/ADSR

OSC:
- drum specific OSC with 1 octave where you can add your single shot samples

samples:
- gain level on the osc (samples)
- a simple sample editor will be most welcome. (attack, end, loop, x-fade)

I'd love to see SM as a complete workstation, with keysplit, zones, drums, so we can create 1 key presets.

pitty that this meter isn't available anymore, it's the only one offering all the great tools in a copact way.

My only go to synth.

And I've tried many, because I'm very demanding to find all I need in 1 synth for live use. But only Avenger can please me up to now. I use it as my solo live synth running in my DAW on stage. It's demanding but I've found a way to get it running pretty smooth. Besides it's the only synth that has a next/prev preset assignment (thank you devs !;-) Very handy when you want to load the next preset in your DAW, because like most synths, you can't pc a preset/bank anymore.

It sounds like a monster, can distort multiple ways, has huge filters and effects, lot's of synthesis, .. in 1 word I love it.

Why I choose Avenger?

• It has 8 OSC (eight!) and you can even add multi samples under 1 osc+sub and voicing in the osc.
• Has many synthesis on board, also a nice basic sampler per osc.
• It has arp on board, step seq, mod env, ...
• A drum seq and full drumkits.
• Full modulation possibility, everything you see can be assigned to everything .
• Great effects in chains or as send, ...
• Comes with a huge library of professional presets and the devs are working all the time on new expansions. Mainly it's dance oriented, but you can go several ways with this synth, even importing (basic) multi samples...

Sound Quality: Just perfect, what more could you wish? A ton of fx, waveforms, drum samples, drum patterns, arps, ... to choose from plus many filters.

UI: Consider it the Nord of usability. All knobs in your reach, use rightclick or shift for more functions, ... and very nice skinable. I already made several skins for it. It's not easy to put all the functions into one interface, but somehow they managed it. Some things could be better and I'm still demanding those tweaks to the devs, ... Hoping one day they will make this great synth even better.

Synthesis and functions: Almost unliimited, you can assign everything to everything. And the developers are working on even more functions and synthesis every month (it's version 1.3.6 already since 7/2016.

CPU: It's quite demanding but works perfectly for many instances on a modern music PC via Wasapi (I hear Mac is the same). Although there is an optimisation problem with ASIO (I get pretty fast some cracks on my MOTU mk4 at 128 smpls).

Price: A fair price for such a great product. The expansions are rather expensive, but worth the money and very well programmed into the detail.

Support: The dev Rene is always ready to answer your questions or fix any problems. And sound dev Manuel is every day online here at KVR forum for your prayers...

Conclusion: The intrest is growing very fast in this synth as it's still kinda new under the soft flagships. It's not perfect. It has flaws, but I believe in the product and the dev team is very helpful and responsive. They even help me solve issues I have with live situations for the synth. Which is quite unique (sorry for the nagging Rene and Manuel;-)).

I see this synth rising the coming years, next to other big boys as Serum, Falcon, Omnisphere, ...

Keep on improving the product .

New Review:

I finally switched and upgraded to Cantabile 3 and can say that I'm very happy .

This software is a blessing for performing Windows musicians.

Pro:

• The software is very stable.
• Very reliable.
• Loads and switches very fast. Can preload the setlist with all the plugins. Switching is a matter of seconds.
• Very low latency.
• There's an enormous user community, very helpful and mature, the developer is always and I emphase ALWAYS there if you have some issues, ...
• Everything is MIDI assignable.
• Good playlist manager (separate text files you can edit, so crash proof).
• Song structure is very well written: You have Playlist > Songs > States (=parts in the song, f.e. verse, chorus, etc.).
• Engine is stable and written by a musician, so he knows the problems on stage and has workarounds for it. f.e. the audio ports are linkable in the options, this way you can easy change your soundcard without reassigning all the settings. Racks are plugins structures you can link and reuse in songs, loads faster.
  Also, there's a Background Rack, here you can add your basic settings for the whole show.
• Built in Mediaplayer .
• Built in Notes viewer.

What more can a musician ask?

Sure, it's not as sexy as Mainstage or other hosts, but it's very powerful once you get past the aesthetics.

Switching to C3 is the best thing I ever did, finally a decent Windows VST Host .

Sven.

YES YES YES .

I successfully tried it out all night and it works like a charm !
Simple and fast program that does what it should, what more could you wish for?
For 9$ in basic version (4 channels), it's a no-brainer ! The full version at 50$ still is low cost, compared to other Live Host.

It's mainly setup as a mixing console, so it doesn't take hours of study to get working with it.
There are several versions of it, for Guitarist, Bass, Keys. except the keys, they are more fx oriented, because there's an online preset sharing function.

What I like about Intone (Keys):

• Simple interface, yet very functional and lightweight, you can get hand on directly, where in the other live hosts I had to go through the manual.
• Chaining and inserting effects is so simple ! Plus it comes with a standard set of hi quality FX (guitar and matrix version have an extensive set).
• Low CPU and RAM consuming ! Fast startup and stable, no crashes yet ! (on low-end laptop W7 x64 2GB ram).
• The direct way of selecting programs (via entering the program # on the keypad > enter, or with the arrow keys > enter. It's great it lets you pre-select the program in live situations! (See my wishlist regarding this funcion below.).
• The plugins are instantly loaded when selecting a program, almost no waiting for small setups! (here also, a better plugin organiser is needed).
• I like the way the plugins are loaded, choose if you want to display a plugin and it remembers the layout of the program.
• The controller assignment work great and easy .
• I like the online program sharing function for guitarist ! This way it's sort of FX setup rack for guitarist.
• Smart idea to have different versions of the same product (guitar, bass, keys, matrix).
• Play a list of MP3, record your gig .
• The program files are made in XML, so you can edit them easily (via XML editor or notapad) yourselves. Be sure to make backups, because when the pogram crashes when shutting down, it writes to the XML and it gets corrupted.

###################################.

Although the software is great, I do have a WISHLIST (for Santa) ;-).

The program selector:

• Select the programs by typing the first letters of a word (pia..no for example).
• Program categories .
• Larger font of the program display and programs list (easier access to it also for live uses, 1 key stroke to open the list with category and search function). Why not make it user configrable? Choose the hight of font (and background color?).
• A better program organiser would be handy, that's a much wanted feature ! I think you have to dig into the XML file of the bank now to order things? I'm not looking forward to manage my programs afterwards ;-).

Playlist function:

• Add a sortable Playlist function where you can order your programs for a gig .

UPDATE: I got a reply from Audiffex, it appaers to be there in the Mac version ! :-).

Plugins:

• A simple plugins manager, with thumbnails and search/category function.
• Load the name of all the (once loaded) plugins presets in a database, so you can easily find that preset that you were looking for in between the 10.000 of presets (I have 9000 from Synth1 loaded LOL).

I give it a 10/10 ! It's almost all what I wished for.
I'm so happy I found this software after weeks of struggling with other Live Hosts, believe me, I have looked at them all and tried some of them. I don't understand why this gem stays under the radar???

Cant wait to take it live after I have finished programming my sounds .

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UPDATE, BUGS REPORT on PC:

After some months of live use, I can now come back and nuance my report.

Here is a list with the bugs in the program for PC. It appears that the Mac version is working OK, but the PC version has lots of bugs to deal. I contacted support and got very friendly and helpfull reply, but no fix so far, I'm hoping version 2 will bring solutions.

1. The playlist editor: Doesn't work on PC. Very annoying, and this makes the program a big minus. Since you cannot delete any made programs or rearrange. Forget even seting up playlist for live shows. This needs to be fixed in priority.

2. Keypad: Selecting program numbers can only be done with the keypad, so on a laptop with no keypad, this function is unavailable, so very missing on stage to switch instant between programs. I'm thinking of buying a second usb keypad, just to control this program .

3. Always on top for the main panel would be interesting, as it looses focus sometimes with other panels, so you cannot select instantly a new program and you need the mouse for input.

4. I'm not sure if it's Intone, but it could be more stable. To many times the program locks live on stage (dual core CPU 4GB RAM x64 W7), it could be due to the plugins maybe, I'm using mainly Synth1. It seems to happen after an hour or so. So better to restart it in between live sets. (that's fast luckely)

5. The MIDI channel problem with windows can be fixed by setting to ALL CHANNELS. It's a known problem, windows changes the MIDI channels IDs all the time.
It's pitty, because MIDI learn cannot be used with many VSTs, they often use a fixed channel, not ALL.

I contacted support and am looking forard for solutions. This is a good product, when the bugs are solved .