As I dived in First impressions looked nice but was not sure if this was going to be a contender just yet.
After going through several presets and having a tinker it started to grow on me. Something that I feel is important is how quickly can I get some great sound for instant gratification and start down the avenue of producing something that sounds worthwhile. I need to point out I am not a seasoned sound/patch programmer, more of grab a preset and tweak.
I say this as I often find a lot synth plugins, for me personally, load up and just get stuck in finding inspiration, very usable. This is not one of them and whilst there are many synths I want to like and believe from reading on forums I should use and like, I do not (wont mention them here as I will get flamed and i don't want to set my smoke alarm off! lol).
Not too sure what people are saying in regards to filters as i am finding them very nice. As mentioned the sound is sharp, not in pitch, but in tonal quality and dare I say richness.
Big negative and this is why i am not using Lush but waiting for a more lean version, is CPU usage. I found on playing two chords and hitting them simultaneously (ie 6 notes at once), I was rewarded with a high pitch squeel and an ASIO spike that could make a lesser mortals ears bleed. This is not the synth but my soundcard, cpu and asio spiking
Saying that with less notes it's not an issue, maybe devs can look at making it less of an overhead at some point. Till then I am not investing unfortunately, have too many others on the shelf awaiting less CPU burn. For example using LD Inspiration, performing a simple 3 note chord and extending the release just buckled my system and bombed the ASIO out. Generally around 50-70% ASIO load, without anything else loaded. Using the same midi part on different presets it washitting a minimum of 25-50%. To be honest unless bouncing down or using freeze, this is pretty unusuable for me personally as is. I am interested in how some of the demoes were captured/produced...I believe a lot of bouncing parts. Note average load in Cubase without playing, so idle, 50%.
In comparison to DIVA (had to mention it) tried the same part with Arksuns OldSkoolTrance preset and in fairness hitting the same issues...turning on multi thread, using great and Diva being VST3 did overcome this and sawq the overhead and ASIO usage drop to around 20-25. This I believe demonstrates a good comparisson in development needs and coding. But I am no expert in any form, just little ol me!
If I added other plugins, introduced some compression, reverb, saturation and channel strips I would not be using Spiral unfortunately.
I really do hope to see this as a contender over the coming months, at the moment its still in the Lush cabinet
I like the sound, some of the presets and hope to see improvements.great plugin guys, work on the coding please.
System i7@2.6.12GB Triple Ram 1300mhz . RME Firface 800 @ 256.
Windows7x64 . Cubase7.04x64
ADDUM : I forgot to mention, I've read some posts not all in this thread. I own a |Virus and this is actually similar but not a reason in any shape or form to rid the Virus...no way.
