Log InCreate An Account
  1. Plugins
  2. »
  3. Green Oak
  4. »
  5. Crystal
  6. »
  7. Reviews

Crystal

Semi-Modular Synth Plugin by Green Oak
MyKVRFAVORITE517WANT150

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 Magpel [all]
September 20th, 2007
Version reviewed: 2? on Windows

Given the sophistication and novelty of Crystal, you can make a case that it was/is the most GENEROUS free VST ever. And there's some tough competition for that title.

Learning to use it is an education is synthesis.

The .sf2 was the topper. All of sudden, untold GB of sample data became fodder for Crystal's bottomless mangling architecture.

Crytsal is a synth I would program for fun and exercise, not in support of a song or composition but just for its own sake--every bit as much as Cameleon 5000.

It's strength, obvioulsy is movement and modulation. I loved it from the start, but it wasn't til I heard the Tim Conrardy banls that I was able to understand its rhythmic potential. The enevenlopes are still the best of their kind, imo, not that I've checked out all the "competition." The frequency splitter is a trip. The Mod Matrix is pretty much bottomless, for all intents and purposes. Stability is excellent, CPU usage can go from modest to extreme. .Sf2 support was a brilliant stroke.

It's weakness, frankly, is in (the lack of) thickness and solidity of its core sound and an LP filter that to my ears is no great shakes. I am not able to coax fat, high character lead sounds out of Crystal, but so what? Keeping in the free domain, we have Synth1, Triangle 2, and the Iblits for that.

Crystal is, uh, an absolute gem. Glen/Green Oaks' generosity with this one is truly humbling.
Read Review

Click here to read all 26 reviews

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.

Please log in to join the discussion