FX Max

When this came out, about a decade ago at the time of writing,

it was revolutionary.

At this point, it's a small, dead end of evolution -

principally due to the developers inability to keep developing it.

With the advent of dual-core, 4-core, 8-core CPUs, and the support in audio hosts for these new developments, the money that was spent on (an extremely expensive) connectivity solution was better spent on new CPUs,

and FX-teleport, to an extent, became redundant.

Despite the developers continued insistence that they WERE working on a version 2, with support for multicore processors etc,

this never eventuated, leaving the frustrated users with a dead-end product that could only utilise a quarter of their slave machine's processing power.

In addition, many host developers, such as cockos (who developed REAPER) came up with their own proprietary solutions that Did support newer technologies, and supported them flawlessly.

In the end, the concept is great - the delivery dated, and now, 100% redundant, due to the developer's lack of delivery on their, decades-old, promises.

Avoid, and buy a better CPU - or a better host - instead.

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So you are mixing this song, using some dynamics and a reverb. But suddenly your CPU starts to scream at you and your computer reacts very slowly. Well some weeks ago this meant either: get a new computer or upgrade the old one. Now these times have changed. Sequencers like Tracktion and Logic already have a built in freeze function, which renders the used effects into the wave file. Now FX_MAX' fx-freeze offers this tool as a VST wrapper for all the other hosts, too. Even Tracktion users will benefit from this VST, for its approach differs from the built in freeze function.

But how does it work. Well you start a standalone program, browse thru your folders and search for all those VST plugins you'd like to wrap (since it doesn't effect the behaviour or CPU load of your VSTs you might as well wrap all of them). Fx-freeze now creates a new dll file [plugin name (z)] and places them into your plugin folder. Now make some music. If you start to run out of power, open some of your CPU Hogs and click on the little snowflake on the very left. Press play and let the magic begin. If you're using large sample libraries that store the content in your RAM, you should click on the right snowflake which cleans your RAM from the files that are no longer used.

Now the only thing that can stop you from using billions of effects is your hard drive space and speed. But since today’s HD’s are huge and fast this shouldn't be a problem for most of us. Only Laptop users should be careful, because every frozen plugin means another running audio track (in 32bit floating point quality). This is the only weakness of fx-freeze. The built-in freeze functions a la Emagic or RawMaterialSoftware don't increase the disk load or even reduce it (Tracktion merges all frozen tracks into one single audio file).

So if you have a sequencer like Logic you probably won't need this. If you have a freeze function similar to Tracktion's and want to freeze a track but still want to change the volume or position in the mix, this is the tool for you.Read Review

Install:

Given the relative complexity of networked PCs, this could easily be a nightmare. However, as long as you read the install notes and get the concepts of which machine is 'host' which is 'server' etc clear, it was a total breeze. Everything worked on first attempt!

Features:

Good, simple, UIs make setting up hosted plugins and then the monitoring of them easy. The host and server settings mirror eachother instantly (e.g. you can change patch on the host or server). So far all the native plugins I have tried have worked flawlessly. Even complex multi-out VSTis like Cube and D'cota. I have not tried any 'powered' plugins (e.g. UAD or Creamware) but indications from other users on the support forum are that they work fine too.

Documentation:

A little above average, but with some flaws. e.g. All the documentation refers to 'effects' which lead me to belive that VSTis were not supported (they are! :)

CSUP:

I paid and got the auth code within seconds. The demo is fully functional for 14 days.

Value:

Well worth the price to get some use from an old PC, or if you plan building an uber-network.

Stability:

So far no problems at all.

Overall:

A brilliant concept implemented in a simple to use, cost effective way.Read Review