Claw

I've had Claw for awhile. At first I didn't see a monophonic 1-osc synth as very usable - but lately I've pulled it out on a few tracks and found that it sits in the mix well and doesn't sound cheap.

The GUI is very simple and looks good; this is a good synth to learn the basics of VA synthesis. Its very easy to dial up the tone you are looking for.

As I've said above, the sound is very good. There is a quite warm distortion that helps fatten the sound without sounding overly dirty. The delay is also a nice touch, especially for spacey leads. A stereo spreader is also a generous addition.

For me Claw's sound is more geared for leads than basses; 1-osc is sometimes just not enough for a nice bass. Of course, thats what the 4-osc Beast is for.

One thing claw is not is full-featured. It doesn't have an adsr env - so its not possible to create pads or anything without a fast attack. It also doesn't have the capability to change pitch-bend range. Since Claw is most useable for leads, its a shame there is no lfo for vibrato. And since the pitch-bend range is so high, you can't 'hack' vibrato in with automation very easily.

The docs are complete and explain everything you need to know, though you probably don't need them. Claw is also packaged with 32 presets which is more than enough for such a simple synth.

Claw has never crashed my system, or either of my hosts: Sonar 2 and Tracktion. Claw tends to use about 3-4% cpu per instance on my p4 2.1ghz, which is low - though considering its a 1-osc synth thats a higher % than I expected.

All in all, thanks ReFX for Claw! I recently bought Beast because Claw is such a nice "demo" freeware of Beasts' capabilities. I'd say more devs should release lite versions of their synths for free.Read Review