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Crystal

Semi-Modular Synth Plugin by Green Oak
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Crystal has an average user rating of 4.42 from 26 reviews

Rate & Review Crystal

User Reviews by KVR Members for Crystal

Crystal

Reviewed By .jon [all]
February 19th, 2003
Version reviewed: 2.2.1 on Windows

I've used Crystal since Glenn Olander unleashed the first version on us, and fallen into a tremendously rewarding affair it since the version that introduced - tsadaa - MIDI learn, in addition to the longest feature list in the VSTi world.

UI:
Crystal's ultimate strenght is the user interface, which is IMO the best so far. It makes more sense to me than any other synth. Once you get over the unsexiest graphics since Atari days, you'll find yourself creating complex textures, tempo synced builds and tonal treasures that have no names before you give them one - and that's before you can say "I never thought I could do this"! Logical, clear and intuitive interface to endless possibilities of mangling. I think this is a remarkable achievement in synthesis.

SOUND:
The native oscillators themselves, without any modulation, could be fatter. However, as you can use soundfonts as osc wforms, apply granular and FM synthesis (although only sine is available as modulator) and twist, loop & bounce the original sound to extremes the osc sound quality itself is not an issue.And Green Oak has actually developed the osc sound as well!!

FEATURES:
I think it's ´nuff said that there is more than on any other VST synth. (Absynth comes close, but it has no tempo sync or midi learn and is generally more usable as a stand-alone)

DOCS:
On-line manual, but due to the unbelievable development speed it's a bit behing reality. Anyway, it's well written with pictures, and new tutorials come with new features.

PRESETS:
Lots of unheard patches of seriously inspiring quality, but Crystal is a explorer's Supertool, I would make my own no matter that the presets are good.

SUPPORT:
Glenn recently introduced the Crystal Mailing list (Yahoo Group) which works like dream. Can't beat this one.

V 4 $ & STABILITY
It never crashes and it's free :) How's that?!

Superior synth. Go on and get lost in it!

-pakana-
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Comments & Discussion for Green Oak Crystal

Discussion
Discussion: Active

THIS POST HAS BEEN REMOVED

Mmmr
Mmmr
27 August 2021 at 9:32am

Can't import Crystal's effects banks or contact the developer (Grrr at Facebook).

Hi. Bit of a story. Back in the day, I got Crystal from a ComputerMusic CD and messed around with it a bit. Time has moved on and last year sometime I bought Jbridge to use a different VST. Recently, I went through the old discs from ComputerMusic and started bridging the old 32-bit plugins (God this was fun). I made a project in Ableton Live yesterday where a spreadsheet I have that lists all installed VSTs and VSTis throws up random plugins for me to use in whatever project I'm working in. It threw up the bridged version of Crystal. I was totally confused on how to use it (as it's been a lot of years since I did use it) but got it working. After the project was finished, mixed and exported I thought I'd see if there were any tutorials. There were so I spent some time last night watching videos. It then occurred to me that there may be a current version. And, Hey Presto, there was. I downloaded and installed this and it seems to work fine apart from one thing. From the Greenoaks website for Crystal there are a load of banks to download and so, download them I did. I followed the instructions on the site to install them but they appear to be uninstallable. I've googled this and it seems to be something to do with Windows 10 security features (I'm not a hundred percent sure though). Anyway, I thought "Hey, I'll contact the developers and tell them about this". The only contact is via Facebook. As an old man of 53 I seriously don't ever want a Facebook account. I've had friends promote it to me on so many occasions not realizing that all the points they're making about how good it is are all the points that make me NEVER to want to have it. So, as a last resort, I thought I'd post on here and see if anyone has any ideas about working around the problem of importing the preset banks as the drop in the application doesn't work at all.

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