Product Reviews by KVR Members

I don't understand it - a good synth is a good synth, now and in five years time. And Vanguard is most definitely a good synth, maybe even an excellent one. With a sound somewhere between a vintage analogue and the C64's SID chip, and a character of presence all of it's own, Vanguard is an instrument capable not only of the much advertised big trance sounds, but also experimental, abstract pads and tones, chippy blips and bloops, oldschool sequences via it's arpeggiator... and the trance gate is useful well beyond the realm of trance music, combining with the arpeggiator in interesting and fun ways.

Vanguard features a highly fixed architecture, which is in many ways very limiting. You have three oscillators - each has it's own triangle wave LFO which can alter PWM, detune and the master filter's cutoff. You then have two envelopes, which have preset knobs to affect the patch's parameters in a hardwired way, such as cutoff, resonance, volume, PWM, detune, etc.

Throw on some classy effects which augment the sound rather than glossing over it - such as variable unison/spread, a very nice overdrive, reverb and delay... and then make the filters AND oscillators multimode, and you have quite a variety of sound, which will both require and inspire creativity.

To make up for this very fixed routing, the oscillators can make a variety of different shapes, and many of them respond in their own unique ways to the PWM parameter - we have Amplitude Modulated sine sweeps, synced noise, a strange digital burbling waveform which seems to work by turning on and off the digital bits in a logical way, as well as the old classics such as variable pulses, pitched noise, and Phase Distortion style morphing sines. Similarly the filter has a whole bunch of modes, including rare choices such as a resonant 6db lowpass, bandpasses feeding a waveshaper, and dual filters.

Layering these, and making careful use of the envelopes and LFO's, you can get some very cool abstract sounds, covering bass, lead, pads, effects, and videogame effects. The sound quality of Vanguard has been described as 'plasticky', and it can do that sound very well, although the sound has undergone a number of revisions, and going into the setup panel allows you to choose between a few different setups regarding antialiasing and oscillator versions. A lot of people liked the way Vanguard aliased, but it's nice to have the option for a more silky sound, if you so desire.

Typically I use Vanguard for abstract leads, SID inspired leads and pads, digital sounding effects, and arpeggios. At times I wish for more flexibility, for example, the modwheel is hard routed to raise the filter cutoff, and aftertouch will always bring in vibrato, but I've made a staggering range of sounds, and the sexy interface really pulls you in and makes you want to tweak.

All in all a very rewarding, and unique sounding synth, which looks and sounds like a solid object, rather than code. If you're looking for pure analogue emulations, look elsewhere, but lovers of SIDs and digital/analogue hybrid sounds should find the sound of Vanguard very enticing.

If there's one thing going for this effect, it's it's uniqueness. Geometer is my kind of plugin - it works on the raw geometry of the waveform in realtime, with a graphical and text based interface which gives you a very good idea what's going on.

The overall sound of Geometer is FSU style decimation, sample rate reduction, pitch scaling and distortion, but spend a while with it and you'll find some deliciously subtle flavours and blends of all of the above, and occasionally some fizzy crunchy procedures which are quite simply pure Braindance gold, the likes of which I've never heard before.

The sound is created by placing 'anchor points' on the waveform according to certain rules, and chosing from processes and thresholds a way to deconstruct and reconstruct the waveform, allowing you to create interesting sweeps by moving the parameters and thresholds while the audio is processed. This goes beyond sample rate and bit crushing sweeps, allowing more ways to change and degrade the sound.

Is this the effect for you? If you need gloss, easy and quick results, and instant inspiration, probably not. If you're a fan of grit, grain, bit crushing and lo-fi weirdness, and like to sit with a plugin and experiment thoroughly, you'll find this one of the most unique and fun lo-fi freewares out there. As I've said before, occasionally this spits out transformations that make the hour of twiddling entirely worthwhile - especially on drums!

Digital costs 20 quid, and is a unique frankenstein-style amalgamation of various digital waveform-bending synthesis techniques, stuck together in such a way that not only do they compliment each-other, but they also interact in interesting and useful ways.

18 base waveforms are available, but these can be doubled up, like in the Casio CZ synths, so that you get one cycle of (say) sawtooth, and then another cycle of square. Silence and noise are not excluded from the party, and a waveform which consists alternately of a sine wave and blasts of white noise is possible - a pretty unique thing! - and this suggests the kind of oddball digital mayhem this synth is set up to make.

Each of the four oscillators gets it's own phase distortion shaper, but unlike the vast majority of 'PD Synths' which give you the phase distortion model championed by Casio - a model which has tunnel vision in that it bends sine waves (well, cosine waves, if you want to get technical) with a view to creating the sound of a sweeping lowpass filter, Digital lets you feed any single or compound waveform in, and use any phase distortion function on it (you are limited to five control points, which is more than enough to open a universe of interesting sound). Map the PD level to the modwheel or an LFO, and you have extreme PWM type sounds, frothing waveshaper type effects, Casio twangy plasticity, and morphing tones reminiscent of wavetable synths.

The author had the insight to provide six preset shapes for the PD function, and the names of them are the waveform you get out if you feed it a sine wave - but of course you don't have to feed it a sine! This means that by flicking through the countless oscillator waveforms, six preset PD shapes, and messing with the PD depth, a huge range of tones can be created right off the bat by someone who is averse to in-depth tweaking.

Asif that weren't enough, we have a feedback control and multimode resonant filter for each oscillator, distortion, as well as several other controls, and the resultant four sounds (post PD, filtering, feedback and everything) can be used as operators and carriers in one of several 4-op FM and ringmod setups! Ladies and gentleblokes, we have arrived in tweaker paradise! Please fasten your seatbelts and remain in your seats for touchdown...

As an example of how interactive the various stages of this synth are, consider the feedback knob, which seems to be applied last in the signal chain, so that the filter - instead of filtering out the feedback when you lower the cutoff, gets caught in the feedback loop, creating unique resonance feedback effects which really extends the tone of the filter. The feedback can also create wave morphing, turning a triangle wave into a sawtooth for example. The only pitfall here is that turning the knob a hair too far results in unpredictable cascading digital noise - not a fault of the synth by any means, but it can be awkward. Luckily we have an excellent, comprehensive modulation matrix for very specific modulations, capable of reining in the digital beast. I found for example, that by setting things up so that when the resonant LPF was closed, the feedback was high, and when the filter was open, it was low, I could maximise the effect of the feedback, without falling into the 'abrasive digital noise' trap.

Sound quality is good, with something unique about it - it has a bit of warmth - it has soul. There is some aliasing if you play very high notes, but an acceptable amount, and to an extent this is part of the instrument's character (it's called Digital and not Analogue for a reason ;). Luckily, the types of animated tones Digital produces tend to sound best in the bass to high midrange range. If you play very high notes, you won't hear all those moving harmonics, so it's a bit of a moot point, perhaps.

The GUI is quite plain, as per the CoFX canon, however, I appreciated the ability to add my own colour scheme to the synth and change it at will. I like using certain colours to get me in certain moods, so this breathed some life into an otherwise rather drab GUI for me. At the very least, it is set out in a logical way, which facilitates ease of use, which is the most important thing.

In a way, I see this synth as a sort of spiritual predecessor to Blue, and actually the morphing waveforms reminded me a bit of my love affair with Zebra. All in all, for the price you pay for it, Digital is a steal, and one of my favourite CoFX synths to date. It has that tweakability and hands-on experimentation which keeps you hooked, and a unique feature set and structure that I don't think I've seen anywhere else ever.

Crisp looking, compact little 2 osc VA unit with a sweet spot which is quite easy to get into. It's hard to explain, but this synth can sound mediocre, almost lacking in power at first, but after a bit of tweaking, it gets into it's groove, what I call it's 'sweet spot', and it begins to sound very juicy and powerful.

The two oscillators each consist of two waveforms with selectable octave, which can be blended together for each osc. Then you blend osc 1 and 2 together, adding ringmod, AM, overdrive, filter FM, noise, and standard filter action. There are *around* 30 waveforms, so quite a bit of a choice, but some of them are a bit samey, and I'm fairly sure a couple are all but duplicates. That aside, with the large palette and plenty of wave mangling options, there is plenty to choose from.

The real power core of this synth is it's seven slot modulation matrix. Here you can add constant values or controller/envelope access to any parameter. This is where you, for example, set osc 2 to play a harmonic interval (there is no knob for it) or perform PWM (wave stretching works on all waveforms). This, combined with the three LFO's, two envelopes and controllers, is what brings the sounds to life.

Consider one patch I made, there are two waveforms, 'combed' together using AM to make a raspy tone. As you move the modulation wheel, a resonant lowpass filter closes, and the two oscillators drift out of tune, one up and one down, creating an 'in and out of focus' type of sweep. I had plenty of slots left over to add octave stretching (so higher notes are slightly sharp) and aftertouch based vibrato... This is the sort of flexibility the matrix affords you.

Since you can do PWM on any wave, you can mix two waves in an oscillator, one several octaves above the other, and perform PWM. Because one cycle of the base wave contains several cycles of the higher wave, and the waveform is stretched from the midpoint and as a whole, you can get a swirling harmonic wave effect which is a good stand-in for sync (it actually sounds like a sync which is both rising and falling at the same time!). PWM on other waves will make similar swirling harmonics or thickening effects, depending on the waveform.

The filter is on the calmer end of the scale, but in a very musical way. Filter FM is the standout feature here - it simply sounds gorgeous, and can add anything from a subtle textured distortion, to full on formant effects, as the FM amount can be a modulation target, and can be sourced from any waveform from the two oscs or the noise section.

GUI-wise, I think it's fine. Silver and blue create a distinctive but mellow visual experience, and everything is neatly laid out, with nice knobs.

Overall, a flexible workhorse for bread+butter sounds and beyond, which takes up little CPU power and rewards your creativity with an easy to hit sonic sweet spot.

FURTHER DOWN THE LINE EDIT:

After a few months with this synth I've noticed that like a lot of VSTI's, it can generate a fair bit of DC offset, especially if you use the Osc Symmetry parameter. I'd recommend using a good highpass filter or DC offset remover directly after it in the signal chain.

No review for this yet? Allow me, then. This is a long review, because of the specialist nature of it's subject, so bear with me!

Ooh, where to begin? Having cut my synthesis and music composition teeth on a Commodore C64, and having been an avid gamer since a small child, playing on my friends' NESes, Ataris, and owning a Breadbin and later an Amiga, the sound of those tiny, cheap and mostly rushed and improvised sound generators that provided the soundtracks to our fantasy lives, has understandably become a part of my roots.

The idea of a software instrument which simulates not one of these chips but a whole slew of them is a seductive idea to a lot of people, myself included. It is, however, a tough tightrope walk, and runs the risk of simply being a 'retro bleep machine' trying to cash in by yoinking on Ye Olde Nostaliga Heartstringes. I'm pleased to report, however, that Chipsounds does pretty much what it says on the tin, and it does it 'virtually' to perfection.

Many of these chips produced nothing but square waves, so it's easy to dismiss this product as, well, a bunch of square waves! But when you consider the ridiculous amount of research which has gone into the development of this software (much of which is made public on the Chipsounds blog) you realize that you're not getting 'a' square wave, but THE square wave, generated by a facsimile of the digital logic used in the original chip.

Factors such as intonation, pitch resolution, volume and sample level limitations, and the very way waveforms are generated are taken into account, rather than merely copying a waveshape and spreading it across the keyboard. The sounds are uncannily accurate to any audiophile who was around in the 80's and early 90's.

All the abilities of each chip are present, and there are a lot of them, so the variety of sound is startling, especially when you consider that you can layer sounds from different chips, using their different abilities and weaknesses together to create some massive sounds... So much for "a bunch of square waves"! Not only are the lovely square waves present and correct, but the famous quantized 'nintendo triangle', the PWM and raspy sawtooth of the C64, downright gnarly lo-fi modulations on the Gameboy wave channel, and maniacal buzzing from several of the other obscure chips I can't remember the name of are ready and waiting to be deployed. The 4-bit-and-below sampling capabilities of the Nintendo and C64 are also supported, allowing you to throw in samples and have them run through an emulation of these systems' sampling abilities (the Ninny had a lofi sample channel, and on the C64, it was done with clever abuse of the sound chip by programmers), something which is not possible with mere bit crushery, contrary to popular myth. There are a lot of sounds here, far too many to cover in this review.

So... Not only can you make arrangements of Lady Gaga covers in authentic NES BGM style with this product (go on, you know you want to!), but I've made a lot of cutting edge shifting tones, albeit with a lofi edge, with it. Several times I've had people ask me what synth 'x part' was in one of my tracks and it's been an experiment which came from Chipsounds - in fact, it's the one synth I have that consistently draws compliments, and I have a lot of awesome synths.

The negatives? There has been a bit of controversy about the use of samples in this software. Samples are used, as far as I can see, to capture oddities such as 'chip failiures' and other lab nightmares which are impossible under standard emulation models. They are fun little extras. They are also used in the SID emulation for some of the more obsure waveforms it can produce, but as I understand it, these will be replaced by emulation in due course. While we're here, sync and ringmod are missing from the SID emulation, and while it's filter is suitably weedy and grimey, with a nice dose of internal clipping, it doesn't sound *quite* right to my ears. If you care only for SID emulation, you might want to shop around a bit first, and try a more specialized product. That said, remember that this part of the product is being worked on as we speak, and is still capable of being very evocative.

Another downside is that the emulated sound, suprisingly, is very 'clean' despite being lo-fi, because though the chips are emulated near-damn-perfectly, we are hearing *only* the chips and not the D/A converters and subsequent crappy signal chain which would inevitably brown up the sound before it reaches our ears. It seems a product is in the pipeline for emulating this section of the signal chain, and the youtube demo of it looks promising! I hope some of that tech makes it into Chipsounds.

It would seem there is a lot to look forwards to. The last update we had, a slew of new chips and features were added, multiplying our possibilities by some ridiculous geometric function. Not only am I looking forwards to more updates, but they even listen to what users have to say on the Plogue Chipsounds forum, and a couple of my ideas for expanding the synth may even make it in to the bargain! It's things like this that make the act of buying a synth that much more satisfying, because the rewards keep coming :)

Is it for you? That, I can't tell you. But what I can say is that for me it was easily worth the money. Collecting and modifying the mass of consoles that this thing emulates is simply beyond me - my area is making sounds and music. I was quite happy to pony up and have the mad chip scientists do that part for me.

One of my favourite freeware VST synths, Noisemaker is a solid sounding little workhorse that I have come to love. The sound of the oscs, filters and envelopes, combined with a simple but well rounded feature set, are what makes this unique.

Noisemaker is pretty much a standard synth on paper. It has two oscillators and a sub-osc square. It has all the VA waveform shapes. You can do PWM on the pulse wave, oscillator sync on the sawtooth, pulse and triangle wave. You can ringmodulate between the oscillators, and do FM. Combining ringmod, FM, sync AND PWM can get some pretty wild results!

But this is nothing we haven't seen before. What keeps me coming back to it is the chunky sound. Yes, it is chunky. I've been working on submissions for the factory presets in the next update (look out for those!) and in doing so have created a whole slew of rasping, blocky, juicy, bulky synthsounds. This is what Noisemaker does best, at least in my hands.

Some of the more interesting features are a tempo synched, multi-stage envelope that you can design visually, the 6db resonant filter which is positively grimey, the strange sync behaviour of the triangle waveform, which creates a strange harmonic 'pinging' as it sweeps through zero-crossings, and the built in effects (I particularly think the reverb melds well with the overall sound). There are even two types of noise source, the 'noise' oscillator shape, and the 'vintage noise' you can dial in in the control panel, which is more subtle and quite lovely IMO.

The drawbacks, there are a few. Not too few to mention, either ;). Modulation is limited, though you get a decent amount of options. The chorus effects are all-or-nothing deals (two algorhythms) and subsequently a bit heavy handed for many applications. Likewise, the bit crusher lacks control, it is sweepable but the action is mostly at one end of the dial. Modwheel and pitchbend routings are very limited (pitch, filter, volume), and there's no way to make modwheel vibrato (a real shame given that I love this as a lead synth). At least we have midi learn, which can provide workarounds to the creative mind...

Overall, with it's bold, simple interface and chunky, addictive sound, Noisemaker is a must have for anyone who enjoys classic synth sounds. And it's free ;)

Combine the best audio engine ever with the simplest and coolest GUI ever and you have Zebra 2.5, the shortest way to get from ideas to sounds, whilst absorbing fresh inspiration along the way.

The big eye opener for me is the oscillator section, which comprises four morphing wavetable oscillators with unison, phase, synch, drawable waveforms, additive synthesis, and the ability to use one or two of dozens of 'oscillator FX' which do things like filter odd or even harmonics, mess with the waveform geometry, do spectral filtering (either with a break-point, or noise-reduction 'aphex twin' style burbles), PWM, fractal synch, phase distortion... the possibilities are not only mind boggling but also easy to use and explore.

Add this into a modular environment with the most amazing sounding filters, waveshapers, FM oscs, studio effects, resonators, etc... many types of customizable envelopes, and an easy and uncluttered interface to string it all together, any you have not merely a synthesizer but an instrument which is as fun and inspiring as it is powerful. As someone who is interested in exploring sound for it's own sake, Zebra is like a laboratory where you can conduct experiments in sound and push your understanding forwards. It's just plain addictive.

Half of this addictiveness is undoubtably because of the UI which is a stroke of genius, but the other half is because of the consistently amazing sound quality. While many synths sound strained at the extremes of sound design or when pushes, Zebra has a fat and confident sound throughout, which means making it sound BAD is the challenge :). Zebra produces the sort of sounds you'd expect from a huge wall of modular analogue gear costing thousands of pounds, and in some cases goes even weirder and more liquid.

Looking at the price, this is worth more than the asking price alone, but given that you also get Zebralette (a mini-zebra with just oscillators), Zebrify (the built in modular effects section of zebra as a stand-alone effect) AND Z-rev (the unusual and mysterious reverberation doohickey with lots of strange knobs and no instructions, which makes a wide variety of really nice sounding reverbs, from realistic to platey to downright odd!)... buying this was a no-brainer.

This is quite possibly the one synthesizer to eclipse them all. People have been making sounds on this ranging from highly realistic imitations of accoustic instruments, to undeard of synth sounds at the cutting edge of cutting-edgeness. Examining the oscillator output spectrally and via my ears leads me to believe this thing NEVER aliases unless you explicitly tell it to. I may be proven wrong about that one day, but I'd be suprised. This is in part what contributes to the 'analogue-like sound' of Zebra.

Speaking as someone who has been 'chopping up beats' since the early nineties starting on the Amiga, and that has spent many hours painstakingly sifting through the peaks and troughs looking for the perfect splice point, Glitch is a freeware godsend propelling the art of glitchy beats into new territory.

What this thing does is chop incoming audio (often drums/breakbeats, but frequently just about anything these days) into 16ths or similarly musical divisions and apply high quality mangling FX to each one based on both user controlled sequencing and random probability.

Whilst this thing does mean that anyone can create funky fills, effect windows and IDM-isms with little to no talent, it also affords glitch enthusiasts and those looking for creative FX use a head start, by providing the most popular effects used for classical beat mangling - retriggering, timestretching, delays, modulation, bitcrushery, etc can all be added to any part of an audio stream with ease, with lots of parameters for each effect, and multimode filters are EVERYWHERE in the signal path, such as on every single effect path, the master section etc..

Personally, I do generally prefer the hands-on approach to editing takes in a wave editor, but I will often use Glitch to provide either an initial pushing-off point for creativity, or for a final layer of subtle complexity (or complex subtlety). If you're going to let Glitch do the work, don't give up your dayjob as you'll sound like anyone else who can download and install Glitch, but it provides the basis for many interesting experiments.

By soloing an effect such as the stretcher and selecting 1/8th or 1/4 sections of audio, you can mass produce a bunch of crazy samples or drum edits, record it all, and sift through it later to provide food for drum/glitch sequences. This to me is where Glitch gets the most use. Once I loaded 10 instances of glitch and manually set each channel up to do an effect I like, set up the random probabilities to my liking and played a drum loop through it for ten minutes. I got some priceless material that way.

Another way to use Glitch involves using it as a send effect to add subtle repeats, chorusing, and 'ghosting' of parts under the main mix. Whilst Glitch represents the ultimate in banal automated washed out IDM crap, it also represents the ultimate in audio experimentation, ease of creativity and imagination empowerment. Truly, Glitch is limited only by your own imagination - use it wisely!

DOWNSIDES - This is freeware, and as I've said, an EXTREMELY generous giveaway, but I missed the following things:

1 - support for non 4/4 based time sigs (though if you use it for sampling this doesn't matter)

2 - I really wanted a way to randomize the effect parameters every bar or 8 bars or something, to add even more variation. But what the hell, you can automate it, so it's no biggie. It just felt like this feature should be there, given all the other features it has along a similar line.

Apart from these details, a perfect piece of software.

Another 'vintage' VSTi which still sounds good today. Claw, being free and sounding as good as it does, deserves to be in every computer musician's arsenal. While it is capable of bass and acid-like lines, I find it lends it's self most of all to sleazy leads, backing synthlines, and the odd outlandish effect.

The one oscillator offers (and crossfades between) the usual square and sawtooth, but also a triangle wave. The waveforms are not 'drawn with a ruler' accurate in shape, and that's a Good Thing, especially in the case of the triangle. This is one of the most usable, sonorous triangles I've heard this side of the Minimoog triangle wave, and just begs to soar in the high range with a bit of portamento and the filter digging in to it's harmonics.

PWM is available on both the square and sawtooth waveforms (on the sawtooth, it cuts a variable-sized hole in the middle of the ramp of the wave, creating rich sweeping harmonics.

The filter is sweet sounding, and in conjunction with the very nice overdrive dial, creates a wide range of sonic possibilities for a single osc synth. The filter also has a highpass mode, which is a generous addition.

The overall sound is very solid and professional. It sounds like a real monosynth, and lends a certain 'coolness' to the tracks I've used it in.

Overall, an unmissable freeware synth for cutting synth lines.

I bought this a few months ago, partly because I fancied it as a 303-ballpark synth, and partly because of the rare and to me, coveted, wavceform features. The 11 waveforms include sine wave, and 5 variations of sawtooth and square. All of these waves sound different from eachother and are PWM-able. I know some synths can do this, but it's a rarity and EVERY synth should be able to do it! Static oscillators are a crime. PWM is achieved on the other waveforms by pinching the wave at the beginning and end of it alternately, and it even brings the sine wave to colourful life.

Hard sync and ring modulation round out the tricks of the dual oscillator section, but without a way to sweep osc. 2's pitch, they're of limited value, providing only static timbral variation (though there's always automation ;). Overall the oscillators sound fantastic.

The filters are juicy and come in three flavours, all lowpass, but with different steepness and characteristics. You'd never guess this synth was made when it was, judging from the sound. Control is limited for the most part to the parameters available on the tb-303, but this is so good at doing what it does, I don't really care. If you really want to play pads on it, multitrack it. It was made to make mono lines (of the bass or lead variety) which cut thru the mix, and it does that beautifully.