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All Reviews by fred-hal


By fred-hal
On 9th April 2008
Version: 1.1

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Admiral Quality Poly-Ana

I got this synth for half price during the beta period, but honestly, it's well worth the full asking price! If you're looking for virtual analog, this is THE soft synth. Growling, wobbling, screaming, soaring, crisp, warm, fat, creamy, fuzzy, smooth and all the other buzzwords surrounding positive sound characteristics probably apply to what's drifting out of this thing.

The gui has been debated since the release, with its fairly large size and angled viewpoint. Of course, if you're still running on 1024x768 or lower it takes up your screen, and some might have difficulties with reading what's on the mod knobs. But the good admiral has provided the option of drop-downs instead of the mod knobs and made it skinnable, and some of the skins are gorgeous!

To obtain the lovely sound, it consumes a bit of cpu, but nothing dramatic. On my fairly basic dual core laptop I can run a fair amount of instances in normal quality before going into red alert.

The number of presets are growing in the Poly-Ana patch exchange (and some of them are awesome) but whipping up your own is also easy and fun!

Also worth mentioning is that I'm running most of my music software in linux through Wine, and Poly-Ana gives me no problem here, unlike some other synths. It has never crashed, and when I needed a new serial for the latest version, AQ replied with a new one within a very short time.

So all thumbs up from me!
 
Last edited : 9th April 2008     

By fred-hal
On 21st March 2008
Version: latest

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UplandToys BallSequencer

This is a very useful tool for quickly generating randomized midi sequences and arpeggios, but also as a midi note generator for when you have your hands full tweaking parameters on a vsti. Especially if you're working in a host that don't provide a qwerty note trigger function and you're on a laptop or don't have a midi keyboard, BallSequencer is invaluable!

The layout is clear and intuitive the little balls are bouncing around generating midi when hitting the walls, and all parameters are easily tweaked. The readme explains everything you need to know, and it never crashes.

Hard to give it anything but 1 on sound, as it generates midi only, and you really don't need presets, as it's super-easy to set up what you want it to do.

As for features, it could provide more balls or note slots, but it's just a matter of adding an extra copy to trigger more notes if you need it. It could be handy to have note lengths above 1000ms for long drones, but then the speed and room size would need values to match.

It might be a one-trick pony, but it's a lovely trick.. ;)
 
Last edited : 21st March 2008     
Latest 2 reviews from a total of 2