ManyStation

There are so many soft synth VSTi's, what makes Manystation special? Basically it's the Wusikstation engine, but with a very pretty GUI and totally different soundsets. That means: 4 oscillator layers and two wave sequence layers, 4 filters and 4 EQ's per layer, 8 envelopes, 8 LFO's and a 6x6 Mod Matrix (Wusikstation), 1.4 GB samples and 10 banks with approx. 700 presets (Manystation). That means that you can a) use the preset as-is, or tweak them, and b) create new presets with all the samples, or c) add your own samples and create totally new sounds :D.

The sounds consist of a lot of guitars and basses, cellos, a few other instruments and quite a few synth soundsets (that I haven't really touched yet). Even just the guitar, bass and cello sounds are worth buying Manystation, these sounds are very beautiful, and inspirational. I'm originally a guitar player, but I found myself playing guitar on the keyboard with the Manystation sounds for quite a few hours. (and I still have about 500 presets to go ;))

With the Wusikstation engine you can use the mod matrix to add Aftertouch and Modwheel (etc) control, to create more expression. Some presets have this out of the box, but it's very easy to add. (IMO this should have been be more consistently applied in the factory presets).

The stability is good, running in high-quality processing all the time, and never had crashes or other types of problems. Although it can be confusing for Wusikstation owners to have 2 different versions when soundset formats (doesn't happen often) or other features change. Of course this is a good thing as well, the wusik engine is actively being developed, multi-timbral features are being added while I write this, etc.

The power of Manystation lies in the soundsets and presets, and while the factory sets are really strong, the extensibility makes it even better. Manytone have announced additional soundsets (both free and paid), and of course it's also possible to use the Wusikstation soundsets with Manystation, for those who cannot get enough.

For all kinds of questions Manytone support are active at KVR, and of course the Manystation and Wusikstation community is very supportive.

In this review I did not write in depth about the sound processing qualities of the engine (e.g. the quality of the effects or filters), because it's not my forte, and because the resulting sound sounds very good to me. Same thing about the CPU-load: I never have problems when using it, so I didn't feel the need to investigate the actual CPU-load.Read Review