Stillwell Audio

I was enamoured with Olga when it was first released, a long time ago now, but at the time it cost more than I was willing to pay. I loved the GUI and the sound was brutal, just what I like. Someone recently mentioned it in a forum thread, which made me go and check it out again, and I am really glad I did.

There are still only a handful of presets but it's not such a complex beast that hundreds would be of any benefit. This time around, I started from the last preset in the list and worked my way forward, tweaking presets I liked the sound of and saving them off as new patches. What I ended up with was a dozen or so patches that make great starting points for getting Olga into a song.

Whilst it is obviously designed for big, brutal sounds, I have found it surprisingly versatile. The multiple voice modes mean you can dial in exactly the amount of fatness you need and if you don't pump the big, scary dial up too much, it can sound quite nice, easily cutting through even a dense mix without dominating. e.g. I used it instead of a piano in Ultravox's I Remember (Death in the Afternoon) and it does a great job. I've been using multiple instances of it in some projects and it always seems to deliver when I need it to. Olga is almost starting to feel like my new "go to" synth, which I would never have imagined possible. So, needless to say, after a few weeks with the demo I bought it and I'm really happy I did.

As it's been around for a while now, and was designed to run on far less powerful machines, Olga uses very few system resources on a modern computer. It's a very straightforward instrument and I found that after a week or so I no longer need to turn on the English language labels. I imagine, though, that some people will find the GUI too small, even in it's larger size, which is a shame.

Overall, Olga looks amazing and it is so easy to work with that you won't care that it doesn't come with many presets. It also has a big, aggressive sound that can easily overwhelm a mix but, equally, it is capable of some real subtlety when that's what is needed. However you patch it, though, it always gives you want you want with a minimum of fuss. If you download the demo, start from the last preset and work your way forwards, I think you'll be impressed.

This is a one-of-a-kind EQ that I adore. When a plugin applied to a song just doesn't cut it and automating is unintuitive, that's the time to reach for Spectro. It's one of my secret weapons for precision de-essing and intermittent EQ problems. It has saved me hours of grief on many occasions.

The Rocket is a really great all-round compressor. It's one of my favourites. You can use it in just about any situation and quickly dial in the settings you want. The GR meter is one of the best I've come across and the GUI is nice to look at and perfect in size. It also has an "impetus" knob for adding subtle harmonics which is something I don't think I've come across before. If you didn't know already the compressor is modelled on a hardware compressor known as the UA 1176 which was first produced in the late 1960s.

Stillwell makes a big deal about how fast the attack is but generally I don't use it at extremely short attack speeds. However it's nice to know it does go fast if you want it to.

A couple of critcisms and ideas:

Why are the GR / OUT buttons upside down relative to the scale on the actual meter?

The impetus knob is super subtle until right at the far end of the dial. It would be easier to use if the effect was better distributed across the entire dial.

It would save me a few seconds here and there if there was "dry" and "wet" written next to the parallel knob. Generally you would expect dry to be on the left side.

The difference between the ratio buttons is really very subtle. More often than not I find the differences between two ratios completely inaudible but that may be because I use the parallel and input filter quite liberally. Arguably the ratio button concept was more important on the original 1176. That said however, when used aggressively the "all" ratio setting is rather interesting. It sounds quite sexy on a drum kit. Most of the other compressors I've tried can't do this sound. On the Rocket it's only a few clicks away.

Is the oversample x2 or even higher? I'm curious. This is definitely a great feature.

The HP filter on the signal only goes to 200Hz. I usually find that is barely enough.

The compensation slider runs between -20 and +20 decibels. I have no idea why you would want to reduce the volume by 20, and when used on the extreme settings +20 is not enough. In my opinion it would make more sense to run the slider between 0 and 30db.

Thanks Stillwell.

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PS: Some more stuff you may like to know before using the Rocket!!.

The impetus knob does literally nothing for precisely the first 50%! (Confirmed by null test). When turned up beyond this it seems to add some higher order odd harmonics, ie 5th and 7th etc etc.

With oversample activated the plug consistently performs 2db louder. It makes it difficult to compare oversample results. It seems to be a bug as the oversample features on other compressors don't do this.

There's a lag on the parallel knob. Can't think why this would be desirable. It may be a bug. If you turn the knob swiftly from one side to the other it takes a second or two for the audio to catch up.