kARMAkILLER

I feel this is currently the best of BONES efforts; and perhaps the very best SE design ive seen. A very powerful, clean sounding little synth. In my opinion it is a bit lite on features, but then everything which it includes is useful.

Actually, that is the primary benefit of buiding with SE -- you build to suite yourself. You can *afford* to leave stuff off and tailor the synth to your exact idea of perfection (in this case, BONES idea).

The little Karma is a refreshing change from the trendy "everything plus the kitchen sink" monster synths of the past two years.

GUI -- A little too dark for my tastes; but the green indicators *really* stand out well. From an artistic standpoint, it is very well executed; it has a professional look to it and it flows better than most synth designs (considering everything here at KVR).

SOUND -- This synth delivers. The sound is pure SE, and that is actually a good thing. You might be surprised to learn that there are only a handful of synths out there with better quality oscillators. And, you can easily prove this to yourself; heres how...

Pick any two synths and do an AB comparison of their saw wave. Turn off *all* modifiers (ie, amp envelop, filters, effects), so you are just listening to a single, pure osc. Pitch the synths up two octaves and compare notes in the highest octave your ears can hear. Now, pitch the synths down two octaves and play notes in the lowest octave. Finally, play a chromatic scale in the middle octave, listening carefully for changes in timbre. There should not be any changes; if there are, it is a weakness of the osc.

SE passes all these tests with flying colors; you would be surprized at many of those which do not.

Unfortunitely, SE does not have the best filters. They are very good, but not the very best.

FEATURES -- Karma has a well rounded feature set. It is a bit lite for my tastes (just a tad), but it does have enough to produce a wide variety of sounds.

DOCS -- It has been brought to my attention that there are, in fact, docs; a nice touch. But this synth is obvious, and it has tooltips; nothing else is needed really.

PRESETS -- By freebie standards, it is rich. By pro standards, a bit lite on quantity.

SUPPORT -- BONES is always available here at KVR to provide support, mainly in the form of opinions.

VFM -- excellent; this is a forth order iterated design, executed with class and style.

STABILITY -- There are some issues here; namely with the dual mode toggle and with mono mode note sticking. For me, the work around is 1) dont toggle dual while playing 2) dont use mono mode.