4ormulator Vocoder Extreme

I tried the free version, blinked when I heard the sounds it created and reached for my wallet. I opened the editor on my shiny new purchase and whimpered.

It's ugly.
It's confusing.
It's near incomprehensible - even with the manual. It may as well be written in Czech.

However...

I soon found myself looking at it as if an alien spacecraft had landed in my back yard, devoid of occupants; strange controls and arcane symbols on mysterious panels blinking and inviting me to prod them.

I found myself creating sounds I'd never heard before. Ever. If you listen carefully, you can start to hear cymbals, strings, chuch organs... all sorts of strange, metallic or bell noises lurking in the background.

I've bought a fair few crappy VSTs in my time: things that seemed cool until I knew better. Even these abberations create cool, enchanting drones, rhythms and aleatoric orchestrations when fed into the beast.

If you want to create some truly unique sounds and wish to be surprised at the stuff you create, give it a try. If you want certainty and control... well, stick to VAs - nothing to see here.

For me, I'll just sit here a while with a stupid grin on my face.

I wonder what'll happen if I feed orchestral strings into this thing and prod the LOW bar up a few notches...Read Review