Waldorf Edition: Attack

I've played around with this on my friends computer years ago and now finally bought myself as part of the bundle. This is such a timeless classic. A lot of people underestimate its power just because it came out years ago and now it's long forgotten. But that's ok, because I can use it as my secret weapon.

This plugin is truly inspirational. Just load up any random drum sound, and tweak it in any random way and you're on your way to discovering lots of interesting sounds and surprises. Nice deep kicks, snappy snares, deep toms, crispy white noise and any other percussion you can imagine.

The drum sounds are awesome, but the biggest surprise for me was the discovery that you can also use this plugin as a synth. That's right, you can play melodies, play chords, whatever you want, just as if it was a keyboard. You can make bass sounds with it or you can make pads or nice clean bell sounds, and a whole range of other synth noises inbetween. It's also useful for creating your own sound FX and white noise, swooshes, build ups, etc.

Now to the problems:

* The interface is a little small.
* The knobs are fiddly and I only seem to be able to move them in circular motion (every other plugin today uses vertical motion to adjust knobs)
* Hard to dial in exact numbers because of the above two points. You only want to adjust a little bit of something then BOOM you just moved the knob all the way to the other side, completely destroying the setting you had.

Other than that, it's perfect. If you make electronic music, you can never be bored with a drum machine, and this is by far my favourite drum machine plugin.

Only one thing is wrong with the Attack, and it bothers me sorely - FINE CONTROL - so direly needed in a respectable drum synth with such nice exponential envelopes, and horribly implemented in Attack. There's a shift option to dial things by smaller increments, but it's still very very chunky, and it seems that within the alloted values for any knob, there's just some numbers you will never see displayed because you can't dial into them.

Otherwise it would be my only payware Drumsynth. I'm glad there's not too many presets so you actually have to learn to use the thing. It lends itself quite easily to most things. Additional envelopes might have been nice for all such assignable parameters, instead of only two, but this is somewhat offset by the number of voices available.

Bottom line: needs a small overhaul to bring it into this decade. The last updates are 5 years old! (might be a goner). I've never had stability issues with it and despite my gripe, I'm glad to have met the Attack and intend to keep it.

This synth is simply great. I use it for all of my synthdrum sounds (instead of sampling synth sounds). The supplied presets are great and tweaking them is easy.
This machine is a fully featured synth too, you don't have to stop with percussion. Although playing pitched sounds is a bit fiddly.
There is very little to complain about with this one. But some sounds are a little too crisp and digitaly (is that a word?) for some applications, though this nothing a little distotion or multiband distortion can't fix (the onboard filter overdrive doesn't realy do it for me except at minimal levels).

i really dont like this drum synth. its really good for weirdo percussion and fx type noises but i find it really trouble some to get any useable xox type sounds out of it.

its really cpu hungry for what it does.

the knobs seem to be really sensitive; especially the tuning knobs. one small movement and your sounds has drastically changed.

if your looking for xox type drum sounds your better off finding samples or trying the free vsti drummatics.

If I was trapped on a deserted island forever and only had a laptop, um...tons of fresh food and water, maybe a girl, and cubase...
if I could only bring one non-reaktor vsti with me it would be this synth.
I've been reaching for this machine for many more uses than it modestly claims itself to have.

'supposed to be' a percussion synth. But there is truly no other instrument like it. multitimbral, fm, analog, fat sounding, gorgeous real-sounding drums and sound effects synth pads and basses up the yazoo! ('ya-zoo' adj. "ad infinitum" orig. Brooklyn, NY connection to 80's Britpop band unknown). It's really all the synth you need if you wanted.

I've tried many of the new vsti's. Pentagon 1 sounded
ok but the bass just sounded a little hollow.
I'm looking for good basses.Not this euro dance
fuzzy reverbed mid range stuff.Pentagon has tons.

I thought ok I'll spend 30 minutes on the pentagon
and 30 on the attack to come up with some basses.

30 Minutes with pentagon I had one that I found usable.
30 minutes on the attack I had 15 solid kick ass
basses with a wicked vibe.

To me the attack sounds more like hardware. It just
has a full solid and warm rounded sound.Somthing
you might here from the old sugar hill records or
Brandy's stuff.

Who would think this is marketed as a percussion instrument.

Mush

Attack is simply awesome, especially given its price. It's great at analog style percussive sounds and the synth sounds are much better than you might expect from what is marketed as a percussion synthesizer.

I have not experienced any instability, except for a minor glitch with verbiage on a message box, and then it was only once. On my Pentium III 633MHz, it consumes low CPU resources and polyphony is more than adequate.

For analog style percussion sounds, it beats anything else out there for flexibility and verstatility including Rebirth and Reason. The multi-timbral implementation couldn't be easier to use and automation of all parameters via MIDI CC is well documented. The shipped kits are, for the most part, excellent and most of the MIDI file examples really show to make Attack shine.

I know that sound is largely a matter of taste, but I really like the way Attack sounds. It can really bite its way through even dense dance mixes and the variable decay shape on the envelope generators adds tremendous flexibility. Vintage Roland emulations aren't bad, but not as close as Rebirth. On the other hand, Attack opens up a world of sonic potential not possible with Rebirth and it's easier to use than trying to do the same thing with Reason or Reaktor.

A more flexibile and complete LFO implementation and full ADSR's would have been nice, but this VSTi has become one of my favorites. It's easy to use and easy to coax useful new sounds out of it. Documentation is excellent, and is needed to understand the MIDI implementation.

No other tool I've found for analog style percussion sounds offers the same level of simplicity, ease of use, stability and sonic versatility of Attack. Highly recommended!

I was totally disapointed when I tried it... It's just a syhthesizer, not a drum machine.
I own a Roland MC-303 and I will never exchange it for this soft!
Sounds are digitals. No analog drum sounds here.
I prefer sampling my MC-303 and to use a drum sampler like the linplug RM2 to make some real grooves.
But if you're looking for some new, experimental sounds, this soft can be usefull and the interface is wonderfull.

I got this thing and I just can't stop using it. It is in evey one of my tunes. I use it for drums on almost every track. I recently found out how to use the synth aspect of this monster and now it is even more interesting to me. I really like weird sounds and blips and bleeps. This thing has that and more. You can tweak and program your sounds so much it is crazzzzy. I would recomend this thing to anyone, who is making electronic music.

I originally wrote, "Do you need Attack? Probably not." I was wrong. It is totally useful as a drumsynth and for basses, leads and to some degree pads.

Some comments have been made about Attack not being as flexible as some other drum synths. Perhaps it isn't but truthfully Attack is much more than a drum synth and as such should be considered so.

You can create complete songs within Attack. It is easy on your CPU and has a distinct sound to it's synth and drum timbres.

Since it is synthesized timbres (the hi hats as sampled) you'll get a huge variety of drum sounds. Think Korg Electribe ER1 with more programming control but missing a step programmer.

Attack is one of the most used plugins in my setup. Almost any music can benefit from a bit of Attack in the mix.
Generous polyphony, a good synth engine and good presets help you get past the uninspired manual.

Pros: a must have for electronic percussion tweakheads, it sounds great and makes a good synth that sits well in mixes.
Cons: The manual is confusing, interface takes some getting used to.

Revised 3.1.02

i dont understand the hype about this thing to be honest. not only is it a bit unstable (considering that almost all VSTIs are 100% trouble free these days thats a no-no IMHO), but especially the sound leaves a lot to be desired IMHO.

im normally not the analog vs digital type but IMHO this thing sounds soooo digital, it hurts. id rather continue working with some good samples from analog drummachines.

its hard to describe what it is, but the trebles got a really harsh character. a bit as if the plugin had an internal resolution of 4 bit (i know the samples are 8 bit or so, but for some reason this also applies to noise you add, the distortion, just everything).

too bad. the concept is cool, the interface rocks, the manual and support are great - its just the sound i dont like.

Got it a while ago and besides some problems after the initial install (some sounds had a weird buzzing noise in them) it works now (try to un- and reinstall it - I heard it's a problem with the CD-protection).

The sound quality is awesome. Sure, there are some cheap b-movie fx here and there, but lot's of the kits are really useful as a supplemental to the static world of sample percussion. Best of all, this thing can also play great bass and lead sounds, which makes it in fact one of the most useful VSTis ever. I also found the CPU-usage quite low for the quality of the sounds.

Software that makes hardware jealous!
Frequent updates add to the quality. This is the real deal!

As a non-drummachine fan I am really impressed.
So i decided to get Attack after trying it out several times.
To simply create completely new drumsounds (or sounds in general), in a very fast and easy way, and with this quality of sound, Yeah, really rocks!

putte

This has restored my faith in VSTi's after the buggy (HALion) and the downright awful (Mtron).

Just stunning sound quality, loads of presets, loads of Cubase song files supplied so as to experiment and hear what it can do, brilliant interface (in real ilfe in looks much better than the screen shots I've seen), hasn't crashed yet, and can do much, much more than just drum sounds.

It takes a while to understand it (I'm still struggling designing my own sounds) but there is no doubting it is very powerful.

And to think it all came about when an Italian student wanted to carry out some research at Waldorf!

If this is the only VSTi you buy you will not be disappointed.

Rob

Attack and Dr-008 are the drum sampler-synth must to have in the studio... Fatter sounds with good and complete filter section. The 2 Envelope is state of the art for fast attack drum sound and the fx section bring this synth in the first place... Try pumpin it trhough a Quadrafuzz and see by yourself !

who needs another drum machine plug-in? well, if it's a good as this one, i would say everybody.
the attack is capable of going way beyond your standard analogue drum machine sounds , with frequency modulation, ring modulation two syncable tempo delays and much more.
also do not underestimate the attack's use as a soft synth for bass, lead and even pad and keys (thanks to the FM) sounds. the attack has the classy waldorf oscillator sound written all over it, and to my ears this makes it the best sounding soft synth around.
it takes a while to get used to the envelopes (not really the standard adsr) but once you get to know them they become very flexible both for drum and synth sounds.
what else? very nice sounding filters with a cool filter drive to get those really punchy sounding kicks.
one other advantage is the very low CPU usage. it barely registers on cubase's CPU meter.
get this alongside a drum sampler like native instruments' battery and you've got all the drums you need.

i used to use the lm-4 but this is what id been waiting for. Great for the typical 808/909 stuff but also comes with alot of more expirimental sounding presets. And obviously as its a synth you can come up with your own stuff to your hearts content! As for cpu, with me (p111 700hmz) its been great, i never have to worry about getting drop outs with it. Not sure if i can think of any bad points...ummm

"Analog" sounding drums, easy handling (you can recall the original settings of each sound) and a high end user interface. My opinion: It's a "must-have" drum-vsti, but you should have a sample-based drumsynth like lm-4 or battery, too, to access to all kinds of drumsounds (Attack cannot produce all drumsounds you need in a typical music production).
The only disadvantage: The cpu usage is a little bit too high!