Model-E

Many people rag of the Model E, criticizing its lack of accurate "moog warmth". The E in my opinion does not lack warmth, it lack accurate control. The Midi implementation on the E is utterly pathetic. Notes skip
constantly, and I have experienced complete sound freezes and control lock ups. The Model E is not as warm as an actual mini, it is notheless a fantastically fat VA. The 3 oscillator Mini is not an easy emulation, so points go to Stein for a valliant try. Steinberg, if your listening, Update the Midi Spec!. Besides control and stability, sounds awesome.

A useful synth if you are maybe new to analogue synth clones, and want some fat-ish sounds, but this one really fails to inspire me.

It's one of the older analogue clones, and it really shows. It's also not cheap - for what you get, in fact it's very expensive. The filters don't sound anything like any Moog I've ever played on, and the actual oscillators themselves are not that big, which was a character of Moogs.

If you want to learn about analogue synths then this is not one to learn on - they insisted on using the arcane terminology of Moogs, which I could accept, if they made it sound like one! But it doesn't. It only looks a bit like one.

Admittedly you can get some lovely pads, and occasionally some pleasing leads, and even some powerful basses, but it really doesn't have an awful lot of character to be worth the asking price. Many free VSTis that are given away nowadays have a wider range of sound and are more authentic than Model-e.

You can get lots of banks of sounds for it, but when you d/l them and play through them all, it soon becomes apparent that they sound very similar - that's because the range of Model-e isn't very wide. The envelopes are slow, which precludes most twangs and blips, although you can get the odd boing from it. The modulation options are limited, and the stupid terminology won't help if you are new to synths.

But it's not all bad - it's just that newer VSTi's have overtaken it by a long way, and some of the new clones have got the character of the old synths better - this one didn't really capture anything of the old Moogs. It's useable, but they need to drop the price a long way to get many sales I would think.

Ahh! What a dissapointment!!!!!!!!!!!
This synth was not even what I was expecting. I was expecting warm fat basses, with that warm unmistakeable filter sound of MOOG.

I purchased this synth at MARS for 90 bucks due to the bankruptcy store closures. I would NEVER pay full price for this synth! I think that I was cheated for the 90 bucks that I did pay.

this is definitely a 1 dimensional synth. It is VERY difficult to get this synth to sound unique, as opposed to others synths out there which offer a much wider spectral capability for much less money. If I had it to do over, I would have purchased a different synth..

I downloaded and installed Version 1.1 off steinbergs site. I can say that it seems to be improved a little, and WinXP stability is MUCH better. I will increase my ratings slightly to reflect the update.

Well, this instrument doesn't sound very good, to my ears. Sounds too harsh and basic.
It can be improved with the Mig Music bank. The demo version alone has a few well programed and usefull sounds.

Well, this vsti really isn't all that bad, it certainly sounds good. However, there are some cons with this synth. Particularly the GUI, it now looks really outdated (which I suppose it is!) Also, again compared with modern VSTi, it doesn't seem as intuitive to use. Perhaps that is just me (I will certainly grant that) but it does seem to show its age.

All said, it really isn't bad, just perhaps not the best value for money. If you want a reasonable replication of the sound, then it does what you want.

Since I used to own the real thing I have been looking forward to getting this one for a long time. I am pleased with the sound but there are two things I don't like at all.
1) The lack of a mod amount wheel or knob, since I'm sure a lot of us have the Roland PC series of keyboards with the nasty bender/mod wheel.
2) The glide is of the equal time type which is not authentic and really takes the sting out of melodies/solos where you want a violent swoop in the pitch over a wide interval. It is not musical and should be like the type on the Pro52 for example.
But it certainly has the filter character I remember and is smoother sounding then the Reactor types which have a nasty out-of-tuneness in the oscillator sound in the high registers - listen to a single high pulse wave and play a scale.
Steinberg should release a version 2 where they could make it definitive.

Pro:
+ solid multipurpose sounds
+ some great presets included
+ multitimbral, 16 input channels, 4 outputs
+ controllable by MIDI

Con:
- confusing non-intuitive user interface
- uneasy modulation handling
- no demo-version
- outdated and overpriced

This was the 1st commercial VSTi synth (or?) back in '99, an unofficial 'clone/successor' of MiniMoog Model D (never had one, so I can't say how close it really is).

It was surely great at that time, but nowadays compared to its competitors it's outdated and overpriced. What I dislike most is the uneasy handling and confusing interface that is badly explained in the manual. I can't understand for example why you MUST send external MIDI CC's for modulation activation and there is no GUI element to control it.

However, you can create good multipurpose fat virtual-analogue sounds, up to 16 multitimbral inputs at once on 4 outputs, making it very usefull for arranging accompanying parts when you're running out of the 8 Cubase VSTi slots.

Well, my expectations are high when someone tells me of a Moog clone and even more: The name Model E implements even improvement. Soundwise my dreamsynth is a MemoryMoog so it's quite obvious to those who know both synths that I'm really disappointed with the Model E. The oscillators sound too thin, the filter is a joke when having a Moog in mind and when you forget about the Moog these filters are only average stuff.
Another thing is that I don't understand how somebody can make such poor looking graphics for such a high priced product? Nuff said.

I use the Model-E on almost every project. Pads and leads are excellent and with the interesting multiple channel per VSTi implementation you don't have to load more than 1 unless you want to expand or restrict voices.

I'll disagree with an earlier post and say that it IS a little CPU greedy compared to other synths like the Pro-52, rgcaudio Square and especially the mda JX10. But the flexibility and ease of use make it a winner.

The only real negative is the cost.