Gladiator 4

There is a lot of hype around this VSTi/AU. I was wondering why there are still no reviews.

I have bought it in January. Since then i have tested this beast deeply. I have been doing a lot of sounddesign and productions.

User interface:
Newbies could be swamped by the huge amount of knobs. That's why the interface can be shrinked and only the patch browser is visibe.
The UI is heaven for sounddesigners. It is non-cluttered and all controls are on one srceen. It uses rendered graphics in 3d style.

Sound:
The most versatile and best sounding VST synth i know (yes it is a real synth and NO rompler!).
Very clean, warm, from analog to digital. HCM gives also a large amount of 'uniqueness' to it.
It is somewhere between Virus, Filzmo and Wavestation.

Features:
Lots of features. Maybe even to much for newbies.

Patches:
750 presets done by professional sounddesigners. They are a good basis for further mods.

Docs:
105 pages manual translated into various languages. Reading this definitely takes time! There are also tutorials in the manual and as patches.

Support:
I have written 3 mails to support, because i had trouble with my soundcard. Tone2 answered within 24 hours.

Value for money:
149 euros is not cheap. But it's well worth the money if you realize how powerfull this synth is.

Stability:
I had trouble with Cubase with Gladiator v1.1 because Cubase saved all 750 (!) presets in the song and the project files were several MB. This did not happen in other hosts. IMHO it is was Steinberg's fault. Tone2 has fixed this with the free update to v1.2.2 within 2 weeks.