GForce Halogen FM - 2 Operator Pair FM Synth

[Alchemedia]

Mac demo keeps crashing for me in standalone mode

Unexpected from GForce! Sounds decent, but has also already crashed Live twice on my mac.

Crashing Bitwig also.

[Korg Supporter]

Mac demo keeps crashing for me in standalone mode

Unexpected from GForce! Sounds decent, but has also already crashed Live twice on my mac.

Crashing Bitwig also.

VST3 has laggy note input issues in Renoise.

[felis]

Finally a GForce synth that I can take a pass on. I'm totally overloaded with FM type stuff.
Not that it doesn't look interesting, useful, and practical for a lot of people,
but it doesn't grab me like most of their other stuff.

Like others have said, it's good to see them branch out a little from their recent run of Oberheim stuff.
I'd only like to see one more OB from them - the Matrix 12.
Arturia's is very good, but I think GForce might do it up even better.

[danbroad]

I like it. This and Fors give me a similar feeling to my Digitone vibes. Had a single crash in Logic when I was mashing the randomise button too fast.

[pekbro]

I think it's cool, dunno if I will buy it. It's a pretty simple synth imo, not overly interested in simplicity when it comes to synths myself. Not for $45 anyway...

[kraster]

You can get it for 33 bucks on JRR with the “group” coupon code.

I think the comparisons to Fors Chiral are spot on.

The best thing about it is that like Chiral, it has a massive sweet spot and moreover that it has a sweet spot in areas where a lot of useful sounds are.

It does the chimey synth keys very well, you can get some great FM basses, pretty lush pads, nasty abrasive sounds, wobbly lofi things, rhythmic pulsing sounds etc.

One area that is really impressive is the reverb. It sounds great. You can get a good variety of different FX by adjusting the parameters.

It’s an incredibly well tuned synth in almost every regard.

I have a bunch of FM synths and most of them suffer from that innate fiddliness that FM suffers from. I’ll be reaching for Halogen far more often than something like F’em.

[enCiphered]

Finally, a synth with randomization across multiple sections (I've been preaching this for years. Should be a standard feature in every instrument) and absolutely top-notch sound. But leaving out the ability to lock individual parameters and exclude them from randomization? That’s a glaring oversight. Whoever signed off on that decision clearly wasn’t thinking it through.

[Artie Fichelle]

I demoed it. But you cannot do much with it. Keep it simple, but not too simple.

[pekbro]

You can get it for 33 bucks on JRR with the “group” coupon code.

I think the comparisons to Fors Chiral are spot on.

The best thing about it is that like Chiral, it has a massive sweet spot and moreover that it has a sweet spot in areas where a lot of useful sounds are.

It does the chimey synth keys very well, you can get some great FM basses, pretty lush pads, nasty abrasive sounds, wobbly lofi things, rhythmic pulsing sounds etc.

One area that is really impressive is the reverb. It sounds great. You can get a good variety of different FX by adjusting the parameters.

It’s an incredibly well tuned synth in almost every regard.

I have a bunch of FM synths and most of them suffer from that innate fiddliness that FM suffers from. I’ll be reaching for Halogen far more often than something like F’em.

Thx, prob pick it up then.

[pummel]

Halogen: the phase modulation randomizer. Not impressed. It's not that phase modulation ("FM") is hard to understand; it's just hard to make it sound interesting with just sine waves, a couple OSC duos, and simple ASDR envelopes. I don't see Halogen solving this issue; rather, it appears gimmicky. Just different nomenclature for a lack luster feature set.

It only implements sine waves. At the default 1:1 (mod->op) ratio "Timbre" and "Brightness" are redundant. It only has a few fixed frequency ratios. The "ring" knob is a frequency offset versus frequency ratio; so relatively useless. Finally, the "xmod" just recreates the right hand side of one DX7 algo. Depending on "xmod" implementation, if op2->mod1 then it's DX7 algo 1 otherwise if op2->op1 then algo 7

To Halogen's credit, it's "xmod" does provide an extra feedback loop relative to the one DX7 algo. Plus it has built in distortion and reverb.

I'm typically not this negative, but Halogen seems so condescending and out of place; both for Gforce software and KVR.

[wintoid]

Funny how polarising this is.

[Neon Breath]

Maybe because I'm used to using Arturia DX7 and Ableton Operator, and I've been spoiled by these two synths for powerful and deep FM, but to me this synth feels very underwhelming and not very exciting. Not bad per say, but a bit boring for a seasoned FM user. I suppose it could be a nice & neat alternative for FM novices who want to get into it though.

[slaambo]

Sounds very good but CPU is off the scale when changing patches and it's crashing Logic here.

[dune_rave]

I don't see why they feel there's market for such simple synth....

[starflakeprj]

I don't see why they feel there's market for such simple synth....

So you think their other synths are more "advanced"?