Product Reviews by KVR Members

All reviews by Moe Shinola

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Reviewed By Moe Shinola [all]
July 18th, 2013
Version reviewed: 7 on Windows

Steps is one of my "must-have" VSTi because with it you can quickly throw together loops using any one-shot samples you have lying around. The six slots are clearly laid out before you, one sample per slot. Per-slot you can turn the sound on/off, raise or lower the volume, reverse the sample or, by clicking "!", feed the sample through the bitcrush/distortion effect on the top right. The loop can be from 1-4 measures(top left)' and can start on any of the measures(top middle). Just above the sample slots you can adjust global volume, apply swing, humanize, and, in the middle, pitch the samples and use the Loop Start/End to really make the loop you've created sound strange. Vocal samples and phrases in particular can be creatively mangled in this way. I don't know what the Show/Track is for and don't use it, but I use most of the rest of Steps and would be lost without it for original loop creation. I give it a 9 instead if a 10 only because of the parts I don't know how to use and could maybe have been labeled better, but I don't think there's anything else in freeware that can do what Steps can.

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H4xx0r

Reviewed By Moe Shinola [all]
February 10th, 2011
Version reviewed: current on Windows

2 0

This is the plugin that got my music in Future Music magazine! I took a loop, mapped the same loop to all the keys, and pitched several slices down an octave, which halved their tempo. I grooved around on the keys, mixing up the pitched slices with the un-pitched ones, and had some great accidents. One of those became the loop I used in "Mayflies", which ended up in the magazine(must have been a slow submission month for them but I'm still happy). It's one of my favorite freeware plugs, right up there with Xoxos' Steps for making cool loops. I don't remember there being a manual, and as far as support, My main beef is with ArcDev's website, which is made up like a DOS page. I still haven't figured out how to navigate around on it. If my hard drive ever bought it I'd replace this plug as soon as I could.

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NitrousPM

Reviewed By Moe Shinola [all]
March 8th, 2010
Version reviewed: 1 on Windows

2 0

This will be my first KVR review, and it's for the most useful synth I've DL-ed in quite awhile, the NitreousPM. The thing to remember is that if you turn on the retrigger on the mod envelope, click the "v" over the Envelope knob on the filter and then turn Hard Sync about halfway up, some cool FM sounds can be had. The filter needs to be LP 24db and A, D, & R on the mod envelope need to be at zero with S close to zero. Another great group of sounds are the mono chordal leads, with the Hard Sync knob tuning the overtone. I was also impressed with the basses I was able to make. Hard basses, soft basses, resonant, overdriven, "plop" sounds. The list goes on. It's easy to do moogy-sounding leads on this synth too. For these, turn off Retrigger and leave Hard Sync off. The only thing I don't like is the Unison, since it introduces pops and crackles into the sound. Can't have everything.
So that's my review, essentially a little tour around the NitreousPM. I was captivated by the synth for over a month and made way more patches than eventually went into the 64-preset bank I uploaded here. If you like mono basses and leads of all kinds then NitreousPM is your girl.

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