Noise Engineering free and paid bundles - AAX, AU, VST3

[SLiC]

Yeh, its great to see 'boutique' VSTs

[briefcasemanx]

I find it strange that I even have to write any of this out, this is very basic and obvious. There's a reason why companies that sell lots of units and make lots of money (i.e. know how to market) almost universally try to give their products catchy, palatable, memorable names.

Loquelic Iteritas and Basimilus Iteritas Alter sold LOTS of units. They're one of the more successful small Eurorack companies.

Your personal preference for names is not a universal constant. I have seen a very small number of other people complain about them but I doubt it's hurting their sales any. I find the names easier to remember than Doepfer's bland model numbers, and easily just as distinctive as any other brand's names. They make as much sense as "Pamela's New Workout" or "Belgrad" or "Rainmaker" or "Kermit" or "Mangrove" or "Plaits," none of which I have any trouble remembering either.

Are we talking about physical eurorack modules, (which is an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT SPACE, with a different audience, different price point, different consumer space considerations, different product expectations, different manufacturer market saturation, etc etc etc) or are we talking about plugins right now?

I guess this pointless argument over super, super basic marketing 101 level stuff will continue...

[foosnark]

It's a pointless argument all right. Let's break KvR tradition by not bothering to continue with it.

[pekbro]

I think it's a pretty standard and prudent strategy to develop and release a product for free and then target the same segment that was interested in that free product with a paid follow up or related product. Particularly when your products are generally considered niche (techno) and not likely to generate much interest beyond that niche. As for fancy UI's and graphics, yeah that stuff cost money and time to develop, and why would you even bother to do that when your brand is already identifiable by a unique graphic style and naming convention with pretty much all the people who are going to be interested in the stuff. The plugin's are just something that they can manage without much expenditure that can provide some extra income and the bonus of comparatively low cost entry into their customer base for those who are interested, yet unable to afford entry into their primary product line. There is not really much incentive to go out of their way for anything beyond that I think.

[v1o]

Hrast's Tranzistow and Diodow have a similar issue with weird names and GUIs that won't be to everyones taste. Tranzistow could possibly be one of the best VST synths ever coded by anyone but no one talks about it.

[foosnark]

The Noise Engineering plugins are minimalist and have that hacker-ish font, and the silly "fire" effect (that is on by default, ugh) and are just not pretty in general. It's fairly consistent with the branding on their Euro stuff. But they're not crowded, they're functional, there are helpful visual representations of waveshapes and envelopes etc. and the modulation indicators are pretty useful too.

I honestly think it was a good choice on their part to go with that style of interface rather than a skeumorphic version of their Eurorack panels (which they came closer to with their Reason plugins). I know they were working specifically on ways to streamline porting code from their embedded hardware to various plugin formats, and keep as much reusable code as possible. That style of GUI helps with that.

The parameters tend to lean more minimalist because of the legacy of the modules. Sinc Vereor has a mode and one knob to affect timbre; Virt Vereor has a mode and 3 oscillator parameters (already one more than Virt Iter Legio), and both share the envelope and VCA/filter GUI and code.


Tranzistow on the other hand... the word that comes to mind when I see it is relentless. Immediate eye fatigue. It looks like a spreadsheet with a late 80s CGA color scheme. There's no spacing between the controls or groups of controls. Slider positions don't really stand out particularly clearly. Random words are in bold for some reason. It's the sort of GUI where as soon as I see it, I just back away slowly and close the door.

It helps that Virt Vereor has a *total* of 14 sliders on the main page (grouped in pretty obvious ways). Tranzistow has 14 parameters x4 oscillators plus another 16x4 plus some other stuff, and then there are apparently 13 other tabs. It hurts.

[HOTF]

Hrast's Tranzistow and Diodow have a similar issue with weird names and GUIs that won't be to everyones taste. Tranzistow could possibly be one of the best VST synths ever coded by anyone but no one talks about it.

Tranzistow is not even comparable to Noise Engineering stuff in terms of UI. Noise Egineering UI's are gimicky sure... but functionnal and streamlined. Tranzistow looks like a sketchy pre windows software

[foosnark]

New bundle just dropped!

https://noiseengineering.us/products/plugin-bundle-2

Disclaimer for the rest of my post: I beta test stuff for Noise Engineering and so I got the licenses free. (If I hadn't, I would be buying the full bundle.) They have never asked me to promote anything though.

Loquelic Vereor: their take on a West Coast complex oscillator. Like all of their stuff it will happily go harsh, and it tends to sound "digital" because of the nature of its three algorithms

I've owned this in Eurorack (as Loquelic Iteritas, one of their top selling modules). It's very nice overall, but the frequency controls can be awkward -- it's two independent knobs which affect both tuning and timbre. In plugin form, the hassle is solved; aside from MIDI, the two oscillators each have octave, semitone and cents settings, so it's easy to dial in both pitch and timbre. And of course, the Vereor package makes it polyphonic, with an ADSR or AR envelope, VCA, filter, chorus, and a flexible modulation system, instead of being a monophonic oscillator.

For me the Eurorack module felt a little unnecessary with my already crowded set of oscillators, including Shapeshifter. But in plugin form, this is something I will fire up occasionally and get some use out of.

Manis Iteritas: think dirty sawtooth plus lowpass filter. The Eurorack version has the tagline "gross industrial VCO" and that's pretty much true. There's a sort of sync-like parameter, which I like to use by downtuning the base frequency and then cranking up Saw Mod; there's also some self-modulation to add dirt and noise in the Profundity and Smash parameters. The Eurorack version has a single decay envelope which can be routed to all parameters at once either positively or negatively (Bash parameter), and a drone mode where the envelope doesn't affect the amplitude.

The plugin version lacks the drone mode, and does not add the extended envelopes of the Vereor plugins... so basically it's a percussion/bassline plugin. On the other hand, it has more internal modulation possibilities (using the main envelope or additional envelopes to modulate parameters separately, instead of all of them by the same amount) and is polyphonic.

I've owned Manis Iteritas twice and resold it twice for rack space -- it's not the most flexible module in the world but it can be dark and ominous, or bright and brash. I'm glad to have a plugin version of it on hand for occasional use now, but it's for sure the lesser entry of these three in the bundle.

Imitor: this one is golden, an evolution well beyond the Imitor Versio firmware into a full-featured multitap delay. Imitor Versio is a firmware for the Versio platform, with 12 taps and a few controls, and it's... pretty good but not most peoples' favorite Versio firmware. But In plugin form it has:

- 1 to 32 taps
- individual on/off switches per tap
- optional tempo sync
- separate predelay and tap delay
- time warp (accelerates or decelerates delay time for each tap)
- decay (amplitude per tap can remain constant, rise, or fall)
- Angle/Rotate (panning per tap and overall stereo width)
- Tap delay LFO with Index, Speed, "Dance" (individual tap variation) and Stereo settings
- feedback section with Shimmer (octave up), Doom (octave down), Tone with Q, stereo width and Crunch parameters.
- a nice graphic display that helps show what the signal and taps are doing.
- the Noise Engineering modulation system, making it easy to do things like add ducking or dynamically sensitive feedback... if you want to you can even create a step sequence that modulates the number of taps

I've never gotten along that well with multitap delays before. The Imitor firmware never really grabbed me, nor did much fancier modules like Intellijel Shapeshifter, nor any other multitap delay plugins. But this one has got the magic. I've been using it both for rhythmic synced delays and for sort of chorusy reverbs and such. It's become my second favorite delay right after ValhallaDelay.

[SLiC]

Nice - I have bundle 1 and will probably pick this up at some point when I have some time- putting all this stuff in a rack in Bitwig (with all the unified modulation) is like having a modular on a track!

[Erik_Lucas]

Just picked up basilimus yesterday and am very impressed with it. Awesome that theyre releasing more software.

[aMUSEd]

Pity you can't make your own bundle though

[SLiC]

They do sell them individually
I was selfishly hoping for a discount as I have Bundel 1, but the price is fair (the £ is just weak against the $!)

[aMUSEd]

I know - I just want the 3 synths but to buy them individually costs more

[foosnark]

I know - I just want the 3 synths but to buy them individually costs more

Maybe suggest that to them? They are cool people, they might decide to do an instruments bundle vs. an effects bundle.

Or maybe that could be waiting until they release more stuff, not sure really.

[aMUSEd]

Good idea - I suggested scalable bundles - the more you add the more you save