Lounge Lizard EP-4

I would like to generally concur with the reviews above--this thing is a great electric piano emulator. I am not concerned about the quality of the overdrive, since it generally sounds OK to me, and have an array of saturation/distortion plugs I like to choose from for different effects. The GUI is beautiful but a little daunting, but that largely has to do with the complexity and novelty of the physical modelling algorithm--it simply has nothing to do with the familiar subtractive synthesis format, although it is easier to get your brain around than FM, at least. The points I would like to raise about this instrument are:

-Even more than your usual synth, LL benefits from the use of a MIDI controller, for some reason. Having a controller (my recently acquired UC-16) REALLY increased my enjoyment of editing the patches.

-Although it is excellent at doing electric pianos, it also EXCELS at doing percussive timbres that are out of the ordinary, like "mutant xylophone/vibes from hell"--the kind of patches you generally turn to FM to do, but much easier to accomplish/edit in LL. Run these patches through the phase/tremolo/pan options, and you can get some really weird, beautiful, and cool shiznit going on.

The update includes enhancement of the release function, tempo sync, and much better patch organization, but costs a little too much IMHO. I actually like having an instrument I can't sync--increases the random quotient of my tunes. Anyway, a very classy instrument overall.Read Review