Product Reviews by KVR Members

I've removed and re-written my whole review for this product, starting with the fact that now Soundmorph now has no record of any license for me, and pluginboutique just sends me to Soundmorph for support -- I PAID OVER $100 FOR SOFTWARE WHICH IS NOW NOT ACCESSIBLE TO ME, and both vendors ignore email about this matter. This is the end result of the below. I recommend staying away from soundmorph and pluginboutique, especially their rent to own.

Two major problems:

1. PluginBoutique is the worst. Ive been using their site for 3 years, and the customer service and activation issues I have with products sold there are absurd. Beatport/Pluginboutique sold me Dust on a "rent-to-own" plan, but REFUSED TO GIVE ME my license after I paid in full, forcing me to contact them and argue about activation. 2 weeks after paying in full, I finally received a license but that license doesnt work. Activation failed, try again later. "Email address doesnt match" even though Im using the same email for pluginboutique and for Soundmorph. Now my product doesnt work AT ALL.
2. Soundmorph also doesnt reply, for 3 weeks. They simply ignore all communications and do not care if they have customers or not. I guess that is what happens when you work with Beatport/Pluginboutique? You stop caring about having customers? Ok. Im done with both.

Lesson learned.

Update 11/11/25: there is an update to the transit2, but I cant log into their site because they do "fastspring" and this is blocking me from receiving the update. I have no account, but I have an account? I bough this in pluginboutique, and they dont have the update, and baby audio has no account for me. Great! Par for the effing course. 2 stars.

Edit: I want to say something I dont usually say: this was better than I thought it was. It took hours and a few different sessions over days for me to come to this conclusion and add another star, and I wanted to say this. The quality and complexity of premade effects stacks is actually very good, and it works, and increases the value of this despite how soon after v1 was this released, how it looks identical, etc. Still - its a cash grab lol, but its also a good product if you just buy this and not the first version.

*****.

I wrote a lengthy review for the first Transit, released... about 1 year ago. I gave that plugin 4 stars, minus 1 for weak MIDI binding, and overall I enjoyed it and found it useful when shortcutting or speeding up my post-processing and tweaking workflows.

Cut to today -- Baby Audio/Huang sent me an email that I thought was about a major update to the recently released Transit, but instead it was an email offering me a special price for... Transit 2, a new release already.

This new version of Transit is also nice, it also looks good(identical), and this version has a lot more presets and a good number more effects than version 1, but.... I cant help but feel that this was not necessary and that the idea was, indeed, a modest cash grab.

If Transit 2(and 1) were not just tools that streamline existing DAW-based workflows and effects chains, and were not plugins whose main functions can be replicated in most DAWs at a stock level, I would not criticize this brand for making a paid version 2 which is basically an updated version 1, but that is the reality here.

I did indeed buy this because the $30 upgrade offer fits into my budgets and I was genuinely curious to see how far this had been developed, but I'll only give 3 stars to an otherwise 4-5 star product because attaching a YouTube streamer personality to this to try to sell + its minimal value warrants it.

I already have a few distortion options in my studio, so I wasnt really looking for a new one. The marketing for Cyberdrive caught my eye (81% discount) and I had some cash rewards on my account, so I wound up paying like $9 for this.

My expectations were low, but somehow this multi distortion plugin is immediately interesting and sets itself apart from Trash/2, Bite, and various NI plugins, as well as Bitwig and Cubase's native distortion stuff. The sound character itself is tight, manageable, has many styles, tones, strengths, stacked distortion engines, and effects engines on top of that. This is not some throwaway distortion plugin and immediately fits in my tracks, and I already use a few other products in my templates.

One moderate criticism and the reason Im giving this 4 out of 5 stars -- there are zero presets.

There are many types of distortion (64!), 3 distortion engines, a feedback engine, dynamics controls, tone control, motion (chorus, etc) control, cabinet sim, filter mode switches, and space (reverb), and there are a good number of control knobs under or around each.

Edited and updated to 5 stars - dev updated plugin and added presets.

I deleted my prior review, which was for Rando 1, and am re-writing it for Rando 2 - another fabulous 5 star instrument that is in every project of mine from now on. Rando 2 is the re-written, updated version of Rando 1, while Rando 1 is also Landr Sampler now. : D Weird, I know.

Rando is a powerful sampler that can load and map 88 samples across a customizable virtual keyboard, filtering for loop or 1 shot, length, type/basic tonal or percussive character, etc. Rando can be pointed at one sample folder, or many folders can be separately mapped and selected/deselected as you load new batches. It has many great features such as automatic BPM and key matching, a 'magic' button that keeps all samples in sync all the time, sample locking per key, great export and drag/drop in/out options, 'move to left' feature that lets you push all your favorite locked items left, great global + per-sample effects, a damned 64 step 4 + 1 track sequencer, and this cool "kick library" feature where you tag and define kicks to be used in the kick sequencer lane or 1 shot on the keyboard.

I have so far loaded over *1 million samples* into Rando 1 and now also Rando 2, from 2 different local drives, and it performs perfectly. This sort of performance / toolkit / sequencer sampler is a dream instrument for me and my specific workflow.

Rando 2 has my most requested update(I thought it was a pipe dream to be honest) to Rando 1, which is SAMPLE SLICING inside the UI! MonkeyC added a built-in slicer, available at the bottom of the program window behind a toggle near the other controls. The slicer has all the features you might want from a basic slicer tool such as transient detection, detection threshold, equal parts, beat grid, etc, and everything works fine in cubase(14) and bitwig(5.3.9) at low buffer (128) settings on my interface. Rando 2 has a somewhat snappier UI on my system, as opposed to version 1.

As is normal on a release like this, there were a few bugs to squash, and also as normal, Dennis at MonkeyC once again crushed those bugs in a matter of days. On top of everything else that is great about Rando2 and this excellent dev, this was provided to existing customers of R1 without charge.

Rando 2 is a fantastic sampler instrument of the likes of which there is no other -- wait, scratch that. There is one other, and it is also Rando but it has Landr's logo on it. Lmao I love you guys and this is my favorite software sampler!! :).

I picked up Pendulate years ago, played with it for a night, then forgot about it and never picked it up again.

Then I got an email about an update and decided to reinstall this and give it a fair listen.

Pendulate sounds good, and it sounds better than it did years ago. If I recall correctly, years ago it was noisy, glitchy, and dangerous lol, but today it seems more stable, more musical, and honestly pretty good for a specific range of sonic characteristics.

Pendulate does gruesome mono bass synth/drone sounds quite well, runs with minimal CPU usage, and its VST3 plays well with cubase 12, 13, and bitwig 5.1.9/5.2 beta. The sonic palette that you can pull out of Pendulate isnt the widest or most interesting, but the FREE pricetag, excellent low end sounds it produces, improvements over time, & addition of MPE allows me to give this 4 out of 5 stars. This is a fun synth and the vendor doesnt force iLok or any such nonsense.

This works as intended in Cubase 12, 13 and Bitwig 5.1.9. Ive only spent a couple hours using Harmony Bloom and the plugin is being actively developed, so I'll come back later and add more details. Update: Details added - I love Harmony Bloom!.

So far this is one of the better euclidian sequencer / advanced arpeggiators I've seen in the software space, and the control you have over note timing is much deeper & more advanced than most. The dev has included many scales and "note collections" to make pattern generation interesting.

Update: from 1.2.9 forward:

Dev has listened to feedback and added more stock presets, has expanded the feature, and I no longer have any sort of DAW transport sync issue in any DAW. This works wonderfully, and as time has passed Ive really begun to enjoy it.

At first I was just using this to generate melodies and harmonies by locking it to my DAW transport, but when you trigger HB with incoming MIDI notes (your keyboard), it becomes a mega-arpeggiator with powerful options! This is wonderful, powerful, musical, well supported, and the dev has livestreams constantly to demo and explain the product.

I've already left a bad review for Loop Engine 1 as well as Chords, Chords Pro + Notes, and all for similar reasons. One main reason, really.

EDIT: OMG They just released Loop Engine 3 lmao Loop Engine 18 will be out any day.

That being said, there was no way I would buy Loop Engine 2, based on my earlier experiences (timing issues with simple loops in all DAWs, crashing on MIDI export) with WA's other Loop Engine-based products. However today I was given a copy of Loop Engine 2 in a larger Pluginboutique bundle, so I figured why not? They couldnt POSSIBLY have left the DAW loop timing issue in ANOTHER version of this same plugin, could they have??

Yes. Yes they could, and yes they did. Is Loop Engine 2 just Loop Engine 1 with a new version number?? I cant even see any differences between version 1 and version 2. When I try to export MIDI from this, it freezes for a second and does nothing(Bitwig), just like all the other versions. In Cubase 13, this does export MIDI after a 5-6 second freeze.

The big issue -- in Cubase 12, 13 & Bitwig 5.1.9, Loop Engine 2 doubles up the first note in any loop(only Cubase), AND cuts the final note in the loop when the arranger loops around. (Bitwig AND Cubase).

Try it out - try any version of Loop Engine, from version 1 to Chords Pro + Notes to Loop Engine 2, and see what you can see.

Ive emailed the vendor about this. They act confused, they ask for videos of the issue, but they do not fix the issue. The only way to avoid this is to turn off cycle/loop mode in your DAW, which isnt something I should need to do to accommodate a looping plugin.

Its my fault for actually installing this, and thinking the issue would be gone. If its been there this long, they have no intention of fixing it.

I'll start by admitting that I already own a couple fart instruments and a handful of fart samples, and I've been trying to become knowledgeable and invested in this genre for the last few years. I may or may not have created a few of my own using a good field recorder and some mics, so I know the perils and pitfalls of mic placement, room acoustics, and of course what sort of meal makes the best muse to get started.

Right now Flatulus is the king of the kontakt instrument fart sounds game for sure, with Fartman and Fartman2 being essentially just as good but with slightly less good audio quality. Flatulus has many farty, sloppy, protracted fart sounds, well mapped key switches and banks/modes for mod articulation lololol, effects, and some presets. There are a few farts in Flatulus that will blow your mind, including some just really, really long farts. I love it. I will undoubtedly have some of this on tracks at some point.

Its another mediocre analog-sounding synth, and I got it inside a larger Pluginboutique bundle where I was forced to accept it along with other products. I think this was inside the bundle to force me to give UAD my email address and install their product portal.

I honestly didnt need or want any more analog synths, and this UAD PolyMAX synth is extremely regular & extremely mundane. The presets included arent numbered- for good reason. There are roughly 100 presets, and they are all sounds Ive heard 1000x by now and can create myself on my dozens of other synths.

If you are all about that analog sound and have no analog hard or soft synths, this can be acquired for $29 along with 8 other products inside a pluginboutique bundle they just put out. The free synth 'Vital' and also 'SurgeXT' have comparable analog sounds if you dont want to spend $, and there are dozens of other higher quality multi synths out there that do these sounds plus a lot more for your money.

I have been stretching, warping, manipulating samples for a long time, at least 26 years now, but I am always looking for the best creative stretch algorithm and I just havent found exactly what Im looking for in all that time. Mind you I have not purchased any of the more expensive time/tone bundles or tools, and I dont own any of the cinematic voice effect tools. I have always looked for affordable or free time/tone tools, and Im always left wanting just a little more creative freedom.......

Then I found PaulXStretch, and my life has been altered lol. Quite seriously, I found this tool last night and have spent almost 12 hours straight making gorgeous drone and ambient music using multiple instances of PaulX on my workstations's desktop. I havent even opened my DAW in 12 hours, and this is weird. I have generated 100s of new drone samples for my projects, and I feel like I have a new workflow that will be with me for many years to come.

The stretch quality of this free (GNU) software is on par with paid products, native DAW tools (such as bitwig or cubase's algorithms), serato, etc, but goes WELL BEYOND any of these tools in terms of creative freedom. I can turn a 5 second sample into a 20 minute long drone masterpiece if I pick the right source file, and I can run 4-5 PaulX instances at the same time, creating a never-ending drone and ambient environment. I can stretch vocal samples to a point where other other stretch engines will lose most of the original sound character and vowel shapes, but paulX allows extreme stretching while still preserving that character.

This is an insanely fun, totally free creative tool and I cant recommend it more. I plan to donate to the dev because they deserve it.