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All Reviews by Shuzhen


By Shuzhen
On 16th May 2005
Version: 1.4

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  GUI
Sound
Features
Docs
Presets
Support
VFM
Stability
Novation V-Station

GUI:
Looks amazing and has been very intuitive for me. 10/10 for sheer simplicity and friendliness. This is probably the interface/VSTi that has helped me the most when it comes to wrapping my head around some the more complicated synths/effects. Everything is well dimensioned, all the labels and data is very readable, and the dials, faders and toggle switches are easy to work with.

Sound:
It's warm. Though you can get some hard, crunching sounds out of V-Station, it's the pristine, luscious pads and clear arpeggiated harp-like sounds that keeps me turning to it when I need that type of sound. The effects section is probably beat for most stuff by a few higher end VST plugins, but I use them quite happily, hearing a superb flair to some of the presets that comes from using the effects to their full potential.

Features:
While it doesn't advance any new features compared to it's hardware predecessors, what it does have works exceptionally well. Even if there is a limit to what sounds you can get with it, if you're looking for something within the spectre of pads, leads, etc, and with huge tweak effectiveness, V-Station is it.
Even with all the new VSTi's that are embarking on finding new forms of synthesis, processing and whatnot, V-Station will never grow stale.

Documentation:
Haven't looked too much at it, but it is fairly detailed in explaining what every function is used for, with illustrations for most, and it's well layed out. There's also a very neat Getting Started guide.

Presets:
There aren't that many I agree, and they have generic names, but among these, you'll find a few gems that sound plain fantastic, and are very versatile. With the ease of tweaking sounds in V-Station, that I feels surpasses most, if not every VSTi I've tried to date, I'm not finding it at all hard to get the sounds I want to achieve.

Customer Support:
Never needed any. That's a 10 in my book. Well, not really, but not knowing them, I'd feel bad giving anything less than a 10.

Value for Money:
Best value ever.

Stability:
Never had a crash.


Recommending this to any person who wants to learn more about synthesis.
 
Last edited : 16th May 2005     
By Shuzhen
On 9th April 2005
Version: 1.5

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Having used Renoise since it's inception, I feel that it still has a ways to go compared to the more established sequencers when it comes to being a versatile host, but looking past that, it is easily the most advanced tracker to date, and has covered alot of ground already, melding the past with the present in an environment that's loosely based on the FastTracker 2 interface.

Past being that it is centered around 'vertical patterns' where events are entered and navigated through using a QWERTY keyboard, and present being that it supports VST/VSTi, ASIO, etc, and lets the user automate most, if not all, parameters with accessible meta devices.

To give you an example, you could have a chain of LFO devices controlling eachother, with the last one controlling a VSTi Automation Device or MIDI CC Device, which in turn would control energyXT.
energyXT is the perfect companion for Renoise, having most of the features Renoise currently lacks (i.e. freeze tracks, piano roll, playing samples from current position with proper offset, etc).

The concept of vertical patterns might not read as past, or as anything else, for someone not familiar with trackers from beforehand, but these spreadsheet notators have been around since the mid-to-late 80's. Renoise is the continuation of that legacy.

It's most noticable strength, and the strength of trackers in general, is that it is a compact, focused environment, and you get so close to what is going on that if you were to get any closer, you'd no doubt go through it.

It's most noticable weakness as a tracker, or a compositional device is probably that it is not as easy as with conventional clip-based sequencers, to keep an overview of what you are doing.

The whole layout of shortcuts (configurable) and pattern commands, with most everything being within reach at the press of a key (combination), is a refreshing departure from the mouse-centric sphere of sequencers.
Adjusting to this shouldn't take very long.

The perfect app for me at this point would be Renoise coupled with the strong points offered by Samplitude for audio object control, channel mixing and recording.

From version 1.28x to 1.5, it has undergone alot of structural changes beneath the surface that have prepared it for the additions that are in the works.

At version 1.5, it lacks ASIO input, a horizontal clip-based arranger/sequencer, ReWire support, greater event resolution, and some other stuff that you might expect from a host covering every possible concern, but some, if not all of these things (depending on what the users find to be most urgent), will probably appear before long.

If the devs manage to suffuse that with the ideal of tracking being a very low-level, rapid and controllable way of making music, then I predict that it will leave marks on the backs of Cubase and Logic.
 
Last edited : 14th May 2005     
Latest 2 reviews from a total of 2