MSoundFactory

Takes a while to learn but this thing is a beast. Special mention that you can use Mdrummer inside Msoundfactory.

If you don't afraid spending some time to learn how to made sound in this one of most complicated synths - you'll be rewarded by huge number of options to shape your sound. Basically all Melda FX plugins are inside ready to use (doesn't matter if you have license for them or not). But I must warn you - it's not easiest synth I was using. In fact is one of two most difficult synths I have.

If you don't like to craft your own sounds - there is also LE version, much cheaper, where you have access to all sounds with limited option to tweak them. What are limitations? Well, at start, let me explain something that isn't obvious when you first time run this synth. You have two types of sounds - first are regular presets which are available in "Global Presets" menu. It's not the same as Meda Instruments, even if they're made using the same options. Global presets are basically normal presets like in any synth - no graphics, no tweaks (except deep edit if you have full version, not LE), just sounds. And there are instruments - and this is something different. Imagine that you have any synth with macros, so you create your own prests and assign some knobs to these macros, so user can change your preset in the way you designed your macro knobs. Most of synths have 4 or 8 macro knobs and that's all. In MSoundFactory you can assign up to 256 macros to any element in your preset. And then you can add your graphics to these macro knobs. And then, when you assign all your macros - you can create instrument (your mega-preset with its own knobs). And you can create presets inside this instrument using your macro knobs (because you have so many assigned parameters, you can create even your own complex synth!). And from time to time Melda adding (free of charge) additional instruments into your MSoundFactory (LE and full). And it's not always just different type of generated sound, these instruments can contains large base of samples as well, so you may expect a lot of different stuff (sampled strings, drums, pads etc).

So, as I said, if you have LE version, you have limited option to tweak sound - you may tweak all instruments using their internal knobs and even save your own presets, but you can't dig deeper and tweak global presets or edit parameters in instruments that are not connected to knobs. So - even LE version have lot of option, especially if you're not sound designer.

What can I say - it's not an easy synth, but it is great. Will not be a love at first sight, but it will be sooner or later. If you are patient enough to learn it.

Ah, one more thing - imagine that you have full version if MSoundFactory and your friend have only free version. If you create your own instrument, you can share it to your friend and it will work! No limits like in Kontakt Player, no full version required. You decide if you want to share your own self-made instruments for free or if you want to protect them by your own serials (and sell them for example).

I don't understand the positive reviews. The plugin is buggy (version 15), some sounds are showing as 'content missing', I have regular crashes of my hosts while working with it.

Regarding the sound I would say - good average but nothing extraordinary. The presets are very digital, very cold.

The GUI requests quite a long learning curve, if you expect fast results you are wrong with the plugin. The soundbrowser is complex, first you have to look after the category (e.g. Bass), then you choose the plugin and after that you have a several browser for the sounds. Not the easiest way.

Looking at the positive - it is modular and you have a lot of options and opportunities - after the described learning curve.

This is amazing. Probably the best synth I've ever used. For the first few days, I thought it was great but maybe slow to use, learning concepts/menus. After a couple of weeks (not that many hours, I don't have that much time!) I now find the workflow fast and making great sounds is fun and intuitive.

It is feature rich, hugely powerful and has a superb 'pure' sound. 'Analog' randomness/feel is easy to add with loads of options.

Very CPU efficient and stable.

I'm not quite as impressed with the presets as I don't think they demonstrate the power of this synth and they could be better organised. Due to this I probably wouldn't recommend the 'LE' version (which doesn't allow editing). As Melda updates are frequent, I'm sure this will be improved.

Stick with the interface, configure it to your liking and after a while you'll see why this is such a great VST. Definitely one of the very best available (maybe the best).

I love this synth / sampler / sonic playground. SoundFactory is probably the most fun and inspiring synth I have used. Sound quality and what sounds 'good' can be just personal taste but of the many synths I have owned over the years it is easily on a par with the best of them.

When people say certain hardware has a bit of extra magic or mojo I just think this has that too.

The beauty for me is you can go deep exploring but also you can just throw together strange combinations of sound generators and fx and modulate them and get interesting results.

The layout can seem daunting at first with pop out menus and so many options but it is actually pretty easy to learn and also there is a lot of help boxes so you can get info on what the controls do and learn things as you go along. It is brilliantly well thought out overall.

I hope Soundfactory does really well - it is its own thing, and some people may be put off by the extra menus or layout etc but I just love the workflow now.. basically it is always inspiring, fun to use and just sounds very good - also you have a huge amount of top quality but pretty crazy FX to modulate and play with.

There is also all the drum side of Soundfactory which looks really impressive too but I haven't even got to that yet so lots to explore still.

It has been a great buy for me so far and I can 100% recommend it.