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User Reviews for Fuzzpilz Oatmeal

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By jdtrbn
On 5th May 2008
Version: 38-1

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Possibly the best freeware synth and the only one I've heard producing that screaming progressive metal lead. It supports custom waveforms and has a lot of stuff to tweak. You also get a couple of effects, which is nice. Some of the user made presets are astounding, better than some you hear in commercial synths. How hard or easy it is to get those sounds out of the thing, I do not know.

The GUI isn't the best I've seen. I believe it would work better if it had more than one page, like V-station. Now there are a lot of small knobs and the learning can take some time. After that you can work with it easily, though. You can also download alternative GUIs made by users. The manual basically explains the controls, but doesn't teach you any programming or go into details. This is normal for synth manuals and in the end you have to go through the controls anyway.

It's hard to review the customer support. I'll give it an 8 because the updates are somewhat frequent and there aren't any bugs or other things you'd absolutely need support for.
 
    

By lightninrick
On 21st April 2008
Version: 38-1

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1 of 1 people found
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Oatmeal is in my opinion one of the best-sounding and most versatile freeware synths available. It sounds great on its own, and it layers beautifully with a wide range of instruments.

The supplied GUI is ugly and complex to the point of baffling, but alternative skins are available that do a very good job of making the instrument more usable. I've rated the user interface as "8" taking these alternatives into account--otherwise it would be more like "5" (usable, but barely).

The large library of 3rd-party patches for this instrument are a terrific bonus--in terms of number, variety, and quality of patches available, Oatmeal is competitive with many commercial synths.

The instrument uses a moderate to small amount of CPU, another factor that makes it useful for layering. It is thoroughly stable under Sonar 6.0 and 6.2.1, and runs very well in Xlusoft Chainer too. (Chainer is a useful way to set up layers using this and other soft instruments and effects, of course.)

In short, this is an instrument that can improve almost anyone's inventory of soft synths. The more I use it, the more I find new uses for it.
 
    

By MaliceX
On 18th March 2008
Version: 38-1

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MaliceX

7 of 7 people found
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Oatmeal is by far one of the most versatile 2+1-OSC synthesizers out there in the FREEWARE market. (And it recently had an addition of unison!)

Tone-wise, it's quite simple to create simple sounds such as sinus basslines, but once you begin to investigate its options, it's a fully fledged VA under the hood. Various filters to choose from, a semi-modular distortion effect unit, onboard EQ, Reverb, Delay, Chorus, as well as an extremely flexible arpeggiator system.

One of the special nuances of Oatmeal is its wavedrawing mechanism. Now while one can draw whatever the hell they want in this screen for either OSC or LFO, right-clicking will reveal there's even morphing options of sorts for it, which expands the possibilities even more! Then there's the two other oscillator modes, hardsync and FM. Very nice touch, though the FM part is a bit limited due to some pitch limitations, if not a noticeable degradation of quality when one goes down pitch too far for OSC-1.

Anyway, the inbuilt modes for the included effects are amazing. There's so much to choose from. I like how it handles certain parameters with its ouwn modulation routings. My only caveat is it's quite confusing to work with at times, being the uniquely-constructed synth it is. I think this is also one of the only synthesizes that have a routable distortion. (Most synths act how GLOBAL mode does. Pre/Post filter? Sweet!) Now with the inclusion of a 15-voice unison, this can now sound very much like those big supersaw synthesizers. The only current limitation to the new unison is, it hasn't been properly implemented for HARDSYNC and FM as it modulates both OSCs or just OSC1 rather than simply the final shape combination. (ie: Post-generator stage) If this can be fixed, sync/fm unison heaven!

The main pinnacle of Oatmeal is its rather interesting randomizer unit. Comes up with some humorous, pre-programmed name combinations with the odd question (How it affects randomizing, probably nada.) Easy textures it can generate although you'd be better off making your own once you understand its limitations to randomizing.

Oatmeal is also skinnable too!! There are already some high quality skins out there for OAtmeal which not only get around the rather hard-to-read default GUI (single colours), to something more fancy, readable and appealing to work with.

Stability has been so far, excellent. While sometimes skins 'freeze' with some hosts, I have yet to experience any crashes using Oatmeal. It's always been relatively nice to my CPU however the more effects going, the more gets used. Now with unison added, long release, reverb plus multi-voices equals potential CPU choke; nothing strange, it's normal. Fares quite well with both a 1.7GHz AMD Sempron 2400+, and a 1.42GHz Pentium Dual Core.

All in all, it's a great synthesizer. Easy to create presets on-the-go, as well as a great creative-block randomizer for a good starting point. Great included effects, and is now capable to sound as good as anything. From vintage retro keys, to fat basses, to growling leads, to sparkling pads akin to a Fairlight, you can't go wrong with Oatmeal!

It's great nutrition for your workstation, at no cost to your savings account!
 
    
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