Plugsound Vol. 5: Synth

I've only had this for a couple of hours so this is an early days review. So far I am very pleased with the Plugsound vol 5 synth. Whilst it is essentially a preset synth there are facilities to alter the tone of the sounds (particularly the filter). The sound quality is excellent.

The GUI is pretty friendly, though there is room to make things a little clearer on-screen in future versions. Looks very similar to the forthcoming Atmosphere!

The sounds are what I bought the thing for and, on the whole I'm impressed. Some of the pads and filter sweep sounds are stunning - I can definitely hear Wavestation, M/T range and D50 in many sounds. The analog sounds are good but there are far too many (well over 100)bass sounds - great if you're into dance but I'm not. Many sound like filler material. If you are into dance I suspect you'll have some decent bass gear or samples anyway. I would have much preferred a load more pads and sweeps though! Some good voice sounds included, but I would have liked a few more treated choir-ish sounds without the tinlky bits.

There are 512 presets and (despite the overkill in the bass department) there is plenty of variety and you'll definitely find a fair few useful sounds. Even some of the texture fx sounds are quite good.

I have yet to really interrogate this product, but there are already a few things I think Plugsound could bear in mind.

Obviously the ability to load in new sounds would be nice.

They could make one instance of Plugsound 'truly' multitimbral (as on the PPG Wave VST) rather than launching different versions (I use Cubasis VST - you can only launch 4 VSTi's. Come on Steinberg!).

Perhaps the styling is a little odd - sort of fifties meets Ultravox!

Maybe a future Plugsound dedicated to voice and choir sounds and textures.

Overall, given the price of this program I think anyone who hankers after real synth sounds yet only wants limited tinkerability will be made up with Plugsound 5.