KVR Audio

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Fri Apr 24, 2020 6:38 am

A new product from Ujam that's $49 at the moment. But don't worry about the instrument, you have to watch the promo videos. They are hilarious.

https://www.ujam.com/product/vice/

Here's one to whet your apetite -

zoidkirb · Post by **zoidkirb** » Fri Apr 24, 2020 11:55 am

Nothing like a bit of gratuitous mirror ball fondling to sell a synth eh

MaF · Post by **MaF** » Fri Apr 24, 2020 12:29 pm

This must be the first public sign of life from Peter Gorges in a decade. He once was the most funny and yet extremely competent writer for the German Keyboards magazine.

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Sat Apr 25, 2020 7:03 am

Playing around with the demo of this has made me realise how much better these things are than I used to think. It's easy to see them as nothing more than preset playback machines but they actually have a lot more than that to offer.

The version 2 plugins allow you to customise your kits and your drum patterns. The kits come as discreet sets of drums but you are free to swap sounds from other kits to create your own. You can only swap one type of sound for another of the same type, e.g. you can only change the low tom sound for one of the other low toms, but it gives you plenty of scope to customise or get rid of that one annoying sound that ruins an otherwise great pattern. (I get plenty of that in Eden.) You can also place your own hits in your sequencer to augment the preset patterns. e.g. You can trigger a pattern using E4 and then trigger extra snares, hats or whatever using the lower octave so you can add several different variations to the same preset pattern to make it your own.

They offer the best of both worlds - you can throw 'em into an arrangement quickly for that instant gratification beat, then go back later, as your arrangement matures, and customise it to work the way you want it to. I've already got Eden v2 and I've decided I am definitely going to get this one, too. Those gated reverb toms are just too good to pass up.

rollasoc · Post by **rollasoc** » Sat Apr 25, 2020 10:05 am

Sorry talking rubbish, the dicount was for Dope not Eden...

starflakeprj · Post by **starflakeprj** » Sat Apr 25, 2020 10:49 am

rollasoc wrote: Sat Apr 25, 2020 10:05 am Sorry talking rubbish, the dicount was for Dope not Eden...

Damn, too late!

Anyway, I got it at AudioDeluxe where I could use existing virtual cash to get even lower. Anyway, as with many other developers I don't like a business model where you as a loyal customer don't get extra discount for completing the collection. I have everything except the Finisher from UJAM, but they still couldn't give me some extra discount. This is crap to be honest, cheap as f*ck!

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Sun Apr 26, 2020 12:23 am

Why didn't you just buy the bundles at the bundle prices? Even so, these instruments are good value with or without any bundle discounts. If price was an issue, why not just wait until the one you want is on sale? I've bought a couple at discount prices but others I have happily paid full price for. I got Dope for free but it's not something I'd have paid money for. The others have all been well worth spending money on.

starflakeprj · Post by **starflakeprj** » Sun Apr 26, 2020 12:43 am

I have purchased a few of the plugins pretty cheap. I have also bought some at bundle prices, but when you have all plugins, and they release another plugin, they don't have (in this case at least) a bundle upgrade. So anyone buying their first plugin gets the same price as anyone having all other plugins.

Money is not an issue per se, it's more a matter of principle. Still I hate to wait for a sale, I don't have the patience to wait 6 months or longer. Well, I managed to do that once or twice, for example with Arturia's latest upgrade to V-Collection 7. They have an even worse upgrade policy.

Oh well, I really like the drums in VICE

PhantomPatrioit · Post by **PhantomPatrioit** » Sun Apr 26, 2020 10:10 pm

how good are these instruments?

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Sun Apr 26, 2020 11:16 pm

Very. They sound really good, they have a lot of variety built in and with the newer ones, or v2 updates, they are very flexible. You can let the instrument do all the work for you or you can get in and program it all yourself, just like a normal drum machine plugin. They all have 30 day trials that seem to be fully functional - you can even save presets in the trial version - and they aren't huge downloads so you should try them for yourself.

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Wed Apr 29, 2020 9:50 pm

Lots of love for vintage sounding synths but not much for vintage drums, it seems.

vurt · Post by **vurt** » Wed Apr 29, 2020 9:55 pm

no, but that video

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Thu Apr 30, 2020 12:26 am

Yeah, it was the video that got me in but the instrument itself is pretty damned good. Like Eden, it provides a really polished drum sound with zero effort that you can customise to your heart's content. I've made a few of my own presets and now I can throw it into anything and it sounds better than Orion's Drumrack or either of it's drum machines ever did. I saw a bit of potential in Eden when I got it, which version 2 and Vice have fulfilled in spades. I might keep using Battery when I am working on album material but for live sets and everything else, I am going Ujam all the way (lots of Ujam guitar for our live shows, too).

tonedef71 · Post by **tonedef71** » Sun May 03, 2020 8:19 pm

I have Beatmaker DOPE 2 (it was a cheap upgrade of a PB freebie), but I have not used it. Pulled the trigger and bought this one today. It sounds nice and should save me time when I want to add a convincing 80s/Synthwave beat to a track.

TheMaestro · Post by **TheMaestro** » Sun May 03, 2020 8:49 pm

I really don't see anything special here, other than that annoying promo video.

Ujam Beatmaker VICE