Orca

This is the first FXpansion product I've ever had the pleasure of using, and if the rest of the company's products are as interesting as Orca, I'll definitely be investing in a few of them. Orca, a free VST, AU, and RTAS plugin, is an interesting and fun monosynth. For the record, I used it in Ableton Live 8.1.1 running on a 3.2 GHz Single Core processor with 2 GB of ram with no problems with slowdown, stuttering, crashing, or anything else.

About the synth: It has 1 filter, one VCO, and 6 controls, making it simple enough to play around with the first time you fire it up. Though it is totally a personal thing, points must be awarded for the beautiful GUI: the plugin's window is the first example I can remember of animation within a plugin that doesn't take away from the programming. The whale tails (one on the left for filter cutoff, one on the right for resonance) have a cool look to them, and they look and feel nice when using a midi controller (in my case the KORG nanoKontrol).

On an unrelated note, the plugin installed to its own folder within my VST plugins folder - to me that's simply annoying. After installation I moved the contents of the folder to the main VST folder.

I was instantly able to dial up cool and interesting sounds thanks to the plugins' familiar controls. There were a few presets demonstrating things like octaving and unison, , and they were interesting without being too repetitive.

Overall the plugin is very interesting: it caters to the recent trend of super-simple plugins, while being useful in almost any genre: from screaming trance and house to hip hop basses and rock accompaniment, I can see Orca being used by pros and garage musicians alike. In my jams with it i found it sounds very nice when paired with real instruments like Kontakt's Classic Bass or Mellotron sounds.

In terms of support they do have a forum and a dedicated one at that, so I'm sure if I had any problems they'd be able to help me.

Overall an excellent free plugin with a very wide range of sounds. I'd recommend to anyone interested in trance, house, Hip Hop/ Rap and other production heavy genres.