Alan ViSTa

A must have, for this free glockenspiel who have a great sound. I use it a lot on my tracks, sometimes I'm too lazy to take my real one ...

Another awesome free instrument from Alan ViSTa! I am a big fan of all his stuff, especially the tuned percussion. The samples are high quality and I don't think I've ever had any of his VSTs crash on me. Sounds good, stable, super easy GUI, just so simple to use! Sometimes you want a powerhouse like Kontakt with a monster engine under the hood, and sometimes you just want something simple and easy to use that that allows you to just work fast.

I love that each rototom has independent volume and pan control. That gives you total control over dynamics and stereo placement. Having control over reverb level AND lenght is also great. Dialing in the right amoung is really fast and easy. An intergrated compressor would be nice, but hey, I'm not going to complain about something so trivial.

The only actual complaint I have is that it's pretty CPU hungry for what it is/does. But that definitely won't stop me from using it, because freeze/render is your friend.

Good job, mate. I made a nice rototom track with this in under two minutes.

All Alan Vista instruments are good. I especially like the melodic ones (marimba, bells, crotales, xylophone, vibraphone). If he came out with an MBira, I would be in heaven. Freeware at its best.

With this specific one, though, I can only get the hi hats to work. What am I doing wrong?

thanks, .

It definitely is marimba. It works flawlessly:

• properly panned, sounds good;
• gives a chance to tune dynamic range to your liking, which is much more intuitive thing than tweaking your MIDI velocity curve every now and then;
• has some decent reverb built-in, though I'd prefer some or your favourite IRs of course. ;).

It sounds a bit dry to my liking, and UI looks kinda quircky (weird fonts and spacing and colors etc), but hey, it's not something I'll do 8 review instead of 9.
I'll suggest to add a couple of reverb IRs (will make some great mysterious patches) and redraw this UI even just a little bit with a professional behind your shoulder.

Thanks.