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Crystal

Semi-Modular Synth Plugin by Green Oak
MyKVRFAVORITE517WANT150
Free

Crystal has an average user rating of 4.42 from 26 reviews

Rate & Review Crystal

User Reviews by KVR Members for Crystal

Crystal

Reviewed By Modeler [all]
August 25th, 2005
Version reviewed: 2.4.8 on Windows

I wasn’t sure what to make of Crystal when I first tried it. A thread was started that raised questions about whether the plug-in was overrated (over which opinion was very much divided), which drew my attention back to it. It wasn't until I began to experiment with it as a lead instrument that I noticed how much of a presence it had in the mix. Browsing through Tim Conrardy's patches provided the inspiration to use it for atmospheres; the results were quite staggering. I have recently noticed myself moving away from pop-oriented music towards more ambient, atmospheric productions and this would not have been a reality without Crystal. If you haven't tried it already, you might be surprised by what you can do with it.

GUI
Recently overhauled to give it a more conventional, industrial look. The layout is intuitive to tweakers; professional sound designers don't seem to have any issues with the more advanced controls (the rest of us might as well be watching Star Trek).

Sound
Didn't grab me at first but it's like nothing else out there in the realms of freeware. As mooted by people on the forum, this is the closest thing to a freeware Absynth. The range of sounds is staggering; from Japanese-style plucks to warm, evolving pads and atmospheres. Everything from the conventional to the completely absurd!

Features
The patch breeding feature is superb; extra points here for that alone.

Docs
Green Oak provide documentation and a set of tutorials on their site. There isn't a lot more you could want for a free synth.

Presets
The supplied patches are plentiful but there are hundreds of high-quality presets available for this synth. Special thanks to all those who took the time to make and share them.

Support
It's free so that's a ten in my book. Developer support is not really an issue.

VFM
See above.

Stability
Works a treat in my host. No issues at all here.

Overall
I have used Crystal to breathe life back into several of my older tracks; those that were built around demo versions of pricey commercial synths that have long since expired. Simply put, I was able to evolve my long-forgotten work into something that sounded new and exciting virtually effortlessly with this plug-in. Keep it installed even if you don't think you can use any of the sounds you've tried.
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Comments & Discussion for Green Oak Crystal

Discussion
Discussion: Active

THIS POST HAS BEEN REMOVED

Mmmr
Mmmr
27 August 2021 at 9:32am

Can't import Crystal's effects banks or contact the developer (Grrr at Facebook).

Hi. Bit of a story. Back in the day, I got Crystal from a ComputerMusic CD and messed around with it a bit. Time has moved on and last year sometime I bought Jbridge to use a different VST. Recently, I went through the old discs from ComputerMusic and started bridging the old 32-bit plugins (God this was fun). I made a project in Ableton Live yesterday where a spreadsheet I have that lists all installed VSTs and VSTis throws up random plugins for me to use in whatever project I'm working in. It threw up the bridged version of Crystal. I was totally confused on how to use it (as it's been a lot of years since I did use it) but got it working. After the project was finished, mixed and exported I thought I'd see if there were any tutorials. There were so I spent some time last night watching videos. It then occurred to me that there may be a current version. And, Hey Presto, there was. I downloaded and installed this and it seems to work fine apart from one thing. From the Greenoaks website for Crystal there are a load of banks to download and so, download them I did. I followed the instructions on the site to install them but they appear to be uninstallable. I've googled this and it seems to be something to do with Windows 10 security features (I'm not a hundred percent sure though). Anyway, I thought "Hey, I'll contact the developers and tell them about this". The only contact is via Facebook. As an old man of 53 I seriously don't ever want a Facebook account. I've had friends promote it to me on so many occasions not realizing that all the points they're making about how good it is are all the points that make me NEVER to want to have it. So, as a last resort, I thought I'd post on here and see if anyone has any ideas about working around the problem of importing the preset banks as the drop in the application doesn't work at all.

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