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All Reviews by mrblitz000

By mrblitz000
On 25th August 2009
Version: 1.8

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Yes | No		 Bram Bos Tunafish

The terminology for Tunafish is that an individual 'track' within a sequence is called a 'channel.' There are 10 individual channels in Tunafish.

The overall mix of the channels, as programed into sequences ('segments'), and finally assembled, then rendered to .wav is called a 'track.'

In the channel mode, each of the 10-channel (or less) sequences ('segments') are created, and these segments are glued together in song mode. The overall segment the user is working on at the moment can be viewed in 'overview' mode. Here, the user can cut and paste measures amongst all of the channels in a segment.

So far, I've worked only in 'single-segment' mode, so have not cut and pasted various segments together in song mode, but have made entire pieces within one large (up to 350 measure) segment.

I like the way it looks and works. The one thing which it does is allocate a lot of unused measures, and oftentimes sets the overall window slider way off to the 'end,' usually hundreds of measures past the actual end of the patterns; so I've got to drag the slider back to where I'm actually working.

It looks like the thing is designed for making small, 8 and 16-bar sequences ('segments') in the channel mode, and mixing them together in the song mode window. I've been doing these longish pieces in a lone segment, and the thing with the 'autoscroll to way past the actual end of the piece' is a bit annoying.

This can happen in 'channel mode.' It looks like the app employs a drawgrid control from Delphi. If that is the case, the app needs perhaps to call a small function, in which it figures out where the last note of the 'segment' ends, and keeps the total number of cells in the grid to that number of measures. That would fix the problem, methinks.

I think it's worth $30, even with the peeve.

It's easy to load up a custom, drum sample bank. As someone else pointed out, you could even load other instrument samples into the drum bank, and play them back through the drum programming interface.

The piano roll editor for the both the sampled sounds and the VST instruments (VSTi) is fairly easy to use, particularly on smaller loops.

I save my work often, because Tunafish will crash out once in awhile. This is on a 1.8Ghz machine, with 1gb of RAM, running Windows XP. Tunafish will usually go 'poof' if the VSTs or VSTi are changed too much, particularly while the thing is playing the segment which is being worked upon at the moment. It's stable enough that, with a bit of saving - or by employing the autosave feature in the app (backup every 4 minutes) - workloss is minimal.

Tunafish has its own powerful, custom EQ VST made specifically for it. My understanding is that the EQ VST will work in other hosts, but is best in Tunafish.

Tunafish does a pretty good job of hosting VST and VSTi alike. It could use a few more features; a bit more stability; and a fix to that slider problem; but it's definitely a good looking, easy to use (especially for small sequences), intuitive, and sounds good when you render it. It allows 3 VSTs per channel, and 3 VSTs on the main, stereo out. It also has custom, built-in effects including panning on each of the 10 channels.

One thing I do with Tunafish, as with all VST-type hosts; is to put a brickwall limiter on any channel where I'm messing around with VST/VSTi (loading and unloading; tweaking). This will help prevent undue signal spikes when certain 'too loud' VSTs are accidentally loaded or tweaked.

I like the Tunafish!
 
    

By mrblitz000
On 20th August 2009
Version: 3.x

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  GUI
Sound
Features
Docs
Presets
Support
VFM
Stability
Antress Modern Plugins

I didn't have a lot to say here, except for this: If you're into free VSTs, and you don't yet have these; by all means download them. Rumour is that they're going to go 'pro' at some point, and as a result these will no longer be free. I haven't explored these in detail, but they have a unique sound all their own. The 3.x pack are all - more or less - software clones of top-of-the-line hardware from yesteryear. In general, these Modern effects have a much subtler sound than many of their free VST counterparts. Some of them - such as the Dynakiller ('limiter') are also capable of some really fine 'dirt' sounds. If you want to expand your studio effects palette, and arrive at place between 'sledgehammer-type' effects on the one hand, and something often barely discernible, these are the effects for you. That's a really long-winded way of saying, 'These VSTs rock! Make sure you get them!' Without having scratched the surface with these, Dynakiller in particular has found fairly substantial use in my 'studio.' It looks like the original offerings (which included Dynakiller and Painter) are in a separate, 3.x file; and the new offerings (which I'm downloading whilst typing this review) are in a separate file. This is all an extremely long-winded way of saying, "Download whatever this developer makes available to the public." I've sussed it out a bit. At this writing, the version 3.xx pack is all of the original VSTs, including Dynakiller and Painter. The new, 'fullpack4050' has the 7th Sign, Premier, and Flashverb. I can't wait to try these out. One more time: Get these if you don't have them already. They will definitely add more nuanced shades to your musical color pallette. It would be interesting to use nothing but these VSTs on a given collection (album) of songs, and see if the final result were painted with shades of the '70s era. Addressing documentation, presets, tech support, pricing, and stability: I haven't looked for any documentation; haven't used any presets; haven't needed tech support; didn't pay a dime; and they've never misbehaved as far as memory serves. Get these before they go $$!
 
    
Latest 2 reviews from a total of 2