Product Reviews by KVR Members

Great performance ! Easy on my CPU and really good sound quality. Get the bundle and you get the Pulse-Tec EQ with it.

Audio Map is an innovative sample-mapper-player plugin that expands on visual mapping ideas from tools like XO, Atlas, or Abyss. Samples are displayed as dots in an multi catergory XY map, playable and selectable by hovering with the mouse, curves or draw freehand-lines.

Core Features

Curve and Path Drawing: Draw curves or freehand paths to flexibly auto-map samples to keys—combinations possible for creative layering. XY Coordinates: Map sorted by properties like sample length, noisiness, brightness or other ones; global Attack/Release to quick shorten or declick Samples; Polyphonic; Quantisation.

Analysis & Loading

Load sample folders, tool analyzes automatically and sort into categories

Linux Support

Native Linux support available (this is not official yet but i use it on Linux), but polyphony not fully functional yet—minor XY calculation errors exist. The developer delivers quick updates;

I find the tool really great for Linux users, and it's fun to use my 20,000 samples more quickly and creatively than listening to them one by one (you know the "find the right snare" meme?). I think the tool is very effective and creative, and it finally allows me to discover samples that were hidden in the crowd.

Forecast: i bet all issue will be fixed soon so its 5/5.

When it comes to sims - have it all use it all - But Amp Locker hands down is the best value over any other maker - the year end sales can not be beat and the quality is top notch. Great customer service in every way. Updates are thoughtful and provide new content available for purchase as well as fixing any issues you can report. A small developer with a long history of solid work who understands what it is to be a guitar player in the real world. Years ago when the Audio assault Sigma was released for $5 before Amp Locker existed that was a good deal. Combine that with the fact that years later the Sigma amp is in Amp Locker - something that a lot of developers would not have done when it is so much easier to abandon old apps.

Seriously you can not get a better deal then Amp Locker - Get on the mailing list and hit those sales.

I've already got way to many clippers, but I'm really liking this. This is a different and a fresh approach. It somehow uses noise to modulate the clipping to avoid inharmonic distortion and aliasing. I was able to push an already pushed mix even more without any audible consequences, reaching one extra dB than before, easily. When pushing hard the distortion is somehow more pleasing and the material remains clear and open.

It's a really well laid out plugin, but it takes a little time to get used to and understand everything and some settings are a little hard to grasp at first. Luckily there are helpful pop-up tips when you hover over the various buttons and sliders so that makes it more easy. It's got delta mode, so it's easy to set up and listen to how much you are affecting, and autogain. Both linear and minimum phase OS up to 16x is a big plus. Wish it had offline settings though. I appreciate the graphics also, and being able to see what your doing to the waveform.

I've been facinating by using noise in various subtle ways to enhance sources, so I really enjoyed playing with upward noise also, for adding textures. Reminds me a bit of fidef and similar plugins.

It's not just a clipper, but a creative sound-shaping tool! Everything seems very well thought out, and I'm not missing much, except maybe a manual. And offline OS settings.

Would recomend trying it out.

This sampler is by far the most infuriating thing I have ever used. I really wish I liked this more then I do, and even despite the issues I have it is still the most powerful free sampler I know of.

The good part of this plugin is that it can do just about anything. It is a fully featured sampler which allows you to not only map each key to individual samples, but also map samples to different velocities, with the full version allowing you to round-robin samples. It comes with an extremely versatile set of modulation options, and is also a fully featured synthesizer, allowing you to map subtractive oscillators like samples to individual keys, as well as load full wavetables into the sampler part to do wavetable synthesis. The wavetable synthesis part surprised me, because it is only talked about in the manual, so unless you read it, you may never actually know it exists. Lastly, you can take the project files and use a program called "ConvertWithMoss" to create soundfonts, which I very much needed.

The bad part about this plugin is the UI and it's somewhat unstable nature. Despite the other reviews, the UI, while visually very nice, is one of the most difficult to understand of any plugin I have ever used. It has caused me immense levels of physical and mental suffering. I am not entirely sure why I seemed to struggle with it so much while everyone else didn't, and why I had a significantly easier time using other notoriously difficult to learn plugins like Dexed or Sytrus. The subtractive and wavetable synthesis options I mentioned took way longer to find then I would have liked, and I even had to write notes down so I don't forget where they are (which you can see below in case you have trouble finding them). This plugin is also somewhat unstable, frequently giving error messages which can optionally be logged into gigantic debug files around three hundred megabytes each. It rarely fully crashes my DAW, so I can often just close them without issue, and I will likely report these bugs in the future.

Overall, this thing is incredible functionally, but that power is wrapped in one of the most horrible interfaces I have ever had to suffer using. Despite this, I might actually still buy the full version just because it is so powerful, and with enough pain I will eventually understand how this thing works.

Here are the notes I wrote about these that I mentioned earlier, in case you want to do synthesis in this plugin:
-To add an oscillator, go to the "Regions" tab, then right-click, then select "New region." Below that, click where it says "<none>" under "Sample/Matrix" and select one of the waveforms.

-To do wavetable synthesis, simply load a wavetable into the plugin and set it's note region like any other sample. Then, in the "Sounds" tab, use the "PW" knob to cycle through the wavetable. TX16Wx should automatically detect it as a wavetable when loading, which will tune it and set the mode to WT (this mode can be found in the "Regions" tab, next to the "Sample/Matrix" column).

Interesting approach. It maintains clarity better than other clippers, sound remains crisp and defined; if I wouldn't know I would have suspected some type of multiband clipping. Because of that clarity, even at the same volume, it has the effect of sounding a bit louder.

I like the idea of offering IIR and FIR options for the oversampling filters (everybody should do that IMO). Aliasing is nicely kept in check, especially at 16x, without eating a ton of CPU. I also like the noise being able to mask it, basically an original implementation of dither, but with some interesting shaping and level options.

I'd love to have some kind of db scale on one side of the oscilloscope, just to have hint of how much it clips, but other than that it's a solid release.

I am blown away by the sound of this clipper. One of the first clippers in a while to truly do something different and the sound quality pays off. Ignoring all of the knee and asymmetrical settings, the hard clipper alone sounds so much more interesting when pushed hard compared to other hard knee clippers. Yes, there is still distortion, but it doesn't bother the ear as much. I tried using this heavily on a master and was shocked how well it held up comparing it to two other commonly used mastering clippers.

If I had one critique, it's that the controls are a bit finnicky and hard to wrap my head around. Some of the buttons kept getting engaged when I tried to just use the knobs, which kept throwing me off. I think those kinks will get worked out though, and this clipper is truly groundbreaking in its audio quality.

This is one of the best and most innovative plugins out there right now.

Buzzcut is a brilliant cut on a theory i played around with before, where injected dithering dithering noise working in tandem with clipping and and some handy controls allow to gain level and at the same time reduce digital harshness from the algorithmic processes, an itb version of what the process of a digital ADDA converter naturally does to the sound, which results in a more full and pleasant sound (dare i say analog-y) of whatever you throw on to it.

Level AND aural creaminess ?! Count me in.

The plugin itself is really well thought of and properly designed - clear and straight forward, the small but indispensable controls on the clippers and tools (like two dc offsets), allow to manipulate the signal in a way that is difficult to do with a full chain of dithers and clippers. Easy to use and sounds great.

It's marketed for mixbus and mastering duties, but i suggest using it on individual busses and even instruments.

Been dreaming with a tool like this and i couldn't possible done it better, bravo! Straight to my toolbox and it should go to yours too.

this solves the elusive oscillator phase options from the VA layer of the free Halion Sonic. I feel inclined to remind the world that the Halion 7.1 manual has indeed a section on the oscillator phase triggering [https://www.steinberg.help/r/halion/7.1/en/halion/topics/editing_zones/sound_editor_oscillator_section_r.html], whereas in vanilla Halion Sonic any reference (and the respective controls) seem to disapear [https://www.bhphotovideo.com/lit_files/1071738.pdf].

Now, how Steinberg justify a moving sub-oscillator in a workstation even if it's given out free, is beyond me, and there's always the possibility that the option is there and i can't find it (but i've tried so damn hard...).

either way this solved the issue for me (because sometimes i just need to study smth in a multitimbral VA) and i'm grateful to the developer.

Works offline with LMStudio and any LLM.
LMStudio model search can find LLMs less than 1GB.
An RTX with heaps of VRAM will help.
The AI revolution continues.