Phase Plant released

[dionenoid]

So cool to be able to use SnapHeap and Multipass inside Phaseplant. And some nice other improvements. This synth is getting better and better.

[BONES]

Trying the 10-day trial base version, with just the free snapins. Being the base version, almost all of the presets are full of locked features/snapins.

As a result, after a while it starts feeling more like a demo than a base version. While it's clear that one can do a fair amount with just those free features, I'm beginning to get the impression that buying the base version would just lead to frustration more than anything.

They are just effects, you don't need them at all. You can use all the other effects you already have as insert and send effects in your host application. All the important bits are there, you can make whatever sounds you like without any of the snap-ins. I went through and disabled a heap of snap-ins I don't have in a few patches and it hardly made any difference at all. To be honest, most of it feels like lazy sound design to me. I've already made heaps of good, usable patches without anything more than I have.

If I have a gripe, it's that there isn't anywhere near enough variety in the filter styles. The new update has brought us some minor expansion but, to be honest, they don't go nearly far enough. The filter is very workmanlike - it does the job but it doesn't have a lot of character. It would be nice to see a few different filter models available, especially something with a little more bite.

[tdm71]

From what I understand, the plugins that were used to create the patches are open for those patches. It shouldn’t be a situation where they’re locked on general presets

[BONES]

They are locked, in that you cannot edit them from the settings for the preset.

[tdm71]

They are locked, in that you cannot edit them from the settings for the preset.

Gotcha. Can you turn them off? Are the snap-ins that good that they are worth the money?

[BONES]

Yes, you can turn them on and off. Snap-ins are just effects, they do what you expect them to and not much else. I have owned a few for a while - Faturator, Trance Gate and Ensemble - but I would describe them as workmanlike, rather than inspirational.

[ckam03]

So I've been playing with both Phase Plant and Pigments and can't decide which one I like better. For those that own both, which do you prefer and why?

[highkoo]

I was unable to decide between them. To me they sound very different.
Pigments is thicker and rounder. PP is an endless crisp playground.

[BONES]

Yeah, it's a tough choice but I think Pigments would win out in the end, mostly on the strength of the workflow. It's easy for PP to get to a point where you have to scroll and scroll all the time to find things.

[DJErmac]

Imho Pigments is purely uninteresting sonically and Phaseplant has a huge potential as far as sound is concerned (but a lot of details from the interface should be fixed). Pure matter of tastes, of course, but that's an extra opinion. I must admit I haven't worked with the synths so far, I'm strictly talking about the sonic aspect. Nothing at all made me want Pigments, neither 1 or 2, but Phaseplant was on my radar all along.

[yellowmix]

I've long been championing Phase Plant as the FM synth to beat, so while the filter additions are more than welcome, it helps to be in an FM mindframe where you're building up the sound with operators or by layers. You can make some incredibly rich and interesting sounds by modulating the FM and amplitude amounts. Think of the filter as general or performance shaping and it becomes a lot easier.

The Snap-Ins are all post-effects so like Bones said, not that necessary. The advantage of having them is if you do not have a third-party replacement or if you want to leverage the modulation system and synchronize it. But in my experience the post-effects are just that, fluff to make a patch more ready-to-use. I usually turn them all off.

Also agreed that the Snap-Ins are largely utilitarian in their laser-like focus. If anything creative is to come out of it, it is by combining them to become greater than the sum of their parts. Thankfully we've always had the free SnapHeap. I like a handful enough to consider them top contenders, like the pitch shifter, ensemble, and formant filter. Disperser is an interesting utility, it's basically an allpass that creates headroom for a specific frequency. But you can modulate it for creative uses.

Pigments is a lot more traditional and easier to handle. I've travelled that road already, so I find myself in the new playground that is Phase Plant.

P.S. The visual wavetable editor in Phase Plant is one of the most accessibly powerful ones right now.

[plexuss]

So I've been playing with both Phase Plant and Pigments and can't decide which one I like better. For those that own both, which do you prefer and why?

I like them both

[BONES]

Nothing at all made me want Pigments, neither 1 or 2, but Phaseplant was on my radar all along.

Was that purely based on the demo sounds you'd heard? I can't recall hearing any PP demo sounds. I was instantly interested in it for the idea behind it but at $169 I was never going to buy it, so I didn't really go any further with it until last week.

I thought a lot of the PP presets were pretty ordinary but I persisted because I had a few ideas about how I could take advantage of its modular structure. It was only when I got to the "Bass Hard" folder that I started to get excited, whereas I was into Pigments after previewing just the first dozen or so patches. They weren't sounds I thought I might use myself but they spoke to the sound quality on offer straight away. Still, Pigments didn't impress me enough to pay full price for it but at $69, along with the v2 update, it wasn't a hard decision at all. $99 for PP definitely was.

I've long been championing Phase Plant as the FM synth to beat, so while the filter additions are more than welcome, it helps to be in an FM mindframe where you're building up the sound with operators or by layers. You can make some incredibly rich and interesting sounds by modulating the FM and amplitude amounts. Think of the filter as general or performance shaping and it becomes a lot easier.

As long as that's what you want to use it for. It is not what I want to use it for at all, although I imagine there would be much better ways of doing the FM thing than a window full of operators that you have to endlessly scroll through all the time.

[yellowmix]

Yeah, I really don't know a good way around that since it is a 32-OP FM synth with 100% modular routing. If you want something like the DX7 algorithms you can create presets, but you still need to scan for and look at your designated names. I think an "overview" window for quick navigation may help, boxes with the module names and click-to-focus. Or a matrix like in FM8. That's still my favorite workflow for FM OP routing.

[Trancit]

The Snap-Ins are all post-effects so like Bones said, not that necessary. The advantage of having them is if you do not have a third-party replacement or if you want to leverage the modulation system and synchronize it. But in my experience the post-effects are just that, fluff to make a patch more ready-to-use. I usually turn them all off.

You both miss one of the most interesting features of the snapin system...:

These can be used polyphon!!!
I.e. means with all these EQ´s, distortions and what not you could for example built your own special filters for each voice... and now with snapheap and multipass included you can go even a lot deeper in terms of parallel filtering or different filters on different frequency bands...
For sound design this snapin system is more than fabulous and now after the 1.8 update the most advanced I can think of in a VST...

And honestly: 9.99€ a month isn´t really a lot of money especially when getting 80% refunded via a voucher which you can collect over the years and buy the whole package afterwards while you have used them already some years without restriction...
The do sales quite regulary and getting everything for about 300,-€ isn´t that expansive after all...