Atmosphere

I have long been a fan of Roland ROMplers and was very excited when I heard that Eric Pershing was releasing a VSTi dedicated to pads. Since getting Atmosphere I am not disappointed. When buying this products you are not just getting samples and patches, you are getting a lot of extensive work done with a large variety of sound sources and effects. While the price of Atmosphere may seem high, consider the price of just renting all of the units used to create these sounds, not to mention the time involved.

Make no mistake, this unit is for pads. Long, lush pads. It can be used for other parts, but pads is the strong point. As with any ROMpler the danger here is when too many people use the same presets. You can mix and match combos of sounds, and edit those sounds within the VSTi, but it still comes down to the original sample. Some of these sounds are very good, and that makes a lot of people want to use them in their songs. Too often the evolving part of the sound is samples rather than synthesized with the VSTi so there is not really that much you can do to change the sound without a loss of quality. This is a very basic synth playing samples of some very nicely processed synths and effects.

As mentioned before, the LFO does not sync with MIDI. This is a major limitation when trying to do any sequenced effect. But, if you are creating these patches with a real Moog Modular or Oberheim SEM then you will also be without MIDI sync. What this lack of MIDI sync does is restrict the ways you can use Atmosphere. Even so, it is a great deal considering the usefulness and quality.

Pros:
Sound quality.
Sample quality.
Amount of detail in creating the samples that make up the patches.
Great use of effects in the sample creation process.

Cons:
Lack of LFO sync to MIDI.
Much of what makes up a fantastic sound is sampled rather than created with the synth engine. This makes for limited editing of patches.
Challenge Response copy protection.

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