By hseiken
On 5th June 2005
Version: 1.7.5
Was this review
helpful to you?
Yes | No |
Psycle Psycle
Psycle is my 'back-up' sequencer for when I want to create more organic styled music instead of Drum and Bass.
The OBVIOUS: It's a tracker. You either love them or you hate them. Psycle probably won't change your mind about that one way or another.
The PROS:
- Modular Synth to Effect Chainging - this is where creativity resides in this program. True, there are other programs that have this feature, but for some reason, it feels more natural in Psycle. Add in keyjazz (I don't have a midi keyboard, so all my music is played via PC keyboard) and Psycle just become great for sound designing.
- Internal Synths - It must be said that the internal synths of Psycle are the best I've ever heard. The overall sound output of Psycle sounds so polished even before adding in mixdown tools. As well, they don't use up a whole lot of CPU either so creating an orchestra of smooth FM synths is no problem.
- Score-Styled Seqeuncer - This is the way to go. I personally don't care for 'playlist' editors as it's so easy to get into a rut and just throw a bunch of 'loops' up, replay the song while recording knob tweaks then call the song finished.
- Open Source - This pretty much almost garentees that it will be forever improved upon and eventually ported to whatever OS's people want to run them on.
The CONS:
- The sample handling (as of the latest version) isn't the best in the world. It sounds superb, but it lacks functions that many trackers provide in regards to samples.
- The Tracker - Something that just doesn't sit well with me is that in order to 'tweak' knobs in a pattern, you must waste a whole track for each knob that you simultaneously wish to fiddle with. While it's not necessary to tweak however many dozens of knobs your synths have at any given time, it does give a vibe of restriction which in turn damages the overall feeling of versitility of the sequencer. As well, there seems to be a missing column.
- VST compatibility - It must be said the Psycle does have problems with various VST programs. A quick look at the Psycle boards will tip you off that SynthEdit VSTs don't mix well with it for one reason or another.
The OVERALL:
Overall, this is just an amazing piece of software for creating music with. Even without the aid VSTs, Psycle has a very polished sound that is just missing from many other programs. How they achieve this very organic/analog sound is beyond me...and why they wish to give it away for free is also out of the realm of comprehention. Probably the most exciting aspect of Psycle (aside from it's sound) is the fact that it's always being updated and that it's very community driven in that aspect. As of this writing, a new version is on the horizon with features that just may peel me away from ReNoise a bit more often. |
  |
|
|
By hseiken
On 5th June 2005
Version: 1.5
Was this review
helpful to you?
Yes | No |
Renoise Renoise
I primarily produce Drum and Bass and have been using ReNoise for about 5 months and I personal have found it to be a great seqeuncer that gets my creative juices flowing.
The OBVIOUS: It's a tracker. You either love it or hate it. I happened to get my start in computer generated music with Impulse Tracker, so I'm a bit biased in this respect. That said, ReNoise is not going to change your mind about trackers, one way or another.
The PROS:
- Score-style Sequencer - I personally find this a pro instead of con, due to the fact that because you're writing out the music with all of the tracks visible next to each other, it's very easy to coordinate between different instruments intricate patterns and twists in the music. I've used piano rolls and the 'playlist' style sequencers and always found it frustrating to do this without much trial and error. However, in ReNoise, you can see exactly where your kick drum hits so you can (for example) line up your bass notes perfectly, no matter how obtuse the rhythm is you randomly punched in. As well, you can keep a monotonous song fresh easily by simply duplicating a pattern then changing little bits here and there on the clone. Then clone the edited clone and repeat.
- Render To Sample - A great way to add extra 'glitchy/chopped' depth to a track as well as save on CPU usage. If you got an intense instrument using tons of VSTs and effects, simply create a sampled instrument out of it and ditch the VSTs afterwards to reclaim your CPU.
- Built-In Sample Editor - Something I've always found would interrupt my work flow on a song was having to exit or switch between a sample editing program to fix samples or see if maybe doing something different to the sample would sit better in song. With the editor built in, you can run VST effects on samples, set loops points (ping pong loops are the best!), etc. and hear the changes instantly. And then, if you are unsatisfied, the undo button is a click away. Again, this is a great work-flow enhancing feature.
- Multiple Effect/Note Columns Per Track - something I've noticed with many trackers is that when you want to create a chord, you must take up a whole track with only a single note. ReNoise allows you 4 notes per row (collapsable/expandable as needed for easy organization) so that you may take advantage of the effects assigned to a track. As well, you can expand the effects column to allow 4 simultaneous per-note effects (for when the automation isn't precise enough for you!).
- Low Latency - I'm not into the whole hardware setup stuff, so I'm using ReNoise on a Direct Sound compatible only card and even when I'm sucking major CPU cycles off my processor, I can easily get by on 30ms of latency which is virtually unheard of on other programs where as little as 10% CPU usage would require at least 50ms latency on exact same computer.
- Stability - I've yet to crash this program, and believe me, I've done quite a bit in it. I'd even crashed a $300 sequencer several times and this essentially homegrown, underground product has a better use-to-crash ratio.
The CONS:
- VST Automation Meta Device - It is beyond me why you are required to create this device instead of it being generated with the VST itself. It's a minor gripe, but it just seems like an oversight of some sort...
- Lack of Side Chaining - This is a bit specific in terms of cons, but common things, like ducking a bass under a kick drum are left up to the efficency of your VST alone, rather than being able to command it specifically to drop out one for another.
- Lack of Modularity - something I love about programs like Buzz and Psycle is the modularity of the device chaining. This is virtually impossible in ReNoise. It IS posslbe to route multiple effects off one another, but you are limited in how you can do this and how many SENDS channels you're willing to give up.
- No VU Meters - I personally like track VU meters instead of track oscilliscopes. There is a spectrum analyzer, however, which makes up for it slightly.
- Internal Effects - There are some amazingly bad internal effects (but to be fair, some really good ones as well). The compressor I find to be completely useless. It's idea of being a limiter means to make the sound inaudible at all. As well, the filters are clean, but they're sound is not very agressive.
- No Internal Synths - most sequencers nowdays have at least one.
The FINAL VERDICT:
I'd have to say that if you look at this program as I do, which is that of the best sampler out there with a sequencer and sample editor built in, then you will have a ball with this thing. It's setup feels natural, even for a tracker and is just plain fun and intuitive to use (after the brief learning period). However, if you're looking for something a bit more organic and suitable for realtime synths, you might want to look elsewhere. |
| |
|
|
By hseiken
On 20th December 2004
Version: 2.1
Was this review
helpful to you?
Yes | No |
| |
 GUI
 Sound
Features
 Docs
 Presets
Support
VFM
 Stability |
Tweakbench Monomate
I must say that this is a deceptive little VST. You wouldn't think this thing with so few knobs could make such a wide variety of sounds, but it does. Are they always useful? Not all the time. This is obviously a synth made for IDM and general experimentation if used in other electronic genre's. My only complaints are that there is evidently a filter keytracking that is not controllable...so sometimes you may have a REALLY nice sounding low key but pushing a high key won't sound ANYTHING like the low key...I also think that filter is a bit misleading as it sounds closer to an FM effect. Another problem I run into with this VST is that if you have the filter knob on anywhere except at 100%, you can hear the original sound 'buzzing' in the background, which makes the sound almost...glitchy...like it's made of a sample and it wasn't trimmed right before the loop.
Anyway, I keep this one around and do get some use out of it sometimes. With effects stacked on it, it can get pretty nasty. The random knob is REALLY nice and it can suprise you with some of the sounds it makes.
It's a nice synth, very simple and easy on the CPU, but it's obviously not for everyone. Give it a go if you're into something different. |
 |
|
|
By hseiken
On 19th December 2004
Version: 3
Was this review
helpful to you?
Yes | No |
| |
GUI
Sound
Features
Docs
Presets
Support
VFM
 Stability |
e-phonic Drumatic
This has to be THE best sounding pure synthesized drum VST I've used. Just going by it's sound, CPU load and interface you wouldn't think that this was a SynthEdit creation by ANY means (when was the last time you had a very nice and useful graph-based envelope editor from a SynthEdit creation?).
So far, this beast has been able to make any sound I'm going for; smooth and chilled or rough and tumble. As well, it's possible to make some of the punchiest drums this side of your speakers. I've tried quite a few so-called drum synths out there (pretty much all the free ones available) and compared to this, they sound like a cheap Casio keyboard.
What's really interesting and provides a great increase to the types of sound you can get out of this baby are the lofi bitcrushing filters and the fact that there ARE multiple filters (low/band/hi) that aid you in getting the exact sounds you want. To say this thing jams would be an understatement. In every style of music I've applied this machine to, it quickly made fast friends with it, fitting in with the mix just nicely...electro, drum and bass, house...it doesn't matter in the least. Not to mention if you make a nice snare or hihat you want to mix with another kit, it allows you to save/load individual drum part settings instead of having to write down all the peramaters of whatever part of whatever kit you want to use. Very nice.
There's a couple of drawbacks, though. Most notibly is it's use of multi track outs. There's not an option to select the number of tracks you want it to use up; it automatically creates 6, even if you route all parts of the kit to one out, which makes for an unecessarily messy mixer if your host uses that format (i.e. Orion). The second major gripe is the fact that velocity when programming a sequence for it controls nothing more than the volume of whatever part of the kit you trigger. A little more expression when changing velocities would be very nice. The only way around this is to make soft and hard versions of the kick and snare and to do this, you must omit the toms (which, personally, i rarely use toms in my electronic music).
Minor gripes include the fact that you cannot separate the oscillators used for a drum part from each other spacially, such as setting the 'metal' pan to the right and 'noise' pan to the left. It's also not possible to fine tune some of the kick/snare/tom tone modulation too well since the values it can have are so wide, which means sometimes you have to settle for either less or more than you want. It's rare this happens, but it does.
These are extremely minor gripes and I encourage everyone who loves designing their drums from the ground up rather than taking samples and mangling and trying to make them into something else, or those who just want a good solid drum machine should definately download this amazing piece of SynthEdit magic. And to those who think SynthEdit can't do anything worthwhile, just imagine you didn't see the name anywhere in here. You'll be happy with this thing too.
I knocked the docs rating because it doesn't come with any (not that you'll need them if you know your basic synth functions). Presets are set low because they dont' by any stretch show the full capabilities hidden within. |
| |
Last edited : 19th December 2004
|
|
| Latest 4 reviews from a total of 4 |
nanoKONTROL - Control Surface Plug-in for GarageBand / Logic
Planet Trance
Things Get Better.mp3