Ohm Force

Some reviews say the interface is difficult to figure out. In my view, that is the best feature of the plugin. This forces you to listen to the sound you are creating. I find it a powerful creative tool that really is inspirational. The automation implementation is very good as well. One welcome feature is the ability to change the time it takes to morph from one preset to another. My comments about the general structure apply to their other plugins as well. Most of them allow you to choose between a funky skin or a "normal" looking interface. Unfortunately, you have to choose one of the other. It would be nice to be able to alternate between them easily. Their documentation is superb and with the funky interfaces it will pay great dividends to work through them.

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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.

Ohmstudio is a collaborative DAW. This means that, using Ohmstudio, you'll be able to share your projects with musicians allover the world and invite them to contribute to it all "inside the box", download and upload of tracks is a background process that happens while you continue to make music. If you need a guitar track you have not to look for some "strum" plugin, you simply invite a good guitarist and hopefully he'll play his part. After nearly three months of Ohmstudio I know drummers, bass players, guitarists, singers and I can invite them to participate to my tracks. Some great features that make online collaboration easy and effective in Ohmstudio are:

1. All the people collaborating to a project can simultaneously record, edit, apply FX, so you don't have to wait your turn. You may even take your part secret (not audible by others) until you are satisfied with it

2. the changes are automatically uploaded in the background. First a 45 kbit/s version is uploaded and shared with all other users (usually this happens in a few seconds, depending obviously on the duration of the audio file), then a 128 kbit/s, than a loseless one.

3. People participating to a same project don't have to share the same vsts. Let's make an example: I have the XXX vsti and I record a MIDI part for it. If you have XXX in your library you hear it right after I stopped recording. If you don't have XXX I have to freeze it in order for the audio to be uploaded on the servers and downloaded by your computer.

4. All tracks are "cloud" stored, on Amazon servers. So you may access and work at every project in your account from every computer (mac or pc) that has Ohmstudio installed, by entering your login and password and you don't have to be afraid when you have to reinstall OS, all is stored remotely.

5. A same project can be shared by mac and pc users !!!!!

Ohmstudio comes bundled with all Ohmforce FX plus GForce Minimonsta and Oddity, but that's not all. It has also a very musical parametric eq, a good compressor, a basic limiter, a flanger, a vocoder and a nice sounding filter. I want to underline that these plugins make a great value by themselves. (Ohmforce plugins + Minimonsta + Oddity retail for nearly 550 Euro!). Anyway they are in a proprietary VST format, so you won't be able to use them outside Ohmstudio, unless you buy them in standard VST format.

If you need more instruments and FX, Ohmstudio can host VST plugins and instruments. It has a full featured mixer and very very smart and intuitive routing possibilities (sidechain, vocoders are no longer a routing nightmare) based on a modular architecture in which you simply draw virtual cables.

Obviously you have not to expect to find in Ohmstudio all the features you can find in Cubase or Logic or other more mature DAWs, Ohmstudio is really young, so some features are missing and there is still some bug to be solved, that's why I didn't give it full marks. However the development is being really fast. In three months I've seen many many new features added at a rate I have never seen in other daws.

And even if Ohmstudio doesn't meet the power of other more mature DAW, you can build a track from the ground up to the finished version all inside Ohmstudio. What's more, here is

what sets Ohmstudio apart from other DAWS is, in my opinion:

1. THE FUN! Sitting in front of your computer screen all alone to make a track cannot be compared to sharing your track with two or more musicians around the world and chatting while recording, editing, sharing your ideas! Your music will benefit from it. Once I read in a magazine: "So you have composed the song, you have played the bass, the synths, the drums, the keyboards, you have sung ...... so you won't be surprised if you are the only one who will like it". In Ohmstudio ideas are always shared and can really flourish to something good.

2. SUPPORT : Inside Ohmstudio there's a "general chat" where you can almost everytime find some Ohmforce guy online that helps you to solve your problems... or, at least, takes note of your problem. Sometimes this is vital, expecially when a bug is really difficult to describe with words.

3. COHMUNITY After three months of using Ohmstudio I can say that Ohmstudio is like a pub where I go almost each evening to play music with collaborators from all over the world (but now I find it appropriate to call them friends)

4. COLLABORATIVE EVENTS These are pure fun! Each week OhmForce team calls the users for a collaboration event in which you will meet other Ohmstudio users to build a track compliant to some kind of restriction they have announced before (there can be restrictions on the key, on the tempo, on the overall mood......). These are a great way to know other musicians you can invite to your own creations.

4. MUSIC I have never composed so much music! Collaboration enhances creativity! The collaborative character makes you produce more. When I am writing a track, I feel thrilled thinking that I will share it with talented musicians that can give me feedback, ideas and record their contribution having fun with it! I've never composed so much music as I've done with Ohmstudio.

Obviously you have the choice to keep your projects private (only you may open and even see them), share them with trusted collaborators only, or make them public, so that everyone can join.

One suggestion for all: Try it till it's free!