first impressions of the DC12 entrys

[DuX]

So far I *really* like Transient, Proximity and Thrillseeker XTC black. However, not just due to nice GUIs but what they do. These three can be *really* helpful for mixing and saving you [time] from using [well known] tricks to achieve the same effect with other tools. But Thrillseeker is a special tool, I'm referring to Transient and Proximity here.

Oh, I also like the SoftAmp 3OD, Dust Bucket, Vintager Toy, and Philteroid.

That's all for now. I haven't been able to try others so far so I'm reluctant to give any votes. I would like to first try using them in my work, and then decide.

[Trakstar]

Im lovin the 2106 synth, sort of reminds me of native instruments pro 53 and unbelievably made from synth edit modules, incredible sound quality as well so this one gets my vote as well as the thrillseeker EQ, Im betting the thrillseeker EQ wins 1st place because the variety sound stuff of late have raised the freeware standard by miles.

[Compyfox]

I wouldn't bet on that. Actually SleepytimeRecords and Tokyo Dawn Labs are also runner ups in that section.

Though "Proximity" takes the whole game on a completely different level. The DC was always about innovation, and this tool certainly is innovative.


Synth wise, I think g200k will be among the top tiers. Having some competition to U-HE ACE, but in the freeware realm, is definitely not to underestimate.

[Zombie Queen]

Some random notes...

Sifft - I was confused at first, but I like the concept once I figured it out, it does some very interesting noises. I would like to love it, but it crashes on me like crazy. First it crashed when I was changing buffer size, then while manipulating knobs in bottom left section, basically it crashes every time I touch those. Also I dislike the microscopic GUI, I have literally stick my nose to the screen to read labels, though I would live with it, if it wasn't crashing so much.

Philteroid - First it didn't output anything. After the update I was able to make some sound out of it, but nothing to write home about, actually not much of a sound at all, it makes some burps and go quiet, sensitivity switch helps a little bit, but not to make anything useful out of it. I guess I don't get it.

MaxwellSmart - I'm not really a limiter connoisseur I guess, I did some shootout against limiters I have, but couldn't tell much difference.

Clip Shifter - this one didn't load at all as I'm on WinXP, then I've got the special experimental version, which loads alright. Maybe I'm getting it wrong, but I can't get anything out of it, the output is pretty much the same, until I push it really hard when it becomes somewhat distorted. Again, maybe I didn't get it.

Transient - Now this is really cool, I think it's the first transient processor I used that I could actually get working right away and hear some results. I will have to spend more time with it. It's on my voting shortlist.

Vintager Toy - Nice toy, fun concept and easy to play with. I'm not sure, if it's something I could find a use for, but still it was fun to fiddle with.

Full Bucket Frequency Shifter - It does some very cool subtle effects and some cool full monty effects... It's a sort of one trick pony, but I like it. On my voting shortlist.

I shuffled through synthesizers quickly yesterday and I would say I wasn't too impressed overall, maybe I'm spoiled with multitude of quality stuff already here, maybe it was not the right day... However some honorable mentions:

Kamioooka - At first glance the most attractive synth in the lot. Will get back it it for sure.

Poly 2106 - nothing new, but sounds nice and works smoothly.

Acrobatics series - cute lil' toys.

T-C-M - no presets and the thing seems too complex for a quick ride, tagged for later.

I'm really glad we've got soundware this time, they all look tasty, but I'm leaving those for the dessert...

[Flandersh]

My favorites are:

Proximity: Great subtle tool for mixing with good quality of sound, also very nice GUI.

Full Bucket's Frequency Shifter: The use of Hilbert Transform caught my attention, and I found it to sound very nice; something old warm classical phaser sound over it; a great analog emulation soundwise.

Sound Rider: A great mixing and mastering tool with many optional details.

Space360: Worked as expected based on the description and is a valueable tool together with Proximity.

Kamioooka!: Very nice modular synth and a real competitor to ACE and so as mentioned by others.

Philteroid: Great GUI and great many possibilities makes this to one of the better filter plugins out there. May thought be too many possibilities.

[foosnark]

So I was pretty brutal in my judgement; if the functionality of a plugin was not obvious, or if it crashed the host, froze the CPU or otherwise had technical problems, I'm not voting for it. There are a couple of plugins that are unstable that I'll probably use regardless, with paranoid saving of my project at any rate.

My favorites, in no particular order:

Commodore 64 Sessions: At first I thought "samples? In a Developer Challenge?" And "I have Plogue Chipsound already..." But this one has got some great stuff and will see some use.

Azurite: one of the nicer chorus plugins I've used.

Hot Robot: this is so cool. Since I tend to use vocoders only in odd ways anyway, this gives me another tool for madness. I wish the UI had a few more features for manipulating bands -- a "reset" button to spread the bands out to their defaults, global shrink/grow and spread/narrow buttons, and the ability to set relative levels for each band. Maybe for a pro version?

Space 360: As "just" a reverb this is a nice one, but as something to modulate, it's a true joy. Some basic built-in modulation might have been welcome -- a slow LFO to modulate room size just a little maybe -- but the real power will be doing that in the host.

Transient: this will be good both for its intended purpose and for dirtying things in new ways.

Frequency Shifter: if Runciter didn't have a similar tool, I would probably have to mop up the drool. Still, these are rare and this one's well executed.

Minisynth series: I really like Fret and Grit; they are simple but effective.

[nineofkings]

FreqShifter is cool. It seems like a one-trick pony but can be used with Dry/Wet to make vibrato or chorus effects, ringmod, and strange beating sounds.

The real chorus, though, Azurite, is sweet sounding, sits well, and is versatile. Its CPU use is very reasonable to boot.

Kamiooka is another CPU-friendly and versatile plug, surprising for a modular synth. The oscillators are really aliasing-prone, but it works well for dirty digital sounds or sounds with a low filter cutoff. Really fun to play with.

Philtertone's envelope generator can be annoying and I wish there was a way to turn it off, but the sonic possibilities are huge and the actual filter sounds awesome. The GUI looks like rack-mount gear from the future made of starship parts.

Proximity can be handy, it's nice and subtle most of the time. I like it, but I don't see the hype.

SoundRider is fun. Instant YouTube videos?

"Strings" does mostly what it says on the tin, but the quality is weird. The staccato and especially the pizzicato sound really good. The sustained samples, though, especially in the higher registers, sound like brass rather than strings. They're missing some of the brightness of actual violins/violas. Even with the "CC Color Control" I couldn't quite get it to sound convincing.

Thrillseeker XTC is awesome. The "mojo" can make it sound grainy when pushed but the three-band exciter part and the drive is smooth and can be as subtle or obvious as it needs to be.

Clipshifter is a little more involved than a straight-up clipper because of its softness control and built in envelope, but it can be used creatively to sound amazing. The envelope can be used to make transient-aware distortion, which sounds incredible on kick drums, for example.

Maxwell Smart is a good limiter, akin to the Kjaerhus Classic Master Limiter or Loudmax. Unlike some limiters, though, it retains a good amount of definition in the original track.

Transient is good, similar to Flux Bittersweet. It is more customizable than Bittersweet though.

Vintager Toy is nice, but I don't know when I'd use it. Maybe to dirty up a hip-hop kind of snare drum, or to make a drum loop sound like a sample, or to make a whole song sound "older?" Whatever the uses, it achieves its intended effect.

Hot Robot caused horrible crashes in Reaper upon opening. Flame caused not-so-horrible crashes upon being scanned, and wouldn't show up in the VST directory. Poly 2106 sounds really good, but it uses too much CPU for me to keep it.

[andrelafosse]

Nothing on The Penultimate Trilogy yet? Sure, it's a HUGE file(s), but...

SERIOUS collection of totally off the wall loops, sounds, and snippets. Well worth checking out if you're so inclined. Regardless of the format listed, I've been able to load all categories into Ableton with no trouble at all.

[IrionDaRonin]

Nothing on The Penultimate Trilogy yet? Sure, it's a HUGE file(s), but...

SERIOUS collection of totally off the wall loops, sounds, and snippets. Well worth checking out if you're so inclined. Regardless of the format listed, I've been able to load all categories into Ableton with no trouble at all.

I'm wondering if the dev already uploaded everything.
Because i have only 5 rar files now. But in total are 1,5 gygabytes or so. When the original huge file was 5,6 gygas.

I'm waiting for it too.

Have a good day.

[s_t]

About Penultimate Trilogy,
I downloaded it twice, each time the exact same issue: Windows couldn't extract it, 7-zip burbs tons of warning messages and then fails completely at 30%.

[s_t]

Today I noticed that the votes I had put into DC2012 page have been disappeared.

So just a warning, don't trust you're already done with it.

[random_id]

...
Clipshifter is a little more involved than a straight-up clipper because of its softness control and built in envelope, but it can be used creatively to sound amazing. The envelope can be used to make transient-aware distortion, which sounds incredible on kick drums, for example.
...

Thanks, I think this was what I was going for. I know there are mastering tools (like T-Racks) that provide a clipping tool to produce a little boost and grit. I was trying to get a little more features out of my plugin. Specifically, I was looking for something that I could use on bass, kick, snare, room mics, etc. to produce some compressed and dirty sounds. More subtle than extreme; however, some of the tape sims and vintage simulators I have tried to use in the past have not provided enough control of the sound (at least for me).

If you really want to push it, you can always crank the input gain and feed it a normalized signal. Basically, it would function like a guitar distortion stomp box without any of the low-end roll-off.

Matt

[Compyfox]

I'm through the most of the FX plugins - at least the ones that interested me the most.

I unfortunately had to ditch "Hot Robot", since it needs NET4 and Spectrum Analyser S8 (needs Max Runtime). Then I can't load Sound Rider due to reasons unknown, I still wait for an update of SoftAmp 3OD (which looks really interesting), and I don't need to further test Thrillseeker XTC, since I was among the beta testers.



VST:

Philteroid - had to ditch it. It works at insanely high levels, and without a manual it's pretty much "trial and error". GUI is great and fairly clean (reminds me of modern hardware beat machines), hope to see an update with certain enhancements. Then I consider taking a closer look.


Flame - Intersting plugin, would love to see more "matrix typed" multi FX, especially affordable ones. But I had to ditch this one due to nasty noises if no signal is applied and you used the bitcruser.


Delay Studio and Pitched Delay - I put these two on the very same level. I only wish that these two things were combined. Meaning: Delay Studio having a pitch mode and maybe more tabs, while Pitched Delay having a better LFO matrix, a solo mode for individual tabs, and more than 5 (like old ReaDelay). Speaking of ReaDelay - since that thing always crashed on me, I think I finally found an alternative. And dare I even say, that I might ditch Rob Papen's Delay in favor for one of these two.


Space 360 - love this tool. Sad that it's SM only, but still great. Would love to see actual "sizes" of the room in an update after the DC, maybe even more speakers to mess around with, different material of the wall, different room shapes, etc. I could also imagine something like this, with the visual representation of QuikQuak's RaySpace - but I guess that won't ever happen. Still a great piece of software to create virtual ambiences or mess with room reflections.


Vintager Toy - dissapointed. Not drastically, but definitely a lot. Compared to old Vinyl in Cubase or izotope's Vinyl, the <60ies sound's still to "modern", only muffled. The concept is there, I like the "Back to the Future" type layout, but the sound is just not there.


Azurite - plain and simple chorus effect. Very versatile. Don't know if I'll keep it. But it offers something that other choruses don't. Works on guitars, bass, synths. I'll keep it for the time being.


FreqShifter - hm... dunno what to make of this tool. Barely needed a frequency shifter up until now.


Ignite Amps PTEQ-1A - a solid pultec EQ. These people know their game. Can't add much more.


Proximity - definitely one of the top tiers in this challenge. Hope to see some updates (like a different mic algo, more prominent reflections, etc). It will have it's use in my studio. Especially with external productions.


Transient - also simple yet powerful. SleepyTime Records came out of nowhere (like Variety of Sound back in the day) and provides excellent tools. Same in this case as well. It does offer features that other transient designers lack. I hope to see a Mac port eventually. And I definitely hope to see more from that developer.


Bioids - sorry, way over my head this one.


ClipShifter - simple clipping tool, IMO nothing that shakes the world.



TOOLS:

VST Plugin Preset Match - cool concept, but I'm dissapointed due to two things: a) it's basically a fundraiser for VST Plugin Analyser v2 (whenever that might happen) and it might not be developed any further, especially if there is no interest. And b) it's buggy, or better said incompatible with a lot of plugins. The tool is definitely hit and miss, some additional C.Budde plugins come bundled (which were not available through his page if I saw that right). I just don't know what to make of it.



VSTi:

BEAT Black Mamba - I ditched it. It's not my cup of tea, and the use of a "magazine bound" VSTi rather than just offering the samples is highly questionable for me.


Kamiooojka - definitely one of the better VSTi entries. Of course it's not U-HE Ace, but heck - it's a freeware modular synth. Sound Designers, this is pretty much a gift for you.


KlingKlang - er... nice, but nothing more. Some fun sounds, but it's not something I'd give points for.


MATRIX 8000 - I really, really, really(!!!) tried to make a use out of it. The GUI is pretty much self-explanory, but preset switching is no fun. The delay is annoying, causing a lot of feedback loops and the bundled sounds are just not representative at all. At least it's fully controllable with the BCR2000 - but without a manual or futher info how to set up the BCR... er, okay.




SOUNDWARE:

still have to test them. But I'm divided on The Penultimate Trilogy (someone please fix the links? thanks!) and I haven't checked out the rest yet.




So yeah... I think that's it for me. Nothing more to test except sounds), nothing more that's interesting me.

[AXP]

I thought it a bit brash as well before it occurred to me that just listening to the plug on its owen is a bit like plugging a guitar overdrive pedal straight into a mixer. Needs cab sim etc to smooth the highs. Once I did that then the character came through. Nice. Look forward to trying it out with my guitar soon, I like simple fx chains and have never found an all-in-one guitar amp plug I totally liked. Can see 30D being part of my chain from now on.

By the way, the new version that I've just uploaded should sound a little bit smoother when pushed harder.

[Zombie Queen]

some more random notes:

Commodore 64 Synthesizer Sessions - the names of developers are familiar, so I expected good stuff. And yes, this is brilliant, some classic sounds nailed. It's very cool to have those in both nki and sfz, so I can load them to Alchemy as a oscillator or Kontakt to play with the nice gui. The samples naming scheme made it a bit more work to remap samples for Kontakt, but that's minor annoyance. It's on my voting list.

Modulok - I scanned free sections of Waveshaper site before, so again this was familiar with it in a way and again it's good stuff. Well done and described properly. On my voting list too.

Black Mamba - One more sampler is definitely not something I'm interested in. But seeing sfz inside I thought I could treat is as soundware, putting all included software dilemma aside. I tried to load sfz to sfz - no sound, nada, null. Tried in Alchemy - ok, these work. But, no looping, everything is build of one shot samples, a quick look into files tells me it has been mapped by some Cakewalk mapping software. There's no documentation, no license, no word where the samples are coming from. It doesn't look like much effort has been put in it. Sorry.

Penultimate Trilogy - This is hell of cryptic stuff to me, but it looks amusing on paper. After a deeper look into the sounds, my excitement cooled down reasonably. Some of this stuff is interesting, especially IR section, but not really worth the disk space alone for me. If this idea has been reworked into algorithmic reverb, it would be something unique. Anyway, concerning that there's still no way to get the whole of the submission (I understand it may be troublesome to host that much data, but maybe it wasn't such a good idea to make such big submission in the first place) and that the large portion of it is a cut down version of not so new commercial product... it's a drop for me.

Sifft (again) - so in another thread, I noticed it has been updated. It's kind of silly, as the thread seem to concern a sound demo and it's mentioned sort of in between the lines, while on main submission page there's no hint it has been updated for bugs and the version is described as "0.0". Anyway it crashes in the same way as before. Some samples load some don't and the plugin won't give you a hint it could read the file or not. In the other thread I see developer suggesting to anticipate crashes and work around them... Seriously, it's just too much mess to mess with.