Product Reviews by KVR Members

Others allready raved about it, so here's some additions only:

Roughly said, this is ReCycle as a VSTi, allowing you to slice up loops and creating MIDI files triggering those slices. In addition it plays its own files, so you don't need no further sampler or whatsoever.

And of course, having your slices triggered straight in your sequencer has quite some advances. If your not happy whith the results, you just change the slices in realtime, the worst thing that could happen is that you'd have to "re-drag" the MIDI file (dragging straight to Logic/Cubase works perfectly, btw). And of course you have instant control over the slices through your keyboard.

Personally, I liked the "instant transpose" functionality a lot. While PP uses MIDI notes from C2 and up to trigger the individual slices, all lower notes (C0 to B1) are used to instantly transpose everything globally. Imagine using a sliced up funky git loop, you can now use it tonally as well.

But now on to THE feature that made me love it: You can drag and drop from PP to other apps. If you have a sampler/drumsampler that supports d'n'd from explorer/finder (DR-008, Battery, HALion), it will also work with PP. You just drag onto them, drag the MIDI file on the appropriate track and there you go. Now, if you have a "preview in context" feature, such as in DR-008 you can easily reassign each slice to another sound! Wohoo! Good for lotsa sleepless nights!

As I want to be fair, there's some cons:
- File management. Not existing yet. As I allready lost stuff due to similar things, I am very anal about that.
- GUI. While it's dead easy to understand, adjusting some things is a bit fiddly.
- Installation. If you don't install to C:program files, exporting/dragging of slices won't work at all.

But, talking about cons, support couldn't be any better. Art is a really responsive person and so far it seems that all the drawbacks will be fixed in the next version.
Exceptionally great!

Regards,
SaschaRead Review

OK, even if this is becoming somewhat ridiculous, I have to place another review here.
I don't think bashing something like Tau makes much sense at all - I mean, it's free, does what it's supposed to do and it's as stable as it could be. CPU usage is more than moderate, the sound becomes even more flexible with the Mdrive plugin insterted and the basses surely sound fat.
Personally I even think it's a good idea that it doesn't exactly reproduce a TB303 - I mean, do we have enough of 303 sounds in all sorts of productions or what?
Finally, for a freebie it's almost as good as possible, and guess what? Dave Waugh (Muon mastermind) even responded in a very nice way to some mail regarding some of my Tau wishes - incredible for a freebie!

Meanwhile I sampled Tau and do now use it in some EXS patch (www.saschafranck.de/exs if you want it), now I can use it polyphonic and along with pitchbend, but that's still giving it a good use.

Regards,
Sascha

Read Review

OK, I won't add much to the ratings about Pentagon, it's just a very great sounding synth that I love.

Just so much about that, but I just have to add some things (as these haven't been mentioned yet):

- MIDI learn implementation. This is just as good as possible. You switch a knob into learn mode, touch any external controller's fader or button and there you go! You can even limit the range, it's all well thought out.
Then, important for Logic 5.x users: Whenever you want to record some automation using that CC assignment method, Pentagon will happily record both to the new and the old automation. It's the only virtual synth doing so, not even Logic's internal ones do that!
And finally you can save a bunch of presets for your CC assignments which is very nice too. Just what the doctor ordered.

- Vocoding. Not only that Pentagon is an extremely flexible synth, it also works as a vocoder - and as a VERY good one even! I really wonder nobody has mentioned this feature yet! Try it on a drumloop and be amazed!

So in the end you're not only getting a kickass sounding synth but a vocoder as well, with the benefit of having the Vocoder GUI looking exactly the same as the synth GUI, so you don't need to get used to yet another interface.

IMO there's only two drawbacks:
1) This is Logic related and Pentagon is not responsible for it at all: Only the setting saved on internal preset No.1 will be saved properly along with a song. The workaround is to fool around with Pentagon's presets as long as you're happy, then use it's internal menu to copy to preset No.1.
2) The vocoder setting won't be saved, so each time you load your song you gotta have to readjust that. Assuming that most people are not using much more than one or two vocoder instances it's pretty much what I'd call a minor hassle - more like one of the typical .0 release bugs. Only takes two mouseclicks to fix it and I'm also pretty much sure René will fix that in the next update.

Finally, here's a short snipplet of my first Pentagon experience:
www.saschafranck.de/kvr/PentaShort.mp3
Apart from the drumloop everything is 100% Pentagon, no further FX, no nothing (oh well, of course I had to record a - rather lame - vocal line to trigger the vocoder). Forgive my keyboard skills, I'm still mainly a guitar player.

If it was possible Pentagon would get a higher rating than 100% in terms of "bang for the buck". Actually, I am a bit confused about the general ratings here, but following the apparent standards I just have to give it almost the highest possible rating. The "9" for the user interface only resulted of observing other people.Read Review