Product Reviews by KVR Members
All reviews by tesla
Review Something or Find Reviews
Pro:
+ great sounding presets included
+ unique concept
+ lots of features
+ up to 4 SID's parallel
Con:
- a complex beast taking a lot of time to be understood
- confusing non-intuitive user interface
I really fell in love when I heard the MP3 demos... Classic nostalgic C64 sounds reminding me to my youth :-)
So I immediately bougth it when it came out... And was at first dissapointed. The user interface was nearly unusable. I was horrorfied by those thousands of parameters that can only be accessed by dropdown boxes, and no manual was available.
In the meantime, the long awaited manual arrived, and so I see a bit clearer now, it's capable of much more than I tought. But it remains a complex hardly understandable beast, you need much time to create your own sounds which I don't have.
However, I love the preset sounds, you can use up to 4 SID's parallel and it sounds very different than other VSTi's.
Read Review+ great sounding presets included
+ unique concept
+ lots of features
+ up to 4 SID's parallel
Con:
- a complex beast taking a lot of time to be understood
- confusing non-intuitive user interface
I really fell in love when I heard the MP3 demos... Classic nostalgic C64 sounds reminding me to my youth :-)
So I immediately bougth it when it came out... And was at first dissapointed. The user interface was nearly unusable. I was horrorfied by those thousands of parameters that can only be accessed by dropdown boxes, and no manual was available.
In the meantime, the long awaited manual arrived, and so I see a bit clearer now, it's capable of much more than I tought. But it remains a complex hardly understandable beast, you need much time to create your own sounds which I don't have.
However, I love the preset sounds, you can use up to 4 SID's parallel and it sounds very different than other VSTi's.
Pro:
+ flexible open module concept
+ both sample based and synthetic drums
+ easy drag&drop drumkit creation
+ LM-4 kit import
Con:
- no waveform+envelope display in sampler modules
- ugly graphics (well, I know what should count is the sound quality and easy handling (which are great) but somehow my eyes also wants to be pleased :-)
This is one of the strongest current available VSTi drum modules.
The biggest advantage is the (as far as I know) unique flexible open concept: the sound is created by various plugin modules.
On a 8x12 pad matrix, you can assign any of these pads to any of those modules using easy drag&drop, you can choose between several samplers (from a simple one through velocity layered to envelope controlled) and several synthetic drum generators covering nearly all needs. There should be more in development, and the first 3rd party module from DelayDots is available now. You can also import the available (freeware+commercial) LM-4 kits.
Read Review+ flexible open module concept
+ both sample based and synthetic drums
+ easy drag&drop drumkit creation
+ LM-4 kit import
Con:
- no waveform+envelope display in sampler modules
- ugly graphics (well, I know what should count is the sound quality and easy handling (which are great) but somehow my eyes also wants to be pleased :-)
This is one of the strongest current available VSTi drum modules.
The biggest advantage is the (as far as I know) unique flexible open concept: the sound is created by various plugin modules.
On a 8x12 pad matrix, you can assign any of these pads to any of those modules using easy drag&drop, you can choose between several samplers (from a simple one through velocity layered to envelope controlled) and several synthetic drum generators covering nearly all needs. There should be more in development, and the first 3rd party module from DelayDots is available now. You can also import the available (freeware+commercial) LM-4 kits.
Pro:
+ some good drumkits included
+ further drumkits available
Con:
- creating own drumkits is very complicated
- unflexible
- out of time
- replaced by MarkII - much too late
This was also one of my first VSTi's I bought in Spring 2000. Around this time it was probably the best VSTi drum module available, sample-based with velocity layers.
But time has changed, and now with competitors like DR-008, RmIII, Battery or Attack there is no longer a reason to buy the LM-4, except maybe for the good included Wizoo drumkits and to use other available LM-4 kits (free+commercial).
To create your own drumkits, you have to edit text files and pray that you made no mistake. There are free/shareware kit editors around, but I haven't found them usefull.
Since around Dec/2001 it's no longer available and replaced by the successor LM-4 MarkII which improved some things (but came in my opinion much too late).
Read Review+ some good drumkits included
+ further drumkits available
Con:
- creating own drumkits is very complicated
- unflexible
- out of time
- replaced by MarkII - much too late
This was also one of my first VSTi's I bought in Spring 2000. Around this time it was probably the best VSTi drum module available, sample-based with velocity layers.
But time has changed, and now with competitors like DR-008, RmIII, Battery or Attack there is no longer a reason to buy the LM-4, except maybe for the good included Wizoo drumkits and to use other available LM-4 kits (free+commercial).
To create your own drumkits, you have to edit text files and pray that you made no mistake. There are free/shareware kit editors around, but I haven't found them usefull.
Since around Dec/2001 it's no longer available and replaced by the successor LM-4 MarkII which improved some things (but came in my opinion much too late).
Pro:
+ simplicity makes it easy to use
+ great sound for it's simpliticity
+ MIDI controllable
+ support
Con:
- outdated GUI + features
Yeah, this was also my first VSTi I payed for in Spring 2000...
You can create a wide range of great sounds, and I still love it for it's simplicity. The perfect tool for enhancing your track for purposes when using one of those big complex monster synths is oversized...
Compared to nowadays up-to-date 'entry' synths it's a bit outdated in GUI and features, but a 'revised' version seems to be in the pipeline.
Read Review+ simplicity makes it easy to use
+ great sound for it's simpliticity
+ MIDI controllable
+ support
Con:
- outdated GUI + features
Yeah, this was also my first VSTi I payed for in Spring 2000...
You can create a wide range of great sounds, and I still love it for it's simplicity. The perfect tool for enhancing your track for purposes when using one of those big complex monster synths is oversized...
Compared to nowadays up-to-date 'entry' synths it's a bit outdated in GUI and features, but a 'revised' version seems to be in the pipeline.
Pro:
+ 25+2 VSTi's for a cheap price
+ some instruments producing great sounds
Con:
- annoying copy protection asking for CD very often
- heavy CPU load
- bad VST integration (eg you have to scroll inside the window)
- not all of the instruments are usefull (at least not for me)
- ensembles created by Reaktor can't be loaded (I thought Dynamo is some kind of 'Reaktor Runtime'?)
- only 2 additional instruments released so far (haven't there been promised more?)
I bought Dynamo (my 2nd VSTi) in Spring 2000, because of good magazine reviews and I thought "25 VST instruments for only 300 DEM (about 150$)? Wow, must be great"...
I was naive... After installing and playing around a bit I was much dissapointed, see "Con" points above. Anyway, I have used it several times because some synths have good presets and can create cool sounds.
So, you get what you paid for: It's cheap, you get a lot of nice things, but it also has some big misfeatures that prevents me using it very often.
Read Review+ 25+2 VSTi's for a cheap price
+ some instruments producing great sounds
Con:
- annoying copy protection asking for CD very often
- heavy CPU load
- bad VST integration (eg you have to scroll inside the window)
- not all of the instruments are usefull (at least not for me)
- ensembles created by Reaktor can't be loaded (I thought Dynamo is some kind of 'Reaktor Runtime'?)
- only 2 additional instruments released so far (haven't there been promised more?)
I bought Dynamo (my 2nd VSTi) in Spring 2000, because of good magazine reviews and I thought "25 VST instruments for only 300 DEM (about 150$)? Wow, must be great"...
I was naive... After installing and playing around a bit I was much dissapointed, see "Con" points above. Anyway, I have used it several times because some synths have good presets and can create cool sounds.
So, you get what you paid for: It's cheap, you get a lot of nice things, but it also has some big misfeatures that prevents me using it very often.