de la Mancha

FMMF implements what I like to call "Broken FM".

It's trying to be a 4-op FM synth like the TX81z but it fails spectacularly. I've found it absolutely impossible to make a usable E-Piano or Brass sound. The operators do not work at all as they should. The AMP sliders should be controlling the FM modulation, but most patches have them all at 100% and they are hardly modulating each other. For that, I regrettably must give it a low rating. I'm surprised this got 3rd place in the competition. I expected something at least better than Uno FM, but it's actually worse. If you want a good example of a 4-op FM synth, see eFemme, Exakt Lite, or even Panzertank PM4 which was also made in SynthEdit.

That said, if you want weird sound effects, industrial or chiptune sounds - you might find something here. But this certainly can NOT do basic DX100 or Mega Drive 4-op FM sounds. I invite you to prove me wrong and upload some patches to KVR.

The core sound is rough. This is not going to get you sound quality on the level of Dexed or FM8. Using an oversampler or cranking your DAW's sample rate will help in that regard.

However, it excels in being based around such complex envelope options. For creating complex soundscapes that vividly evolve over time, this is an unbeatable addition to your freeware collection.

sixtyfive is one of the things I miss from when I was using Windows. God, I would kill for a Mac port of this (but I realize that's impossible).

I've tried UAD's and Waves' dbx emus, and to me, this one sounds the best, retaining the bottom end of the input and not collapsing into digital mush as quickly as the aforementioned—especially at high gain-reduction levels.

It's worth 10x its asking price. Cannot recommend it enough.

Do yourself a favor and try the only freeware dbx compressor emulation around.

This is a truly amazing compressor, the one that has most helped me grasp what good compressors are capable of. I can make my vocals float 6" in front of the rest of the mix with it.

If it were available in a 64-bit build, I would need no other track compressor. As it is, I am scrambling to try to get close to this one using MCompressor and ReaComp.

The included presets are obscurely named, and their output is set to greater than unity, but that is not unheard of in the plug-in scene.

Kudos, many thanks to De la Mancha for creating such a great piece of software in the first place, and then releasing it as freeware.

I am a great, great lover of plugins that do just one thing well and in a straightforward manner. This is a very good example, right up there with Clap of Luxury by xoxos, though not as flexible because it uses samples as opposed to synthesizing the cowbell sounds in real time -- which would be awesome, but the samples used here are solid and there's enough variety that I think this will be my source for cowbell sounds for a long time. Obviously writing this VST was just a lark for this very talented developer, but it's nonetheless very great. Thanks to de la Mancha.

Often I ask myself if it is necessary to buy commercial plugins. Yes, it is... sometimes. The first time when I used this plugin I was really excited; clean GUI, just few knobs and good results... ideal for beginers.

Over time I started to see minor flaws. The biggest problem for me are these knobs: Ratio, Attack and Release. I don't know why, but Threshold (0 - -40dB) and Make-Up (0 - +20dB) knobs can be turned gradually (I'm using FL studio and I can see knob's current value in "Hint Bar"). Ratio could be set from 1.5:1 to infinity, but value in Hint Bar starts in 0.0000, and it shows 4 when it is 10:1 (???WHY???), moreover knob only "jumping" from value to another value and turning is not smooth. This is similar for knobs Atack and Release. Therefore, I think, that you can't set exact values, but only approximate values for these knobs. If you want something more precise, I suggest to buy de la Mancha Sixtyfive compressor - it's only 15$.

I really like VU meter (very useful) and also "Dirt" button - I loved it on drum bus. When "Dirt" button is ON, CPU is little higher, but not more than 5% in my old laptop (1.6GHz).

If you want good, free and easy to use compressor, get it, you can't go wrong.