Prizm Atmospheric Synth

I own the PRIZM and I find the presets and sounds in general to be a convoluted mess that I neither have the time or energy to organize myself. I think quite a few of the samples included wrapped up into the Wusik engine offer a ton of potential (some though are truly crappy and make me choke), but the organization and presets included are so hit or miss (personal taste) and cluttered. I fear to delete or change the organizational structure of the presets, because with every attempt I have made I end up getting "file not found", "missing sounds cannot be loaded" errors. I have had to do more trouble shooting with installing the PRIZM than any other audio product and when your trying to be inspired and flow smoothly, those kind of technical and cluttered errors kill the mood and frustrate you, at least me to the point I ignore it completely now.

One thing with Sampler/ROMpler VSTs like SampleTank or whatever, they give you basic sounds you can then layer and edit (simple pads, basses, etc). Or they give you some nice pre-made performances (editable). However with the PRIZM you get a lot of pads for instance where the LFOs, filter sweeps are all set in stone because it was recorded that way as a WAV... not made inside the PRIZM (Wusik) with the built in LFOs or effects. So its like sampling a Virus doing a glitchy filter sweep, but not being able to change the time, depth and speed of the sweep except through changing the key on the keyboard which then changes the entire pitch/speed and timbre. That annoyance literally pisses me off and is so unprofessional it is sad.

Sampling a complex LFO gated lead and then locking the user into those gate speeds is so misleading. Use the basic lead sound and then use the Wusik's gate/W2/Arp thingy to make the sound so that it actually stays on time when you change notes.

My questions and suggestions... Where are the basic presets? Simple pad sounds, simple leads, simple keys. Why are they not organized into nice little banks like Keys, Brass, Bass, Synths? Instead they are put in a cluttered folder with some sound designers name... and even within those folders they are not organized so you really have to either remember the exact name of the preset you liked or search and search and search. Drive me nuts.

Another glaring point to note is that a lot of the sounds are not looped. You play a pad sound and it comes to an abrupt stop, no fade out, no "real" sustain. This is the reasoning for the giant library, because your getting a WHOLE sampled pad without any clever looping and processing within the PRIZM/Wusikstation itself.

*Question to ask yourself is why can a 8, 16, 32mb real rompler make such more complex sounds that are completely editable and yet take up such little space. Answer is they utilize the synth engine/sample engine itself... like the modulators, LFOs, effects, etc. PRIZM more often than not has recorded all that for you, so don't pan on changing the sounds much at all.

For me, PRIZM is a brick on my hard drive. It is huge, cluttered and completely unusable. The Wusik engine has so much potential just based off small basic waveforms, the LFOs, Gates, W2, etc... the PRIZM does not at all take advantage of this.

I would like to hear from someone other than the creator who has opinions contrary to my own.Read Review