Forever 89

Wasn't bowled over at first, but took some time messing around with it between projects, and ended up adding it to my "favorites" folder.

Takes some time to fool around with. It's not going to impress you with presets right off the bat, at least it didn't for me. But once I started fiddling with the parameters, it became obvious there's potential to make a lot of good distortion sounds with it.

Many thanks.

No demo, but luckily this time there is the free version, which is basically some kind of "tweak just a bit and mainly use presets" version. But it shows the sound, usage and CPU usage quite well. So I bought it rather quickly after testing the free version, since it was nice already:

• I love the sound.
• I very like the flexibility.
• I like that it is rather easy on CPU (compared to other products).
• I find the GUI quite lovely (sometimes a bit distracting due to a bit too blury animations, but that's okay).

I think that even after the intro price the default price is okay. Looking forward to the future of this plugin! (=.

I don't typically use a lot of saturation plugins, but the gents at Forever 89 make such high quality plugins, I simply can't resist. Topos is a very powerful and well-made effect. You will notice a difference in your signal chain that ranges from subtle to gnarly. This plugin is lightweight, CPU-friendly, and easy to use. It is a stellar tool for creative self-expression.

This is new to me and a very astounding plugin. Can do a lot of things for beats and I don't think there is anything else quite like this. Fun and serious. Check it out with demo. I will have many hours of time to play with this. Just great.

A really great sounding, intuitive and okay on the CPU-ish drum sampler with some kind of a twist.

Pros:

• Loads fast: At least on my machine this plugin almost loads instantly even after a cold start of my system. To me this is a plus, since it avoids breaking the creative flow.
• Fast and intuitive to set up: You can literally draw and shape the sound with the blob grid. But I also really love the Modify section on the right with which you also can shape the sound quite intense yet detailed. Also the GUI is very clean and easy to understand.
• Sound is astonishing: At least to me it is. If I load the same sound into another sampler it just sounds and feels different. This might sound a bit esoteric, but I assume that this tool seem to break down the audio and rebuild it somehow different instead of just playing it back. Especially when it comes to editing the blob it gets clear that it's no plain playback. What really like is that you also can change a model for the velocity. This quite changes the sound somehow interesting. So something special is going on under the hood (to me, haha).
• Effects: Normally I do not like to use inbuilt effects in an instrument plugin, but here I actually like the compressors. Maybe the others as well, if I'll use the tool more and more over the next time.
• Modulation: I love modulating things. Here you can! But it could be a bit better, though. See my Cons.
• Superb demo: I just hate subscriptions and/or demos which are quite time limited. Give ma a muting or a noise, totally ok to me, but let me test the tool also one year later again, for example. And then there is Vicso: giving a hint screen which gets longer to wait for with every new GUI start. And this seems to be all!? I bought it quite fast, since it just flashed me, hehe. But if I understood the demo restrictions correct (also from the website) it really only gives this "demo prompt to upgrade". How kind is that? Really great, thank you.
• Price fair: To me the price is fair. Considering the intro price, which even is nicer. I guess there could be other companies, who would charge way more for such a plugin after all. So I am grateful for the kind price. Also: no subscription or iLok crap.

Cons:

• Modulation could be improved: The modulation possibilities are great already. Yet the sources are only limited to 8, which can feel a bit restricting sometimes. Also a quicker and intuitive linking from a modulator to any knob would be great.
• FLAC support: I love using FLAC, yet you cannot drop FLAC files onto the plugin.
• Save dialog path: The saving dialog always uses the last location, which was used from the DAW, I guess? It would be great if the path/location of the dialog would be in the correct folder already. E.g. if you like to save a preset, the presets folder should be chosen already.
• Undo missing: There is only an undo button when changing the blob, yet nor for the whole plugin. This would be great to have, since it can happen quite fast to chose a preset without saving the other one and thus loosing something.
• Further ideas: I'll contact the devs as well, yet wanted to write down here as well. It's not quite a "Con" list, yet still something where I think the plugin could be even better: Randomising a single track instead of the whole plugin, a Button to switch the elements for a track (the blob), better copy&paste features, note stretched out through whole keyboard mode (like Microtonic has, for example), choosing the part of the dropped audio, simple cleaning of unused blobs.

Overall I love this plugin already.