Tantra

This review does not mention the presets that come with Tantra.

There are 4 banks of factory presets, split into sections like pads, sequences, distortion, glitch and drums. The presets are an excellent showcase of what Tantra can do, but barely scratch the surface of its capabilities. Even the most boring synth pad can become a wild, bubbling rhythmic new sound that will inject fresh life into even the most cliched sound. I've had this plugin for a week and I can still spend hours simply listening to how the presets can create something new from old drum loops or my VST synths.

I agree on the CPU performance issue - you will need a very high-spec computer if you want to run more than 2 instances of this plugin. Dmitri said he would do something about the overly-large GUI, which will not fit onto most laptop screens, and many desktop monitors.

I agree with the 9/10 rating. If and when Dmitri Sches changes the GUI size and adds a randomizer, it will get 11/10 :-)

I agree with previous commenters that this is very powerful with a lot of potential, but the CPU hit is just too much for most machines, mine included (and it's an SSD, i5, only ~3 years old, so not top of the line, but hardly an infirm dinosaur). I can deal with a huge CPU hit for a good softsynth, especially on something like a pad or some chords or something where I don't plan to do any modulation, because I can just transform / render it. But with an effects plugin, a huge CPU hit is pretty much a deal breaker for me. Yes, if I felt really confident that I had the track / effect in a "done" state, I could also render it. But for whatever reason I rarely find that to be the case. I'm usually tweaking effects right up til final mixdown.

If Dmitry can get this thing to be less of a CPU drain, or if I upgrade my PC in a few years to something 5x more powerful, then I could see myself using this a lot more.