Spire is interesting. Out of the nowhere, in few days, hype like crazy. It reminds me of what happened with Dune few years back. Anyway, is it worth the hype? ...well ...yes.
Features: 8/10
This is the clever bit. It doesn't seem like, but under the hood, there is quite a lot of features. It starts with cute little oscilators being able to generate it's waveform by morphing, by FM, or by AM synthesis. Then it goes into unisono stage, which aside from classic parameters allows you to control even iregularity of detuning and way how voices are scaled from each other. Filters are cool. Few models to choose from. It ends up with badass effect unit. You see, why to have user choosing between regular distortion modes and bitcrushing, when all it takes is two extra knobs for having it all at once. This is the way of thinking I like. I'd love to see possibility to change order of effect signal chain though. It would take just one more tab at the FX area. The modulation stuff is just cherry on a cake. Whole bunch of LFO's, envelopes and step sequencers with (really) nice collection of destination to route them to.
Sound: 9/10
Really somewhere between Sylenth and Twin. Creamy, warm, but rough enough when you need it. It can lack "concentraion" on high frequencies sometimes, on the other side, when your sound needs to be "softer", Spire is right there for you. Even when you use stuff like FM synthesis that usually tends to be harsh. Effects have great quality to themselfs. Especially reverb is kind of cool for a built-in unit.
GUI 8.5/10
User interface is great. It's all really intuitive, straight nice flow. Where it needs to have some tabs, it has them, but only on small restricted areas, so the whole synth doeasn't dissapear when you need to adjust LFO speed, or something. Olny thing I'm missing is some kind of quick modulation assignment. Either knob related pop-up menus, or some drag'n'drop way. Just so we don't have to browse through the whole selection of destination.
Value 9/10
Price is set reasonably, eventhough I think seeing it permanently on discounted price would suit the synth much more as it is really nice bread & butter instrument. What makes it extremely valuable though is customer support. Developer is not just responsive, but also active, which is really breath of frash air having in mind another bread and butter softsynth of the history. ;) It still takes a bit higher CPU load, but developer is actively optimizing the code, so it got better already and it will continue to get in upcoming months. I strongly recommend you to try this little thing. Nice, fresh, easy, capable. Really appealing combination. :)
Cheers,
Martin.
This synth came out of nowhere and after one look I knew I had to try this. After first few minutes I knew this thing had a powerful engine. CPU load is a little high for my CPU, that doesnt mean everybody will have that problem, but still managed to get some very nice Poly sounds. Overall I give this a 7 out of 10. This Synth has tons of potential in my opinion.
I agree with PUSHA about the CPU usage but was able to get it down to about 4 - 7 % using the creative asio driver and not ASIO4ALL. The sound is absolutely amazing, very thick and epic. These are the sounds that will keep you awake at night :).
Really? I might have to check that out cause that's what I am using, ASIO4ALL, and I get lag. Is Creative ASIO free? Ive never heard of it before.
This Motherfucker is hot! I checked tons of VSTi Synths and most of them is garbage. Only a very few Synths comes near a highclass Hardwaresynth and Spire has what its takes.IMHO lots of potential. It plays for me in the Class of Native Instruments Massive when it comes to sound quality.
@pusha.
Its the ASIO Driver for his Soundcard.Dont use ASIO4ALL its shit. Buy an M-Audio Card, its very
cheap and has good sound and driver support.
I love the fact that Spire is continuously updated. Great support from Reveal Sound. I hope this is just the beginning for this company. They seem to know what people want in a synth so hopefully they dont stop here and keep knocking out new instruments and effects.
Pure Pleasure! I have never made presets as fast as with this one.
Hopefully they will work on Spire growth and depth before moving to a new plugin.
brilliant vst, and capable of virus ti hypersaw with only 1 osc.
I use it with Vienna Emsemble Pro 5 and Protools 11. Sounds great - however I experience a lot of hanging notes. Is this the place to get support… newbie to this forum. Boe.
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nice sound but more CPU usage.
Version 1.1.9 works REALLY REALLY WELL. Sounds just incredible! Uses a tiny bit more CPU than Hive and Dune2, maybe. It arguably sounds better (to my ears at least) than those two as well. It goes on sale periodically (more so than Dune2 or Hive) and is well worth the money spent. I don't EDM, so I don't have a much use for most of the presets but, it is super easy to tweak and get some great sounds that sit really well in a mix without a bunch of subsequent EQ or compression necessary. It also has some of the best sounding delay and reverb I've heard built into a synth (where most other synths fall short, though U-he's is just as good). I don't really like to jump on synth band wagons with people who make music I don't really like (not an EDM fan AT ALL) but, the SOUND of this synth is in a league all its own. I don't know if it's really better than what it's often compared to but, it's different, and that's good enough for me.
I totally agree, with everything you wrote. :)
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