Product Reviews by KVR Members

Since FM7's being kindly donated by Native Instruments for this month's contest,maybe this will inspire some of you...
FM7 is a masterpiece!I've owned it for 10 months,and it still makes me smile every time I fire it up.Between user-programmable algorithms,resonant multimode filters,the ability to read Yamaha 4-OP and 6-OP sysex,the adjustable bit rate,etc.,they've brought a classic into the modern age.You can use an external audio source as a carrier or modulator.The envelopes are great,with up to 32 breakpoints,with positive or negative curves.And did I mention the randomization options(for all us lazy people)?Not only can you choose what you want to randomize and a % value;you also have the choice of mild or aggressive randomization.
The manual's written by Craig Anderton,and is logically laid out and easy to use.
The sound?I've owned 3 FM hardware synths(a TX81Z I bought as a guitar synth module,a DX7 and a V50).If any of those had sounded half this good and were this easy to program,I'd still have them.
So,enter the contest and win it!If you don't win,buy it.It's money well spent.Read Review

Chainer may be the best $60 you'll spend on VST stuff,period.It's a patch bay for all your VSTis and VST effects(and combined with VB's ffx4,DX effects,too).
It will let you mangle different combinations of synths and effects to your heart's content;add a little hardware(there's audio ins,too),and export it all as a .wav file,or as .wav or SF2 multisamples.Load THAT into Crystal,VirtualSampler,NN-19,Kontakt,CronoX-you get the picture.Add to all this that it doesn't use hardly any resources(less than 1.5% on my old 933 MHz PIII) and the fact that it DOESN'T crash-if Chainer crashes,it's either a bad plug or something's wrong with your system-and you have the perfect solution for a lot of routing,sampling,etc.problems.Try the demo if you haven't,and then BUY it...these kind of apps need all the support we can give them!Read Review

I was lucky when I was playing around with the demo-I hit random and got a glimpse of what this could do before the 3 minute limit hit.Now that I've owned it for a while;
It has two oscillators,switchable between pulse,variable triangle and sawtooth.The first oscillator has a suboscillator,and there's a noise source.
The filter's a 24dB/octave,with resonance and key tracking.There's three envelopes;pitch,filter and amp.
Each envelope is 4 level/3 rate,so there's a lot of control.One of the coolest things about Fat Machine
is the way velocity can modulate attack time,attack level and decay level. You can set up different velocity response for each of those parameters for each envelope.Wonderful stuff!There's also a random control that sets a different attack level for each note. Very organic sounding.
There's only one LFO,but with a bunch of good modulation options. You have separate mod pages for uncontrolled LFO,LFO controlled by the mod wheel.and LFO controlled by aftertouch.There's 5 destinations.Both rate and delay are syncable.
It has a glide section with the option to set constant time or constant speed.The instrument is switchable between poly,mono and legato modes.
The drive control is at the heart of the Fat Machine's sound. A lot of the presets that weren't quite to my liking became more alive by tweaking the drive.By the way,there's a bank of 108 presets that comes with Fat Machine.
It has a random patch generator,and by Shift-clicking the randomize button,it will randomize a whole bank.Cool...there's also compare and recall functions.
I'd like to see oscillator sync also,as well as being able to assign the pitch envelope to just one oscillator.
So,how does it sound?With the drive turned up,FAT!I could clone my sadly departed Pro-One's sound easily,
as well as get a close to Mini sound(I never owned a Mini,but I've played them often enough...).Using one oscillator,I could get all those early Roland bass sounds easily.For $29, a STEAL!Read Review