Product Reviews by KVR Members

First, the good: Transition is fairly unique in what it does - create random notes based on several parameters you can set such as scale, octaves, frequency, etc. Further manipulation by utilizing creative tools in the activity pad area ensures whatever Transition comes up with is very original. Already, I've created 25-minute ambient tracks as well as one long 50-minute opus with it and it sounded good.

And now, the bad: For some reason, and I can't contact CodeFN42 to find out why, you can't load more than one instance of Transition in Cubase or Studio One. I'm guessing this is the same with other DAWs although I haven't tried. When you do attempt it, the DAWs either lock up or shut down right away, thus my intended goal to set up one Transition in 1/4 time and the other in 1/8 or 1/16 is never achieved.

Common sense would suggest that I'm trying to force the DAWs to use multiple clock rates which they can't do, but using CodeFN42's own RandARP in multiple instances with different timings does work, so it must be a Transition bug. Like I'd said before, I couldn't reach the dev about a solution. Anyway, I can always record one track of 1/4 Transition then go back and create a 1/16 take. It's just be nice to have two or more of them going at the same time to make sure what was being concocted makes musical sense.

I'm an old school Cubase user going back about 25 years. Even though it was my favorite DAW, its instability caused me to look elsewhere (Studio One). Version 12, however, appears to have been cut from a different cloth. Extremely full-featured, it nevertheless has been as steady as a rock - mostly. There's been the occasional lockups when trying out new plugins, but generally, I'm able to get a lot of work done without pulling out my hair because of crashes.

Cubase 12 has everything I need - scoring, snap to scale, alternative scales, impressive effects, VariAudio, sampler, ASIO-Guard, etc. I can go on and on. I'm glad that, with Cubase 12's new complexity, its workflow is still silk-smooth. There's nothing worse than having a workflow stymied by extra hoops you have to jump through.

Every so often, a product comes along that makes up sit up and take notice. Noire is one of those. At first glance, you think, "Eh, yet another sampled piano, albeit well done, and complemented by its felt counterpart." All that is true, BTW. Slightly darker in tone - and thus a little rounder - than its contemporaries, there is playable consistency across its eight octaves that betrays the lengths the engineers went through to capture its essence. But, that's just the beginning.

You can also sculpt tones to your liking using the various and plentiful parameters and effects on other pages. Then, there's the creme de la creme: the Particles page. At first, I was skeptical: Why would a serious piano have a built-in creative delay/reverb-y/granular/arpeggio-type engine? It's true. Using it for classical piano tracks wouldn't work, but in context for, say, an ambient track, it fits like a glove. With Particles, its so easy to create one-chord evolving textures that it almost feels like a guilty pleasure.

In conclusion, Noire is a win-win-win situation. Kudos to its creators.

Now, here's something different - a product that the company doesn't try to oversell in their ads. From a cursory glance at Riffer's ads, I got the impression that it was basically a one trick pony, a simple product that producers MIDI riffs for your productions, and nothing more. I couldn't have been more wrong. As arpeggiators go, Riffer is at the top of its class. Going beyond the typical rate/scale/direction/gate/velocity/swing (called Shuffle here) of other arpeggiators, this one offers a whole lot more with things such as glitch/ratcheting (called Density here), tie and sustain (probably the first place I've ever seen this), 64 step sequencer, perpetual random sequence of every loop, and the creme de la creme - 57 scales in any key you choose, from the ordinary (chromatic, major, minor, etc) to the exotic (Arabian A & B, Hungarian Gypsy, Prometheus, Chinese, etc), plus you can save your own. All of these features propels Riffer to the top of the arpeggiating class. Also, and I'm not sure its because its a VST3, but it doesn't freeze Cubase 12 like other VST2 arpeggiators when I try to run two or more instances. Riffer is definitely a keeper.

Although not chockful of features, Invader 2 accomplishes what it set out to do - give you a simple, nice sounding, easy to use synth for a meager price. Far from harsh, Invader 2 is right at home in an EDM, IDM or ambient environment.

Orchestra Enigmatica has some good points and bad points. Technically, I'd wanted to give it 4 1/2 stars, but since that can't be done on KVR, five it is. Its strongest point is its eight arpeggiators. Not only is that quite a lot, but each individual oscillator is so full-featured that it competes with, and sometimes bests, offerings from synths with very complex ones like Thorn, Diversion, MPowerSynth, Wavestate Native, etc.

OE's glaring weakness is its modulation section, that is, there's just one LFO which can be linked to only four destinations (volume, pan, filter cutoff and resonance) but only one at a time. So if you wanted to modulate both pan and filter cutoff, for instance, you're out of luck.

OE is fairly generous with its FX section, though. There are three parallel paths of FX along with convolution reverbs built from the ones inside Kontakt.

Although not a letdown, the sampled sounds themselves are, well, nothing to write home about. If OE didn't have its fantastic arpeggiators, this Kontakt instrument would've been donationware. Luckily, the arpeggiators make this synth rise above the fray, so if you're a sequence-grabbing freak like me, it could find a home in your arsenal.

Patchwork comes in handy as a multi-arpeggiator/sequencer host. With it, I'm able to load two or more instances of an arpeggiated synth like, say, GR-8, and set one synth to random 1/16 (high register), the other to random 1/4 (middle) and the third to random 1/1 (low), and viola! - instant complex ambient sequence. Latency compensation comes in handy, too, to prevent things like time shift. Very nice product.

AudioModern is turning out to be one of my favourite plugin manufacturers this year, and that's partially because they have three superb plugins they give away for free - Panflow, Gatelab and Filterstep. I've also dabbled a bit with their Riffer but my main drum tool, Playbeat, is what gets the most workout on my computer. That said, I was eager to give Panflow a spin as soon as they offered it.

You'd think that Panflow, being free, would be a grossly limited product. Nope. It's as full-featured and CPU-friendly as if it cost a lot. And it works well, too. Random controllable panning really gives life to static elements like pads, high hats and percussion. I've also used it for plucks to either give them width or timed-panning in the stereo field, and it comes in handy across synths with arpeggiators that lack panning modulation like GR-8 and Proclethya. To randomize these synths volume, Gatelab does the trick. I wouldn't be surprised if AudioModern combines all three free effects into one package. It'll be worth it.

I consider this one of Sugar Bytes' rare misfires. DrumComputer COULD be useful but the unnecessary time-consuming hoops you have to jump through to get a satisfying sound will have you quickly reaching for your handier Playbeat or Triaz machine. Firstly, Western music scales from A to G. When you attempt drum mapping with DrumComputer, some of the patches are mapped to H. Huh? Did I mention that mapping sounds is like pulling teeth? Would it kill Sugar Bytes to use standard mapping for their eight pads? To wit: When you pull up the first kit, SB Analog Kit, the kick is mapped from F3 to F#3, the snare on G3, and the high hat on E7, a note that doesn't even exist on an 88-note controller! If you then slide the kit down so that the kick is triggered by C1, you notice the high hat is then mapped to H4. Where the hell is H4? That doesn't even exist.

Another weak point is the sound collection itself. The kicks are mushy, a lot of sounds are unpredictable in their variance, and for whatever reason, a lot of drum sounds are always pulled up flamming. You have to remember to turn that off. The snares also leave a lot to be desired. One plus is DrumComputer now allows import of wave files. That's definitely handy. The modulation matrix and sequencer isn't bad, either. Neither are the effects, but I suspect producers will just record the drums dry and add effects later. If Sugar Bytes fixes DrumComputer's ghastly mapping system and sound engine, I believe they'll have a winner.

To say Rigid Audio's Sodium is an exercise in sheer frustration is the understatement of the year. The pluses are it clocks in at a mere 250MB, and this is a Kontakt library! A lot of the sounds aren't bad, either. The problem is the sequencer. It's like pulling teeth. You can't just sequence all 32 steps and have them play like that. Nope. You've gotta press 'A' then 'B' to accomplish that, and then it STILL doesn't play all 32 steps back to back or in a loop. Also, you can't just import a difference drum sound in a slot. You have to use whatever the kits give you. This means you can't audition each individual sound. You have to take the kit as is, no variation possible whatsoever. Lame! Audiomodern's Playbeat is what Sodium needs to aspire towards as that can import wave files. Both machines do allow you to flam and pan each drum step in their respective lanes with Sodium giving you more options like multi-effects and reverb. And Sodium's odd drum trigger layout on your keyboard leaves much to be desired. Still, that's where it does have Playbeat beat. With Playbeat, you can't press a key to trigger the sequence. I use a virtual input in Cubase with my Presonus interface to accomplish that. It's a little convoluted and time consuming, but it is what it is. No VSTI's perfect.