rs-met

Brilliant equaliser. Intuitive and easy-to-learn. Extremely powerful.

Cannot stress how powerful this EQ is. it lets you do everything you could ever want for an EQ: mono controlling, left/right control, unlimited bands, individual changing of mode of band to be highpass, lowpass, high/low shelving, or peak/trough, along with the basic features and shortcuts of scroll for band width/resonance, right click to place a band, left click to remove one.

It even has four different views for stereo/mono viewing and control. That's something I haven't seen an EQ do before, but a convenience I didn't know I needed.

This may be free, but for its convenience and power, against its low CPU load and ease, it's worth a lot. Recommend it to anyone looking for an equalizer.

OMG, i can't believe no one has ever commented on this little gem yet. 5 stars, hands down. see, I got introduced to the concept of having a "formularparser" in a VST plugin by xfer serum, where it is used for many things like making 2d- or 3d-wavetables, modifying existing wavetables or setting up the wavetable editor for certain types of sample import. that was way before i started developing myself and i loved it. when i was bored in math class i pulled out my phone and pretended to do math for school, but i was really doing math for myself in the mobile app "grapher", where i came up with the fanciest looking graphs that i then tried in serum when i got home. Ofc at some point I just decided to google for more plugins with a formularparser and this was basically the only other good plugin i found. honestly it has a bit less of a hype factor than serum, because only certain shapes work well on most material when used as a waveshaper, but it's still huge and became one of my favourite distortion plugins. you know, when you are developing plugins you're constantly asking yourself if a certain feature you wanna add is overkill or not. you don't want to cluster the gui too much and make it feel inviting to new users. but in funcshaper the user can define the transfer function that is used by the plugin to distort the signal yourself. you can just input ridiculous shit that no plugin developer ever added to a plugin before, even if they have considered it. and you can do this for every individual sound you drive through this thing, completely customized, but still as simple as it can get, with this super small and straight-forward interface. you don't even have to be any good at maths, believe me. just slap some functions at it that you remembered from school or read about in the manual and see what happens. there will be a lot of happy accidents.

It's so absolutely simple to use, this is exactly what I've been looking for. A lightweight simple EQ to use as a low-pass, high-pass, etc. Thank you so much.

very underrated filter plugin, btw. i just wish it had automations or other modulation options.

I agree with the previous reviewer that this soft synth deserves greater recognition! Perhaps this soft can best be described as a function generator in the disguise of a synth; at it's core, it's an exceptionally powerful wave-shaping engine that extends the oscillator and envelope toolsets in bold and beautiful ways. And it sounds fantastic! Some may not like the GUI because of the lack of eye-candy (no knobs, for one thing); but I found Straightliner's GUI fast, easy, fun, and very readable causing no distraction as I manipulated the synth's parameters. The waveform displays provide the user with immediate feedpack to adjustments made to many of the oscillator parameters; and there's a large osc parameter list to work with! It really does feel like you're playing with pieces of string that directly represent the oscillator waveforms; I would guess that with enough knowledge and practice, you could make almost any waveform shape that you could think up! It should be noted that Straightliner uses flac and XML file formats which are well known and widely used.

Yes, indeed, this is the golden age of the soft-synth industry-many of the soft synths that we all know and love are produced and supported by micro companies like rs-met.

Bottom Line: Straightliner is a found treasure, a jewel. It won't capture you with a gadget-filled, breath-takingly gorgeous GUI-it doesn't have one of those; But what it does provide the user with is complete, and noteably the oscillator and envelope toolsets are superb; really well though-out. And to repeat for emphasis: The sound of Straightliner is excellent!

A solid 10/10

What, no review of Straightliner yet?

Most underrated VST synthesizer- just listen to the demo sounds at the rs-met site. One of the handful of software synths that does not need to be hyped with effects to keep up with real acoustic and analog sounds in the mix, or need these sounds to be watered down. But easily toned down to smooth padding if that is what you need because its strong presence is not due to harshness, but to clarity. Very expressive envelopes, smooth filters. Countless waveform possibilities. Far more sound design possibilities than first meet the eye- the envelopes and osc. parameters under "more" are key.

Great no-nonsense GUI. In fact, a no-nonsense synthesizer. The price is a mere token, if you are familiar with the prices of instruments with quality sound.

Only the lack of a true noise source keeps me from giving Straightliner a 10.

Background:

My first experience playing synthesizers in a public concert was with an Arp Odyssey- and it was not a "vintage" synth at that time. I still have hardware, including the original discrete analog Vermona monosynth and a Moog Theremin. Primarily I use Csound and acoustic instruments. Straightliner is the only VST synthesizer I still use, after trying and owning many, since VST first began.