Vengeance Sound

After spending a few days with this fun, approachable synth / workstation powerhouse, I've begun to feel like what some people say about it might be at least somewhat true - - that it is tailored mostly toward house & trance artists.

I really enjoy many of the sounds that are included with the stock version of this synth, I like the embedded sequencers, and I like how easy it is to bind MIDI in standard and creative ways, but... As a general sound designer and someone who makes mostly music that ISN'T trance or house, I keep feeling pulled by Avenger toward making those genres.

It feels like it's harder to make other styles, including ambient, drone, bass music, glitch hop, etc, and that the dev really built this for eurovision fans lol.

I am undecided. I'll probably keep it and use it for rhythmic melody and creative inspiration, but I would like it if more categories of sound inside this synth felt general purpose.

Unfortunately 1 star is due to the protection that this Avenger VPS has that I bought and after a couple of months it asked me to 'register' it again ??? what the fuck? I had to stop a project I was working on in my DAW to find the username and password for the V-Manager, then I had to re-start all instances within the project because it wouldn't take the change. It is a shame that after having spent hundreds of dollars and having registered it, it asks me for license registration again, it has no meaning other than to "remove" potential buyers. DO NOT MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE, DO NOT BUY THIS VST until this stupid thing has been corrected.

***** Opinion updated on December 1, 2022 *****

I think it's a great synthesizer after all, I shouldn't detract from the sound quality and the synthesis features that are incredible, just for an opinion against the protection system that the synthesizer uses, I think it's not fair and for That's why I withdraw and give it 5 stars for the magnificent sound and the quality of its library. Hopefully the protection will be reviewed and improved in the not too distant future.

Simple question:

So how does VPS Avenger stack up against other heavyweight softsynths?

* It's no contest: at the moment VPS Avenger has them beat in all aspects. The workflow feels natural and there is an unbelievable amount of included presets amongst the factory content and expansions.

It's definitely the easiest digital synth we've used in terms of opening a preset and then dialing in the sound we want. Compared to other synths, the GUI is intuitive throughout- from the sequencer to modulation routing, to dialing in complex waveforms.

Most importantly, though, it sounds absolutely incredible, with that characteristic Vengeance energy, power and richness married to the deep textural nuance that only wavetable synthesis can bring.

Overall, we were very impressed by VPS Avenger. It sounds amazing, and the sonic possibilities are limited only by your imagination. If you're a synthesis newbie, this might not be the easiest place to start in terms of learning and understanding synth programming, but if you've got some experience under your belt, Avenger is a treat that you won't quickly outgrow. And, the presets alone will have you creating inspiring music right off the bat. This is a worthy sonic addition to any MIDI studio.

I own Avenger 1.7 but I stepped back to 1.4.1 because of CodeMeter. The design of the synth is almost perfect, and the possibilities are really huge.

BUT:

With CodeMeter I do not own it any more. It only works for 90 days (!!!!!), then I have to validate my license online (really every 90 days, unbelievable!). My second computer had problems with that, I had email contacts for one week, remote support from Keilwerth, did not help.

The good side of all: in my anger I looked around and found Parawave Rapid Synth which has almost the same features and a reasonable protection. Bought it, installed it, perfect. It also has a very easy to use granular section, as well as a very ergonomic design .

When they move away from Codemeter, I will install a higher version of Avenger again.

Great sounds. BUT, this plugin is a huge CPU hog, hits it hard, and slows down your PC.

Its heavy and not easy to run plugin, and after many years its still as bad.

So we can only hope the will optimize the code in the future.

I'm working with VPS Avenger for a long time. It's still number one synth for me. Because it's not just a wavetable or fm synth. It's powerful production station.

Absolute awesome and worth the money! Sounds incredible and the routing possibilities are countless.This synth is a paradise for sound designers. Also the support response is top. Well done Keilwerth Audio!!

I am in love with this synth. I demo'd it for a while and finally purchased it yesterday. It is hands-down the best synth I've owned. This is the first synth where I've actually smiled and said "God I f*cking love this synth" on multiple occasions while using it.

The sound is incredible and the feature set is amazing. The routing capabilities are super flexible. The effects sound awesome. The arpeggiator is world-class.

The interface is amazingly good, which makes it a pleasure to work with the synth. I love how the routing works. I love that "mute" and "solo" buttons appear over each layer when you mouse over them. I love that right clicking each module in the routing draws a red box over the section it applies to. I love how the modules have the colors of the applicable layer above them to make it easy to see what's going on. I love that the envelopes pop up when you're adjusting a parameter, and that they clearly show a dot that moves over the envelope in time. I love how it shows the chord you're playing up at the top. There are so many thoughtful additions and "quality of life" features that the developers put into the synth to make it easy to use and intuitive.

The developer is on KVR all the time and actively engaged with the community. There's tons of videos showing the features.

I was a little concerned that it might be too resource-hungry for my PC but I loaded up 10 instances of it with different arpeggiated presets, each playing 4-note chords, and all of those being sent to one separate convolution reverb plugin, and my system was able to run it without problems (I have an Intel I7, 4 core 3.2 GHz, 8 gigs ram) although the RAM was almost maxed out at that point. I consider that a "stress test" since I doubt I'll have 10 instances ever loaded in a song with that many notes playing at once. So if you have lesser specs you might want to test the demo out before buying to make sure it will run well.

Other than that, I finally found the perfect synth for me after years of trying different ones and I highly recommend it.