Ohm Force

It gets a 9 out of 10 only because of the seriously ugly UI with controls that are not labeled.

This free little plugin blows my mind. I am basically using a single preset, "The Raf smooth", with minor tweaking per use. It takes any flat, boring, 2D sound and makes it 3D. It is great on a lead guitar. It takes the flat sounds of Padshop Pro and transforms them into worlds only found in dreams and movies. I can get lost in Padshop Pro with this plugin. It's almost too good because I don't want to make anything, but instead just zone out in the landscapes arising out of the pads. Haha. I love it.

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For the kind of music I find myself making now, distortion is a crucial element. It has to be dirty in a clean way if you know what I mean -- it has to be controllable. And to be worth buying, it has to be versatile and powerful.

Ohmicide is all those things.

It's more than distortion. It doesn't *have* to be radical and demonic; you can simply use it as a sort of four-band EQ if you like, or as a multiband noise gate and/or dynamics processor. Or you can use it to warm things up a little bit. Or you can melt faces.

UI: A few minor nitpicks. Some of the controls feel a little small to me (particularly the mode selector scrollbar/buttons). The popups on some knobs seem to get in the way, necessitating occasional extra mouse clicks to get rid of them. The dialog box for loading a preset bank is a bit annoying since it doesn't remember where your presets are stored.

The Melohman technology is a bit confusing at first, and chances are if you don't skim the manual before messing around, you WILL lose some of your tweaks. But once you've figured it out you'll see that it's quite a powerful feature.

SOUND: I've never owned distortion hardware that cost more than $15, so comparing it to boutique stomp boxes or overdriven tube amps isn't something I can do. However, it definitely is capable of distorting your sound in musically useful ways. Also some very ugly, harsh ways when that's what you need. Or howling feedback from multiple channels that beautifully interact. :) It's not an amp/cabinet sim, but it doesn't need to be.

FEATURES: Extremely versatile; does distortion well and more besides that. The one feature I could think of to ask for would be individual post-distortion filter or EQ for each band; however you can usually get all the control you need without that anyway.

DOCUMENTATION: Website-based, so you need to be online to read it. Clear and well written, though my browser had a problem rendering the description of the various distortion algorithms.

PRESETS: There are lots of them. I'm not sure they can be judged as "good" or "bad" because it really varies with the source material and what kind of sound you're looking for. I don't find them particularly useful; even when evaluating the demo I didn't fall in love until I tweaked it myself for a while. I almost always start with a blank preset and cook up what I need from there.

CUSTOMER SUPPORT: The only downside I can think of here is unwillingness to allow license transfers -- but I know I will never want to sell mine anyway. :)

VFM: Strong. The 79 Euro pricetag was a little scary to me at first, but this is absolutely the most satisfying plugin purchase I've ever made. Well worth it.

STABILITY: In some projects it works beautifully with no trouble at all. In another couple of projects it tended to crash FLStudio after tweaking a newly added instance. Other plugins have given me similar trouble, so I always save before I add new plugins to a track anyway.

Overall I'd give this plugin 9.9 out of 10.Read Review

Frohmage is definitely one of the "must have" free VST effects. i have used it countless times to brighten, colorize, dirty or whatever sounds that were too clean, too dull or whatever. Frohmage kicks ass. The funky GUI may take you a bit to figure out, but after i did, i decided that the funky UI is part of my love of Frohmage.

Frohmage has enabled me to maintain cheesy tracker module instrumentation ported to Sonar by giving them a sparkle (or a grunge) that they lack (module trackers never give the sample back to you as you put it in, i don't know why).

My only negative comment is that it is a mono-effect and therefore you will lose any stereo imaging passed through it. This doesn't matter most of the time (like when i Frohmaged the cheesy guitar licks in an old module), but if you want to maintain the stereo image... i guess you have to go buy QuadFrohmage (which i am seriously considering at this moment, myself).

Frohmage has been FUN and i plan to have more fun with it in future.Read Review

This is the most interesting filter I ever used.

I have PSP nitro, Ohmforce QF and few other free or reaktor filters.
but this thing just stands out from crowd.

user interface is great. for every ohmforce products there is
standard(classic) skin and Funky skin.
I usually start with classic skin because all the parameter is
layed out clearly.
after I get used to classic skin then I move to funky skin.
I love funky skin. it just make plug-in joy to use.
more I look at the plug-in, more I want to use it, and also
it gives me more creative ideas :-)


QuadFrohmage has 4 filters. and each filter has good number of
mode like LP,HP,BP,BR,Moog LP etc.

and as for almost every ohmforce, you can have independent
LFO and Env for every parameter.
it just makes everything so much easier than having few
set of modulation matrix source and target.

so you can do almost everything you can imagine with filter FX with
QF.

but what's with all this amazing GUI and features if it doesn't
sound good.

well it does sound GOOD, very good.
by comparing to other filters, QF usually sound dirty and aggressive.
which mean you can make soft mellow lead sound really
distorted and make it scream.

but it can do simple soft LP filtering too.
it's just that I like it to sound aggressive.

Ohmforce provides really good docuement with QF.
also, they have tutorial for Quad Frohmage.
I've read all of there documents and it gives me
clear idea of what it can do and shows me all the
parameters that I need to know.

I don't use any of supplied presets but I did auditioned many of
presets and they were excellent. I just don't use them becuase I
like to make my own presets or make setting as I make music.

some people might think this plug-in is quite expensive but
with all these features it's worth the money.
it's just the best filter you can buy with money.
I recommand all of Ohmforce's plug-ins.


oh it never crashed on me :-)

so I give this plug-in 10/10.
good job Ohmforce!Read Review

Let me count the ways I love Symptohm:
(1) It takes a static picture of a sound and breathes life into it. You can twist and pull and wrench and turn that sound over and under, backwards and forwards. The results are full and rich *and* clear and penetrating, and, most of all, musical. It does bread and btter with the same ease as deep fried peyote muffins.
(2) It introduces both a new form of synthesis and the Melohman technology. So it's innovative, too, something that immediately differentiates it from 99% of the plug-ins out there. And these innovations aren't just of the madly experimental sort, but are highly useable. Melohman, particularly, is aimed at players, not just tweakers, although it's a tweaker's delight, too. There's no other synth out there that can do these things: reason enough to buy it.
(3) It has, in the funky skin, the nicest GUI I have ever seen. I love the fact that ohmforce covered it in strange drawings and weird victorian decoration. And more mad apes than you can shake a stick at.
(4)Artistic merits aside, it's a clear and logical design: the signal flow is mapped onto the GUI itself. Which is handy given all the routing configurations. And as already mentioned, those knobs just ooze quality.
(5) There's more modulations per square centimetre than any other synth I have ever used. Virtually every parameter can have it's own envelope and its own lfo. Adding modulations doesn't thin the sound out the way it does in so many plugins.
(6) The filters sound really, really good. The quadfromage concept fits perfectly here.
(7) Metapatches are also an excellent solution to a perennial problem: you create an excellent patch but you have to tweak it slightly for different tracks. So you end up saving the same named preset all over the place. Metapatches centralise this and allwo you to switch easily between variations.
(8) Ohmforce support is among the best in the business.

What don't I like, then? To be honest, not too much. The are elements on the GUI that could be easier to read (a few too many shades of grey in places) but once you know what they do it doesn't matter. The multiple levels of modulation and routing could be confusing for a newcomer, but then you don't have to use these features to their fullest: Symptohm functions very well as a rwo oscillator single filter synth. Mising features? I'd like to be able to modulate the modulators, and modulate the filters using the oscillators as well. The documentation is clear if a bit on the brief side. A tutorial would be helpful for the less experienced user, particularly regarding routing.

Reading over this review, it sounds more like a marketing release, but I am genuinely blown away. I don't work for ohmforce, nor do I have any affiliation with them. I just love their work. Symptohm has become my favourite synthesizer, hardware included, and the first thing I load when I start new projects.Read Review

GUI ... a bit awkward at first to be honest with the 3 page design (and its not the most compact interface youve ever seen either) - but each page is pretty logically laid out (if youre familliar with quad frohmage then the filter page is straightforward anyway) ... as ever the ohmforce virtual knobs are the best on any VSTi (with the way they lock the mouse cursor and their nice 'weighted' effect - as well as the intuitive fine control method too)

SOUND ... its quite possible that were you so inclined you could get pretty much any sound you wanted out of just this one synth - the sample based oscilators mean that you can use anything from single cycle simple waveforms (and use melohman like a 'normal' VA synth) to big complex sounds (that you can manipulate and mangle to do the 'one note track' type tricks) ... the quality of the sound is great too as you might expect from ohmforce - particularly when youve got the mighty quad frohmage filterbank as your synths filter stage ... as with all things ohmforce though you need to tread carefully with this beast - if youre not careful you might think its only capable of nasty noisy sounds which is DEFINITELY not the case

FEATURES ... on the surface it looks like a simple featureset (2 oscilators / noise generator / admittedly big filter section) but once you get into the modulation possibilities (per-parameter envelopes and LFOs and deep deep MIDI control) its obvious that melohman can play on the level of the more obviously complex monster synths (z3ta+ / rhino / albino / etc) ... the metapatch system is a unique feature and should be a BIG selling point for live players (and still quite fun for us tweakers actually)

DOCS ... comprehensive and fairly easy to understand (if youre into that RTFM stuff)

PRESETS ... again - on the surface you might think that the list of presets was a bit on the small side (although a lot more have been added to the latest version release) but once you remember that each preset contains 12 patches (thanks to the metapatch system) things start to look more healthy ... these range from eminently usable bread-and-butter sounds like basses and pianos (all with an ohmforce twist) through to more esoteric monstrous noises that possibly only the abstract among us will ever get serious use out of ... all this ignores the fact that melohman is (with the already mentioned modulation system) one of the best tweaking synths available - load up your own samples and start playing with stuff (not always conducive to making finished music but HUGE fun nonetheless)

SUPPORT ... never needed it for melohman but have heard nothing but good things about the ohmforce people in this respect - they have an active presence on the K-v-R forums and are always good-natured (if quirky) in their communications - they also issue the best newsletter of any VSTi developers i know

VFM ... for what it can do when you start to delve under the hood this thing gives VERY good bangs for the buck

STABILITY ... melohman has NEVER crashed or stuttered on any of the setups ive used it on (other than a wierd disappearing knob GUI issue when i installed it on my new laptop - but that stopped with closing and reloading the plugin) ... it can however (as mentioned above) be a little unpredictable (read as - potentially painful for ears) in terms of the sound it produces if you dont take the time to learn how it reacts to the tweaks you makeRead Review

After about four hours of fiddling around with this beast I've come to the conclusion that Melohman: Symptohm is one of the finest synthesizers ever created in software. In fact, if it was a hardware unit I think it might sell big. What makes it so special?
The pure musicality, tweakability and playability makes it stand out from it's competition. The meta patch concept that allows you to morph patches smoothly, or instantly, from one another via the normal MIDI keys is just ingenious! One of those rare "how come nobody else thought about this?" things.
Another favourite feature of Symptohm is the super flexible per parameter midi scaling (yes PER PARAMTER!!), envelope and LFO. This makes the synth very intuitive to use and extremely flexible. The only shortcoming is that all those Enevlopes and LFO's for the parameters can't be modulated themselves in any way except automation maybe. This is not a big issue though as usually only fully modular designs or synths with complex modulation matrixes let you do this.
The two oscialltors are some kind of granular synthesis things that can take any sample and turn it into something completely different. It usually takes very little time to get some satisfying results from even simple short samples. You can even import your own samples while still keeping the preset settings on all the knobs and buttons so you don't need to start programming from scratch. I guess it's done to encourage the user to try out a lot of different samples for crazy sounds.
Symptohm is not just a "crazy swirling distorted multilayered pad" kind of synth, no, it's a highly playable subtle instrument with immense character. The way you can make nearly every knob respond to velocity, pitch (hi and lo key too), any midi CC, mod wheel etc. guarantees that it's always going to be a dream to play live. It can also make those same old boring wannabe 303 and phat trance sounds if you need to but hey, if that's all you need then, well, let's say that you're just a waste of the Melohman's time.
Deep, challenging but still intuitive programming possibilities. Rich sound and highly playable. Beautifully rendered GUI with the highest quality virtual knobs and buttons that you can find anywhere and for the money the Ohmies are asking, it's a bargain!

Note: I don't know about the Customer Support but my guess is that it's excellent considering the feedback from the Ohmies on this very forum.Read Review