W. A. Production

I got this recently for $12 on plugin boutique. At this price, hardly worth it. The vast number of presets are padded out with a bunch of versions for some presets that sound hardly different. Nothing inspiring here, and ugly interface. Surge xt is infinitely better for free. Uninstalled it in a flash.

When I began writing this, with Babylon 2 still running on my DAW as I wrote, I gave this 2 stars and began writing an angry review about a product that seemed poor because as soon as I installed Babylon2, it immediately hard locked Cubase 14. My C14 install hasnt crashed once in 6+ months, so this was a surprise.

So I reloaded C14 and gave this another shot, and played with it for an hour or so. My initial thoughts were "ohhhh, brother. Here is ANOTHER analogy sounding, "classic" sounding throwaway synth that I have no use or attention span for."

Then, as I played more and more presets, skipping past some of the boring presets at the very top of the list, I began to hear a sound signature that my ears began to like. Does it have many layers? Many interesting oscillator types? No. Its 3 oscillators + a noise generator, a filter, a few basic effects that sounds pretty basic, but it has a tone that my ear genuinely likes, over other cheaper, simpler synths in a similar category. There is a... warmth, purity, and cleanliness that I appreciate, and even with 8-10 note polyphony, it "rings" clearly in my ears like a high fidelity signal instead of a dirty, aliased dime-a-dozen analog emulator.

I like this synth. It has not crashed Cubase again in 3 hours now, so this is good. If it kills Cubase again I will update this review with that info, but In the end I gave this 4 stars for audio quality. 1 star removed for limited oscillator types and narrow sonic character and things like 5 clap sounds that are identical, but its overall a good SOUNDING synth imo.

Can often replace more complex harmonizers, can often replace overly simple stereo widener/ microshifting plugins, sounds great. Unfortunately comes with horrible latency.

This synth is solid, offering a well made UI and a pretty good sound. I am not someone who uses presets, however despite that, I find that a lot of them are a bit lackluster. It is also functionally rather standard, which isn't exactly a problem, however I believe it is on the more pricey side for what it offers (however I did get this synth for free, which in that case it was absolutely worth downloading). Overall, good synth for bread and butter sound design.

Only bought this when it was on sale for under 20 but eventhough it is very good made I rarely ever grab it. It's different to other synts out there but still.

Puncher 2 is a great tool for putting real thump into your drums, especially kicks. I used to use it on kick channels and it never failed to improve the impact and cut-through. These days, because I don't separate my drum channels any more, I put it on the drum mix and it works just as well. I would never even think of doing a mix without it.

It definitely works best on kicks but when used on a drum mix it can also add a bit of an edge to the other percussion sounds, too. I mostly just use the presets it comes with, one of the first 5 or 6 will always give me what I want. Trying to dial it in manually feels a lot more hit and miss, probably because I've never bothered to try and understand how it works. There is no need to. The CPU hit is minimal, the interface is simple and clean and it has never failed to give me what I want.

I try not to give 5 stars too often but this is definitely one effect I would never want to be without. Give it a go, put it on your kick channel and try a few presets and you'll understand why.

This one is bad. I don't think its a good or well made plugin. Got this some time ago for free.

Aviod.

I will come back and update this after the dev gets back to me on my support request. Im using this on Win10, on Cubase 12 pro as a plugin.

First impressions: very simple, colorful, intuitive software with an easy-to-understand workflow for designing and generating chords and note progressions. I was able to quickly set up and register the software, and routing and playback was no trouble (I also use other MIDI generator/chord/scale plugins and they all route similarly).

What stopped me in my tracks is that I couldnt get Chords Pro to play back the right number of notes per bars when my DAW was in cycle mode, no matter how many times I tried or how I approached it.

When my DAW has cycle mode off, Chords Pro will continue playing without interruption, playing back(looping) the number of bars specified at the speed specified.

When cycle mode is on, when the play head returns to the start position Chords Pro goes silent for a whole bar every time.

Also, whether cycle mode is on or off, I get a stutter note when Chords first starts to play. Every time. Instead of only the first note or chord of the pattern, it plays twice in rapid succession. This never happens again as long as it keeps playing. Ill come back later if the dev fixes this.