Product Reviews by KVR Members

Full disclosure: Soundyan gave me a free license key of Interstellar Waterphone to test and make a review of it.

Review done with Logic X (AU) under High Sierra using the 1.2 version of IW.
From the web site: "There is no 32-bit version yet. Only 64-bit at the moment.
MacOS version is for both x86 and ARM processors.".
Windows version also available.
System requirements: 64-bit Windows 7 or higher, Windows 10 is recommended.

Simple installation/authorization process (email + key).
Soundyan offers online and offline registration if your main computer doesn't have access to Internet.

Downloaded installer file is 974.1 MB.
I would have preferred the option to install the needed audio sample files to an external disk, but there's no way doing it yet.

Controls available to sculpt your sounds.
The amp envelope (ADSR), the Start Offset and two filters, currently a low cut + low pass ones.

Sound.

Interstellar Waterphone is quite a niche instrument.
It comes with what Soundyan called sound banks.
There's six ones named "Interstellar Water", "Dry Space", "Dark Chimes, "Light Path", "Full Proximity", and "Slow Voltage".
From the web site: "The waterphone sounds have been recorded using different Interstellar Waterphone instruments made exclusively by waterphone.pl".
Samples sound great and offer variety.
What's interesting with this plugin is his playable/customizable aspect.
While most of the time Waterphone's Libraries are aiming at FX/Sound Design work,
depending of the chosen instrument (Sound Bank), you'll be able to play some melodicmusical content too.

Playing IW using a MIDI controller.

While going true different octaves, it'll play different set of samples.
Extended on few notes, or many...
The dev surely didn't want to over stretch the audio sources.
It'll have an effect on the available notes/sounds needed for what you're looking for.
E.g., play a melody vs creating atonal Sound FX or simply create some ambiances.
The first bank (Interstellar Water) is out of tune.
Of course the "water effect" causes this typical Waterphone note bending effect.
However, I felt that a little pitch tweaking could have made it usable for melodic content.
Using a pitch bend automation as a work around, I could get clause enough to handle a melody...
Dry Space has some register where the tuning is definitely manageable.
I was rapidly able to make an interesting layered sound with an acoustic piano.
In that case, I made used of the IW's Start Offset feature (setting to adjust the starting point of samples).
Slow Voltage has great potential for melodic/musical material.
Waterphone produces some complex sound not necessarily made to play melodies at first, but IW will let you explore this territory while imposing you some limits.
If you're aiming for the sound FX/ambient territory, you'll be pretty well served with this instrument.
There's enough tweaking options to make IW quite versatile.
Mixed with the Virtual Bow (following), it can become addictive.

Playing IW using the Virtual Bow (Waterphone icon knob).

It'll generate a MIDI sequence of notes based on intervals.
It works in conjuncture with the Steps, Offset, Bow Velocity, and Velocity Randomness sliders.
Steps: 1 = semi tone, 2 = whole tone, 3 = minor third, etc...
Offset: -12 to +12 semi tone to change the sequence starting note.
The other two are pretty self explanatory.
The best will be to assign them to some MIDI CCs.
MIDI assignation process is straight forward.
Right click (Mac) to "learn/unlearn" the desired CC.
That would have been great to have a way to restraint the register of the Virtual Bow.
Some app will let you do that when using MIDI CCs, but it would have been convenient to have this option internally.
But what I found really missing is the option to choose scales.
Even better.
Holding a chord and have the Virtual Bow arpeggiating it.

Other welcomed features
Scalable UI.
Show/Hide visualiser.
Double click to default parameters.
Active voices monitoring (max 256).

All in all, Interstellar Waterphone is an interesting and good sounding instrument.
The better way to know if it fits your need is to try the demo version.
Here's the Demo Mode limitations (from the web site):

"The unregistered and not activated software can run in demo mode with limited functionality. List of limitations Time limitation - after some time the application will turn off the audio. Sound set limitation - Only two sound sets are available in demo version, instead of six. Commercial limitation - You can't use the Interstellar Waterphone software for commercial purposes without purchasing a license."

N.

Full disclosure: Pulsar Novation gave me a NFR copy of Lunar Lander to test and review.

Lunar Lander is the Pulsar Modular P900's "stand alone" effect modules to be used as:

AU VST VST3 on Windows and OS X.

AAX is apparently planned for a future release, as written into the "First Edition- May 2020" user manual.

The latter being accessible from the UI question mark icon.

Pulsar Modular P900 is a Moog modular VA plugin that deliver that Moog's sound pretty amazingly.

Reason for someone to check out this plugin?

Getting "that sound".

And must be said that it sounds pretty darn good.

Definitely on the pricy side of things, especially considering the plethora of options available at the moment.

Its a niche plugin but it keeps his promises.

Its made of three modules.

Pulsar 931 is an analog delay(bbd (bucket brigade delay)), Pulsar 933 a plate reverb and Pulsar P938 a summing amplifier (saturation module).

Not much parameters to tweak, but still surprisingly versatile as a designer effect tool.

There's time you'll want to go intuitively instead of having the most tweak able machine.

Here, the sum of his parts is greater than the whole.

There's two effect configurations available.

Meaning that you can put the plate reverb before or after the analog delay(bbd).

Comparing the plate effect with others specialized ones surprised me.

It really sounded good to my ears, better in some cases then some dedicated counterparts.

It's gelling well to the source.

Comparing the delay with some others delays wasn't that obvious.

But couple with the saturation module, it definitely shines as a character effect.

As a chorus effect, modulation plus saturation plus short delay sounded quite good in my tests too.

Note that it doesn't use a lot of CPU power plus no latency behaviour while giving high quality results.

Seems to be pretty well coded.

A ducking option that was added following users (many guitarists...) requests is pretty welcomed.

One knob control.

From the manual:

"This is our take on ducking within the technical bounds of how Lunar Lander is designed- so it has a slightly different behavio[u]r as you will notice."

This behaviour worked pretty well for me.

DAW sync is on the road map.

To me, the way the tempo is implemented at the moment is perfect.

Its in total adequacy with the concept of "analog" delay.

But sync would be handy, of course.

The possibility to numerically (using key pad) enter the value would be too.

There's a tap option for the delay alongside a triplet option.

A dot option would be great in a future update to forget about the calculator...

What is missing to me and that would make me buying it at the current $149.00 USD (as of 2020-10-08) price tag?

Some more modules from the Pulsar Modular P900.

More specifically, a LFO for internal modulation (the 924: low frequency oscillator (without cv input)).

The Moog's 904-A Transistor Ladder Low Pass filter and the CP10 "clean" mixer for some added sound design power/versatility.

What would make it totally awesome (to me at least)?

Modularity, like the synth its coming from.

An LFO, an attenuator, a Moog filters and a mixer.

Respectively, the 924: low frequency oscillator (without cv input), the 995 attenuator, the 904-A Transistor Ladder Low Pass and the CP10 "clean" mixer.

Using patch cords like his big brother.

N.