reKon audio

Rubbish! paid nearly $70 for this and it has been crashing like crazy and it's impossible to control your Alpha juno it has a mind of it's own.

Just purchased this on 10-8-13. I have been an Alpha Juno user for a few years and have fallen in love with the fatness of this under-rated analog synth. When I saw the price tag on this plug in I was skeptical, seeing as there's the free Au300 plugin that's mac only which I had been using with Ableton for a minute and then all the free-bee stand-alones as well.

However, I got fed up with trying to easily load and dump my sysex files via free sysex file library editors.

End result, I bought the rekon audio plugin and was freaking blown away by what I had been missing.

This is the easiest and most ingenious hardware editor I've ever used. And the absolute coolest part is the "random" button. It generates a random value for every point on the synth engine and you get some seriously cool sounds you could not have gotten any other way.

If you love your Alpha Juno as much as I do and you also work in the modern day of DAWs like we all do, don't hesitate, this thing is a game changer. I can play my Juno like a plugin and that's just crazy. My work flow just got a lot cooler.

P.S. If you find a skilled electrician who is willing to do the job right, get your juno recapped with all new caps and it'll pass about 10 times more low end than before. 20+ years takes a toll on your low end.

Peace.

The Nord Lead Editor is a controller plug-in for the Nord Lead 2(x). Ok, a device panel in Cubase for the Nord Lead can do similar things but there is no handling of sysex data.

If a new instance is loaded, the internal memory with 99 patches will contain the default factory patches of the Nord Lead. Program selector up/down switches will transmit the patch to the Nord Lead's edit memory. Creating new patches or loading sysex files from disk will be stored in the internal memory of the plug-in and also with the project! The internal memory bank will be restored with the project to have something like a "total recall". A bank with 99 patches or a single patch can be exported/imported to/from disk as a standard sysex file. The difference with the internal memory and the stored format (sysex): the internal patch can have a own name while the imported/exported patches will not have a patch name and there will be used a default name like "sysex patch" inside the plug-in.

The good things:

• The controller works without problems and so the Nord Lead can be programmed inside the DAW.
• internal memory with place for 99 patches is stored with the project so there is no needs to handle sysex bulks inside the track to restore patches.
• standard sysex files, so the files can be handled with all sysex tools.
• the plug-in will receive controller messages and the GUI elements will reflect the moving on knobs on the Nord Lead.

The bad things:

• No handling of receiving MIDI dumps: receiving dumps from the Nord Lead needs other tools.
• No library handling or a good patch manager to sort or tag patches.
• The default bank cannot be changed, IMO it would be more useful to have a own bank as the default instead of the factory patches.
• No extended format to store additional data like a patch name, style etc.
• plug-in needs a bit routing in the host with extra MIDI tracks this can be a bit confusing the first time.
• No support for performances.
• No handling of system/special settings of the Nord Lead.
• Text labels sometimes bad to read with todays monitor sizes about >22".

Does it make sense to control the Nord Lead with the plug-in instead of using the knobs? Sometimes it's not bad to have it inside the DAW instead of doing such stuff on the Nord Lead. It's the same if Virus TI users will use the Virus TI plug-in and not using the external knobs... But because the plug-in will receive controller messages it's no problem to use the knobs on the Nord Lead and have the settings reflected in the plug-in.

Most interesting usage will be the storing of patches with the project. For receiving existing patches from the Nord Lead it needs a (free) tool like Bome's SendSX (Windows). The dumps can than be loaded with the plug-in.

Wishes:

• Bigger or resizesable GUI.
• internal handling for receiving dumps.
• patch manager.
• support of performances.