Product Reviews by KVR Members

i used to be secretly v down on synthedit-made things - not so long ago it felt like kvr was spammed daily with A+B synths and 303 clones with *funky* front panels that glitched or crashed at the first chance they got - but lately i've changed my mind. maybe it's just faster CPUs and better SE releases, but i don't tick the 'no synthedit' search box anymore and this odd, neat little synth is one of the reasons why.

the interface is entirely unlabelled and unexplained, but the sound of the presets hooked me enough to stick with it for the 60 seconds it takes to figure out what's what.

so, yeah, it's a harmonic additive synth, with a global pitch control (new users: the LH one of the 3 sliders on the right), a slider for each of very many harmonics, and an ultra-simple and very intuitive graphical ADSR for which some kudos is due. no phat bass here, but great for weird steam organ/water drop/imaginary sci-fi flute sounds and potential far beyond.

i could wish that the pitch control was calibrated, it's a too-short slider and a PITA to tune sometimes, and i could wish for some way to evolve sounds as they play. but then what's neat about this is that it's a shortcut to find sounds that many other, deeper synths can also do, but make more difficult and less fun.Read Review

I don't really know what the ideal nay (middle-eastern cane flute) sound would be, this doesn't sound quite how I'd expect (more full and consistent tone) but it makes a usable, very breathy flute sound that seems quite convincingly 'real' in a mix if programmed with care. If for some reason you want a 1960s/70s style jazzy-film soundtrack flute, try this.

The scale corrector takes a little puzzling to figure out - a brief readme file would help here but otherwise lack of docs not a problem because there is nothing else to document. No other controls over the sound, which is a drawback, but the basic sound is good quality with no harsh freqencies.

A little heavier on CPU than you'd expect for such a simple instrument (~100MHz) but it's polyphonic so you'll never need more than one instance of it. For some reason I like the airbrush-accident GUI, small but it cheers up a grey VST desktop.

Now I've run out of useful things to say so this last sentence is just to get the review up to the minimum 1000 characters.Read Review

I DL'd the Dragon along with a few other drum modules in search of something that could make a very particular sound - an electronica version of a kind of hand cymbal I heard on a 70s compilation of czech folk music, since you ask - and blimey, a few tweaks of a preset and there was almost the exact sound I needed, and soon many other percussion sounds I was looking for but couldn't get right before, and then plenty more sounds I didn't know I was looking for till I tried it. OK, so it has that all grey MAX/MSP look, but it's an inspiration.

Till now I used Attack for this kind of thing, very powerful but it's fiddly and unpredictable. That I have now started using the Dragon is big recommendation. The Dragon is simple but capable of a very wide range of sounds, specially good at the kind of is-it-electro-or-acoustic stuff I like best. It's very easy to see how to get from the sound it's making to the sound you want. Not unpredictable so much as fresh-sounding.

If you're looking for a 909, it's not for you, but if you're looking for a shortcut to a new sound, download now.

And it can make Gameboy noises, too.Read Review