What do we think of Loomer Aspect?

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Aspect

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I've been demoing Aspect and I've found it's sound to be very impressive, especially considering it has quite a low profile around here. The filters are very fluid, the oscillators are good and the GUI is nigh perfect.

In my mind the sound is similar to the new Element synth, only Aspect wins out by having a very nice filter and better GUI handling. It's also more experimental, letting you do audio-rate modulations and other semi-modular stuff.
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One of the few I use on a consistent basis. I keep meaning to do a bank for it, but just don't have the time right now.

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i owned but sold it. i only sold it though because it was too deep for me. in the time i had it, and when i took the time to program it, it was awesome. the presets aren't that good. but if your a sound designer, aspect is both a great very low cpu powerhouse and an incredible drum synth too. would definitely recommend it. but only if you love sound design.

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I demo-ed it too, and it sounds great. I like the combo of analog and additive.
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Interface looks cheap. For a £65 plug I would expect a bit more attention to GUI design. Not that it's a major put off, but the headlines of each section seems like they are copied from a word processor, and printing is so small that it is difficult to read

And it is knobs for everything, not that I don't like knobs, but do one need a knob to select waveform? Seems the designer only had one "controller interface" to use when putting this together.

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I like the interface, I like the sound and I like the concept. It's on my "one day I have to get this" list since a long time.
The developer seems to be very active too! :)

Cheers
Dennis

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Numanoid wrote:And it is knobs for everything, not that I don't like knobs, but do one need a knob to select waveform? Seems the designer only had one "controller interface" to use when putting this together.
What, apart from all the drop-downs used for modulation? And the buttons. Yup, it's all knobs.

In real-world use, Aspect has a really clear, "one look tells you a lot about the patch" design ethic, especially when it comes to modulation.

What is it with all the "I expect more GUI for my buck" on this forum? For £65, I expect a sound-generating plug-in to make sounds. Or £50 or £500. If it looks purty, that's a bonus.

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I have Aspect and I love it, I like to use it for ambient music.

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Gamma-UT wrote:What is it with all the "I expect more GUI for my buck" on this forum? For £65, I expect a sound-generating plug-in to make sounds. Or £50 or £500. If it looks purty, that's a bonus.
Graphical view of the waveform, and shaping of it would be important. Cakewalk manage to do it with z3TA+ 2 for instance, at $99 it's about the same price

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Numanoid wrote:
Gamma-UT wrote:What is it with all the "I expect more GUI for my buck" on this forum? For £65, I expect a sound-generating plug-in to make sounds. Or £50 or £500. If it looks purty, that's a bonus.
Graphical view of the waveform, and shaping of it would be important. Cakewalk manage to do it with z3TA+ 2 for instance, at $99 it's about the same price
So your complaint isn't actually about the GUI at all, it's the feature set.

If you want a wavetable/waveshaping synth, then a VA probably isn't going to be what you want. But even on those, graphical waveforms aren't all that useful. The Waldorf Microwave was pretty much all knobs and a titchy vacuum-fluorescent text display; with Zebra, there isn't a lot of visual feedback on the oscillator waveforms once you engage the wave transforms. And for analoguey things like PWM, do people really need to see that, or just hear the pulse thinning out?

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I demoed it twice, and liked it a lot, but also found that it didn't give me anything new with the armada of synths I already have. It's one synth I'd recommend to someone who's starting out.

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Gamma-UT wrote:So your complaint isn't actually about the GUI at all, it's the feature set.
As I understant the knob to the left in the OSC section is a waveform shaper, thus to be able to view the waveform as it is shaped when the knob is tweaked, would be important IMO.

I don't think this is asking for an extra feature.

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Numanoid wrote:
Gamma-UT wrote:So your complaint isn't actually about the GUI at all, it's the feature set.
As I understant the knob to the left in the OSC section is a waveform shaper, thus to be able to view the waveform as it is shaped when the knob is tweaked, would be important IMO.

I don't think this is asking for an extra feature.
How much time did you spend actually demoing it? Just curious, because if there are intermediate settings between saw, pulse, triangle and sine I haven't found them yet. And if it were the case, I suspect it would be better to swap the pulse and saw positions.

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Gamma-UT wrote:How much time did you spend actually demoing it? Just curious, because if there are intermediate settings between saw, pulse, triangle and sine I haven't found them yet. And if it were the case, I suspect it would be better to swap the pulse and saw positions.
But why have a knob for waveform then if only four can be selected, would be better then to have a "check box" where one could select which waveform to use.

This goes back to my original critisim that the programmer only seemed to have one graphical modifier to put in: the knob.

Nothing wrong with a simple interface, that little work has gone into, but then that must be reflected in the price of the product IMO

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Numanoid wrote:
Gamma-UT wrote:How much time did you spend actually demoing it? Just curious, because if there are intermediate settings between saw, pulse, triangle and sine I haven't found them yet. And if it were the case, I suspect it would be better to swap the pulse and saw positions.
But why have a knob for waveform then if only four can be selected, would be better then to have a "check box" where one could select which waveform to use.

This goes back to my original critisim that the programmer only seemed to have one graphical modifier to put in: the knob.

Nothing wrong with a simple interface, that little work has gone into, but then that must be reflected in the price of the product IMO
As I've already pointed out, the interface uses other elements. I assume Colin made an aesthetic choice that a) resembles quite a lot of analogue synths b) preserves the structure of the oscillator sections. In terms of workflow, I prefer the knob to a drop down in this context because it involves fewer clicks. Having a checkbox would not be any faster as a selection mechanism, might mess up mapping from an external controller and would probably demand more screen real estate.

How do you know how much work has gone into a product that you've spent practically no time assessing?

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