Product Reviews by KVR Members

A lot of useful phaser sounds with enough flexibility too. Sounds, like such a phaser should and the plugin offers even more sound shaping and fine tuning options, than the real pedal ever did.

Absolutely love it. Has the perfect set of parameters for me and the taps customisation is very interesting. Great job.

At its core, Anima works by using surgical resonant filters to extract pitched notes from unpitched, broadband noise. You simply drop in any field recording or audio file, play a chord, and listen as the transients and dynamics of the raw audio trigger breathtaking, evolving resonances. Instead of building a sound from standard oscillators, you're literally plucking harmonic life out of everyday noise. The emotional weight this brings to a track is unmatched; you can quite literally "embed your life into your music" by using recordings of your own surroundings.

Interesting, but very different amp plugin concept, especially for clean to edge of breakup or crunch sounds and for tweakers, but also (maybe still) not totally perfect in my opinion.

A manual with some more detailed informations would have been helpful, also at least some hints, on which all these fantasy named components are based. Due to the big differences, which result in the use of more or less components dynamic levels can vary intensely, I also found the Drive section not so great sounding, especially not in combination with the Open Razor and Bartitsu amps, I found Post Drive (I suppose, this simulates power amp saturation) sounding better to me. (Later I found out, that Tuner On obviously adds some unwanted distortion to the sounds, deactivating it really improves the results, especially if you use the Drive section.) After a while I even managed to adjust Open Razor to sound well usable for me while my favorite at the moment became British Saddleback. In principle the amps give you nicely different voiced sounds, just like the preamps do. This is a plugin for subleties, although a lot of subtleties also can alter a sounds intensely.;-).

Adding a gain control to both the Preamp and Amp section would have been an advantage, Drive alone for me does not do the same, while Post Drive does a great job.

If you take the time to find out, what's working well and how to adjust and optimize the sounds to your personal wishes and if you have managed to level out things properly, you can get really great sounds, due to all the component combinations in almost endless variety. But, as already mentioned, not everything automatically sounds good, so storing the results, you like, as your own presets is recommended.

The preamps and amp models really sound differently, also all the fine-tuning options and the Sweetener in principle work fine, at least, after you have learned, how to adjust them nicely, first it can look complicated, but in fact it is not really, so definitely useful, not to speak of all the different compressors and their options. Tightness or even frequency adjustable HP/LP filters, or comparable sound shaping tools are available in both pre- and post-editing sections.

Certainly no plug and play plugin, you could even be disappointed from the first results, but if you spend some time with it, you can get really wonderful and also very different sounds out of it with both American and British and both vintage and modern characters and for all these sounds you needed a lot of different, and also not so cheap gear in reality, which you here get in a single package.

You also can deactivate eg. the Drive section and the Cabinet section and use external plugins and IR's instead, but as a basic sound source, also with other external effects this plugin works very well, so it also can become a nice "pedal platform" for effects like eg. wah, chorus, rotary, univibe, phaser, tremolo, tape echo, delay, polyphonic octaver or harmonizer, (spring) reverb, ...

Despite of my few complaints I give the plugin the highest rating, first, because it is something really unique and different, the plugin market is so overcrowded with always the same things, a lot of plugins just copy each other or the same real gear and everyone promises, to have made it better than all other ones, so this plugin takes itself out of this - marketing - competition in some way, which I really appreciate, second, because for all the options and features the price is more than fair.

_.

Addition: Just got the update to the 2.1 version, which improved some things positively, certain things now even sound and react more naturally, the interaction between preamp, amp and drive stages seems to have been harmonized more, so especially "hotter" sounds are easier adjustable and sound better to me, also an additional (zero watt) power stage has been added within the Type (amp) section (including damping, presence and resonance) and the tuner does not affect the sounds anymore.

As the plugin is now, it's only up to the user, if it sounds great or not. All, you need, is there...

...and even a lot more...

Very well done.

FuruBass-JB1965 Lite is a free demo version of the full FuruBass JB1965 library for Kontakt.

It provides the core tone and playability of a vintage 1965 Jazz Bass using the BaMix sound system.

Most controls and switches do not even react to anything! Tested and deleted, although the basic sound would have been ok, but I dislike only partially working plugins.

First of all, this plugin really sounds very good! The parallel mixing option is an advantage, the sound is well usable, not only for guitar and the tones are very naturally. But, it is not really a typical SD-1 in my opinion. At my own one sounds differently.

If this is positive or negative, is debatable. What I do not hear here, is this - for my taste - too intense bass-cut, the plugin sounds more naturally, which I appreciate a lot, as my favorite, customized SD-1 also has been modded to reproduce more bass, if wished. The sounds also seems to offer a little less gain, therefore also less compression, while some SD-1 character is still there, but I rather would define the sound as some sort of "best of both worlds" between a Klon Centaur and an SD-1.

I already have a very authentically, rougher and hotter sounding SD-1 plugin, but often this one even does the job better, so both make sense to me, but the other one also offers all the disadvantages of the original pedal.

For use with other instruments this plugin makes more sense to add some overdrive, without overriding the basic sound. So, as SD-1 style sound it works well, if you look for a 100% authentic sound, look somewhere else, but this plugin wins concerning flexibility and well usable sounds.

As an all round overdrive plugin with a certain SD-1 oriented vintage character nevertheless for me top notch.

Did not convince me much, so I deleted the plugin soon again.

Noctis does not sound better to me than a cheap, tubeless Metal-distortion pedal, very thin, scratchy and unbalanced sounds, but no typical, well usable, all-tube high-gain Metal sounds for me, if I compare them with the ones, I get out of a Rectifier, SLO 100, 5150, VH-4, Savage 120, JVM, ... real amp or good amp plugin.

Ember simply sounds boring and meaningless to me, not like a Fender, nor like a Marshall, not like a Vox or Orange, nor like any other good tube amp, I know, I do not hear and recognizable character and uniqueness at all and Lumina does not sound bad, nicely warm, but without any convincing treble bite and dynamical reaction to attack also is poor, you do not even get any edge of breakup sounds out, but for clean sounds I anyway prefer just using guitar and audio interface and maybe an eq plugin.

For all three amp models I already have better sounding Tonex models of my real gear, but also better sounding plugins from competitors.

The harmonizer is a nice idea, but I have not even tried it, as I disliked the amp sounds too much and all other effects anyway are not really my taste, only average, no tape echo or spring reverb. Two undefined IR's only and no option, to deactivate it and use external ones instead or a built-in IR loader also does not impress me much.

I maybe used the harmonizer, if it had been offered as separate plugin.

The programmer obviously is a very young guy, so I would say, the talent is there, but at the moment not really the necessary experience, concerning great, if not legendary guitar tube amp sounds.

The market already is overloaded with amp plugins, a lot of them simply sound bad, some usable and a few ones great, so if you are not capable of creating something really outstanding and top-notch sounding, better let it be in my opinion.

The pedals, effects section also only is average, something, I dislike on most contemporary amp plugins. No compressor, drive, delay, reverb pedal in reality sounds the same and every player knows, why he just uses a certain pedal on his pedalboard and not another one, but here you only get exchangeable average effects, which you anyway hardly can use for (re-)creating your own, personal sound, so you anyway will need additional plugins of your own gear, so these sections are completely obsolete for me.

What I also do not understand is, why so many people meanwhile more or less just copy the NeuralDSP plugin look, instead of creating something better and more convincing. I personally never liked it, much less most of their amp plugins. But this is another theme...

4,75/5.

I recently bought a used license of Omnisphere and upgraded it today to V3.

And what can I say... there is no better Synth than Omnisphere 3 (even though I love Serum and Vital as much).

You can literally do anything (granular, analog, additive.....). It took a tiny bit to understand how I can program my own patches (a week approximately) but now that I'll do it's even more amazing. The sounds are amazing and lightweight and CPU friendly and the round Rubin system is out of this world (I literally set up an arp with no velocity - no machine gun sound). And the new Mutaions feature is just so much fun especially with your won patches.

And though I know it's expensive, but after serum this should be your next investment, especially now where you can use Omnisphere's fx in your DAW.

Only downsides are, that there are barely some useable pianos (though with V3 there are some decent ones in there), because for that you need to buy Keyscape (for which I wish there would be a discount if you own Omnisphere 3) and that you can't favorite your sounds outside the big sound browser.

Asside from that, Omisphere is just the GOAT! So truly buy it - it's worth it. Also once I have like 50 patches I made myself I will publish a free and a 2$ pack.

Steinberg Absolute 7 bundle includes impressive number of virtual instruments, top pianos, synths. The best part is Halion and Groove Agent (both the full version). You also get presets for Retroloug and Padshop. Around 35 different instruments.

https://youtu.be/yNmsfb9fpKU