Product Reviews by KVR Members
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Proteus VX
Reviewed By DavidRadi2 [all]
August 15th, 2009
Version reviewed: last one on Windows
It´s almost shocking that first review on this wonderfull instruments is only few days old.
Proteus stands out in my freeware collection / to be true - not only freeware collection /, it´s sound is something different compared to piles of synthedit/synthmaker creations - lots of great drumkits, guitars, basses, retro-synth sounds - an the collections is really, really big. There are even some great addons on digital sound factory site - like the Filters and Functions pack.
The filters of this Instruments standout too, I´m really sorry, that I can´t load my own samples in it in the free version as that would be something!
I just can´t say a bad word about this synth, and if it has some little quirks, I don´t care for them as the positives overweigh them.
So, grab it, if you´re in need of sounds from the Proteus modules, if you´re into hip-hop, big beat, if you´re searching for some great hits, stabs, basses, or drumkits. You get hundreds of presets, the drumkits are really big - not like the usual 8-16 sounds. You´ll even find yourself recognizing some of the sounds from some great tracks of the past eras.
There are not many freebies as this one - Core Player, Kotakt Player, Independence Free...and Proteus.
I had to give it full marks, as I Love the sound, interface, the presets, I never had any problems with it, the value for money is unbeatable, full documentation is included too, and well, I won´t spoil the full marks giving it 0 for customer support as it´s freebie, so what could I want - and I never needed it.Read Review
Proteus stands out in my freeware collection / to be true - not only freeware collection /, it´s sound is something different compared to piles of synthedit/synthmaker creations - lots of great drumkits, guitars, basses, retro-synth sounds - an the collections is really, really big. There are even some great addons on digital sound factory site - like the Filters and Functions pack.
The filters of this Instruments standout too, I´m really sorry, that I can´t load my own samples in it in the free version as that would be something!
I just can´t say a bad word about this synth, and if it has some little quirks, I don´t care for them as the positives overweigh them.
So, grab it, if you´re in need of sounds from the Proteus modules, if you´re into hip-hop, big beat, if you´re searching for some great hits, stabs, basses, or drumkits. You get hundreds of presets, the drumkits are really big - not like the usual 8-16 sounds. You´ll even find yourself recognizing some of the sounds from some great tracks of the past eras.
There are not many freebies as this one - Core Player, Kotakt Player, Independence Free...and Proteus.
I had to give it full marks, as I Love the sound, interface, the presets, I never had any problems with it, the value for money is unbeatable, full documentation is included too, and well, I won´t spoil the full marks giving it 0 for customer support as it´s freebie, so what could I want - and I never needed it.Read Review
Toxic Biohazard
Reviewed By DavidRadi2 [all]
December 18th, 2008
Version reviewed: 1.0.2 on Windows
Well I fell in love with FM synths some time ago for their great clean bellish sounds, clean basses and all the digital type sounds. I own allmost all commercial FM synths worth owning and the 2 I´m missing are still known to me a lot as my mate uses them - and when we´re working together I get to use them a lot too. So when somebody asks me which FM synth I like most, from the moment I bought Toxic Biohazard, the answer is the same: Toxic Biohazard
The thing that gets me is...well to be true thinking of it, there are so many things that get me here: Sound, ease of use and sound design, the interface, and again the sound as that is the thing worth every penny of the price and the thing making it stand out. Perhaps it´s because it´s as IL writes FM/Subtractive hybrid, maybe because of the new engine, anyway it´s crystal clean, the basses are just wonderful and I enjoy it most of all as a source of gritty-hard-electronic sounds which are able to cut your .... off! I´d have to give it at least 11 here!
As for the GUI, it´s one of the best and it fits the synth. That´s 10 as the black/green/silver combination is hypnotizing.
Feature wise, it´s 6 operator synth with the classical FM matrix, there is also nice feature as you can import your wave samples in it, effects are great too - I add almost every time the Phaser and EQ to get really biting sound out of it, and the sequencer is quick to program too. I won´t name everything Toxic offers as you can find that in the info and there is no need to rewrite it again. Anyway I´d give it 10 here, not because it has all the functions that it could have, but because it has all that I ever needed to make all the sounds I was after and I just never felt missing something.
The presets are great too, ToTc has done a great job as most of the sounds should be usefull to users that are not used to design their own and there are many of them too. I think over 500 of them. Anyway it´s really easy to make your own sounds or just to edit the other patches. ToTc deserves full points here!
As for the stability, never failed and I think never will. Some Image-Line plugins have problems with the GUIs in some hosts like Sonar, Reaper, Savihost, but Toxic is thanks god not one of them. I think they have this problem with VSTs that have windows with envelopes etc. like Ogun, Sytrus, Edison...so 10 again!
About the customer service - I promised myself that from now on company not allowing license transfers won´t get more then 5 points from me, because this is really important for me now as I would like to be able to trade plugin if I don´t like it. So IL will get only 5 points here as they are one of the companies and I take this as bad customer support. Änd I think it´s bad for the companies too as I would have bought more from them, but because of this I didn´t and started buying from companies that are more friendly here.
So to finish the review: Value for money is great, costs 99 usd and you get also Toxic III, which is a nice bonus. I was lucky to get even Ogun and all those three for about 60, so that deal was unbeatable even without being able to resell, as I will get over the 60 / it´s not like when you buy Sonar for 800 / and anyway Toxic is the last plugin I would sell as I really love it! Yes I would give them 11 here for the extras too!Read Review
The thing that gets me is...well to be true thinking of it, there are so many things that get me here: Sound, ease of use and sound design, the interface, and again the sound as that is the thing worth every penny of the price and the thing making it stand out. Perhaps it´s because it´s as IL writes FM/Subtractive hybrid, maybe because of the new engine, anyway it´s crystal clean, the basses are just wonderful and I enjoy it most of all as a source of gritty-hard-electronic sounds which are able to cut your .... off! I´d have to give it at least 11 here!
As for the GUI, it´s one of the best and it fits the synth. That´s 10 as the black/green/silver combination is hypnotizing.
Feature wise, it´s 6 operator synth with the classical FM matrix, there is also nice feature as you can import your wave samples in it, effects are great too - I add almost every time the Phaser and EQ to get really biting sound out of it, and the sequencer is quick to program too. I won´t name everything Toxic offers as you can find that in the info and there is no need to rewrite it again. Anyway I´d give it 10 here, not because it has all the functions that it could have, but because it has all that I ever needed to make all the sounds I was after and I just never felt missing something.
The presets are great too, ToTc has done a great job as most of the sounds should be usefull to users that are not used to design their own and there are many of them too. I think over 500 of them. Anyway it´s really easy to make your own sounds or just to edit the other patches. ToTc deserves full points here!
As for the stability, never failed and I think never will. Some Image-Line plugins have problems with the GUIs in some hosts like Sonar, Reaper, Savihost, but Toxic is thanks god not one of them. I think they have this problem with VSTs that have windows with envelopes etc. like Ogun, Sytrus, Edison...so 10 again!
About the customer service - I promised myself that from now on company not allowing license transfers won´t get more then 5 points from me, because this is really important for me now as I would like to be able to trade plugin if I don´t like it. So IL will get only 5 points here as they are one of the companies and I take this as bad customer support. Änd I think it´s bad for the companies too as I would have bought more from them, but because of this I didn´t and started buying from companies that are more friendly here.
So to finish the review: Value for money is great, costs 99 usd and you get also Toxic III, which is a nice bonus. I was lucky to get even Ogun and all those three for about 60, so that deal was unbeatable even without being able to resell, as I will get over the 60 / it´s not like when you buy Sonar for 800 / and anyway Toxic is the last plugin I would sell as I really love it! Yes I would give them 11 here for the extras too!Read Review
Adonis
Reviewed By DavidRadi2 [all]
October 2nd, 2008
Version reviewed: 1.3.1 on Windows
Now I´m mad, because after hour spent on this review when I submit it, I´m suddenly not logged in and the review is gone...OK, this will be brief now - apologies to author of the plugin.
After the last update, the glitch that was present in some presets is gone and that´s great, because now it sounds just fantastic - at least compared to most of the free FM synths.
Pristine sound and 128 presets full of FM plucks, organs, pads and sequences.
Pretty deep routing options - through main modulation matrix and voices-modulation matrix. 8 pages where you can play with voices settings / up to 256 harmonics / and waveform structures / lot´s of combinations /, DADSR amplitude envelopes, filters / 8 stage + injecting one into another /, fx / phaser-flanger, chorus, delay, 3-band resonators, static HPF /, keyboard settings / lowest-highest note, bender, retrigger /, envelopes / 8 segment graphical /, modulation and submodulation.
For automation you can use the per voice arpegiators and the step sequencer with host sync, semi-tones setting, coarse knobs.
That´s pretty just some of the functions, there is more of them and I would suggest: Go and try it and hear it for yourself.
And I shouldn´t forget the MIDI learn - one of my favourite functions, which is not so common in the freeware category.
GUI is clean / brushed metallic surface with green digits in the matrix / and the pages with controls are set pretty logically, so I didn´t have a problem understanding the synth even without the manual which is not included in the free version / there is only a brief desription on the web page /.
As for the support, I don´t need it and the synth is free so I don´t expect it, but that doesn´t mean there is not any – you can contact the author, so there must be some and as there was an update few days ago, there should be something going on there.
Value for money: It´s free and the Pro version is Donationware and for your donation you get more voices, vibrato control, manual, separate outputs, some more controls. So the value is 100% of the price and maybe even more!Read Review
After the last update, the glitch that was present in some presets is gone and that´s great, because now it sounds just fantastic - at least compared to most of the free FM synths.
Pristine sound and 128 presets full of FM plucks, organs, pads and sequences.
Pretty deep routing options - through main modulation matrix and voices-modulation matrix. 8 pages where you can play with voices settings / up to 256 harmonics / and waveform structures / lot´s of combinations /, DADSR amplitude envelopes, filters / 8 stage + injecting one into another /, fx / phaser-flanger, chorus, delay, 3-band resonators, static HPF /, keyboard settings / lowest-highest note, bender, retrigger /, envelopes / 8 segment graphical /, modulation and submodulation.
For automation you can use the per voice arpegiators and the step sequencer with host sync, semi-tones setting, coarse knobs.
That´s pretty just some of the functions, there is more of them and I would suggest: Go and try it and hear it for yourself.
And I shouldn´t forget the MIDI learn - one of my favourite functions, which is not so common in the freeware category.
GUI is clean / brushed metallic surface with green digits in the matrix / and the pages with controls are set pretty logically, so I didn´t have a problem understanding the synth even without the manual which is not included in the free version / there is only a brief desription on the web page /.
As for the support, I don´t need it and the synth is free so I don´t expect it, but that doesn´t mean there is not any – you can contact the author, so there must be some and as there was an update few days ago, there should be something going on there.
Value for money: It´s free and the Pro version is Donationware and for your donation you get more voices, vibrato control, manual, separate outputs, some more controls. So the value is 100% of the price and maybe even more!Read Review
