Product Reviews by KVR Members

Nice, simple, but quite good sounding and working analog / tube saturator.

More American than British voiced in my opinion. I mostly use it with guitar, there you get some nice "Fenderish" tones with some good, sparkling, transparent treble and also some nice vintage overdrive.

In case you look for a "hotter" sound, stacking two instances also works well and can sound good.

Just add a good cabinet IR and you get some comparably transparent, but not digital sounding (tube amp) tones.

I already have been positively surprised by the quality of the VREV-666, which is freeware and is already a really beautiful and great sounding (studio) spring reverb (simulation).

The VREV-305 seems to be some sort of "bigger brother", a true stereo spring reverb with the luxury of two separate 6 spring units, which therefore are capable of sounding more dense and intense, at the same time also more complex and elegant than eg. a typical spring reverb in a vintage (guitar) amp with two or three springs.

Therefore, if you look for these typical, extremely twangy, dirty surf guitar spring reverb sounds, there may be - a few - better alternatives available (a few less in this quality), but if you look for excellently adjustable, more elegant sounding reverb sounds with nevertheless this unique spring reverb character, which is capable of closing the gap between a more simple, cheaper built spring reverb and a plate reverb, this plugin might be the right choice.

Adjustable Decay and Pre-Delay time enable a lot of very different reverbs, which can be additionally altered with the four band equalizations.

Sounds great with guitar or bass, maybe even better with vocals, synthesizers, drums and a lot of other audio sources, but also can equally well be used for mastering, I think.

All useful and necessary controls are accessible, as much as a linking or independent adjustment of the two channels. I personally like to unlink them and adjust them differently, which adds some additional vividness and organic character to the final signal, which anyway already sounds top notch, at least to me.

Fuse Audio Labs offers a fully functional 14-days trial version, so you can test and check the plugin without any annoying noise or other limitations for some while.

The Intro Price makes it a bargain for the quality, although the regular price still is quite fair, I think.

I already have some - more or less - good sounding spring reverb plugins, also a lot of spring reverb IR's for convolution reverbs, but if I had to decide for a single one, I think, this one would be my choice, as more decent settings sound equally good as very intense ones.

Good, useful collection of professional, but compact plugins. I have already bought some of them in the past, nice that they now are free. My favorite is Ensemble, a really unique, comparably more vivid chorus with a very unique character, but also the other Essentials sound and work fine, although I have only installed the ones, which I really need, which are about half of them.

Another advantage of this collection is, that you can use the plugins individually but you can also combine them with the help of Snap Heap to your own, personal multi effects plugin or use them in combination with the other Kilohearts Premium plugins.

The installation system also works fine and also allows individual installation or upgrading of specific plugins.

Good concept, good tones.

Really some sort of stardust.

Not only a very naturally sounding simulation of a Space Echo, with a lot of useful, additional fine tuning options, but also with some equally useful additional features, so that this plugin in fact is more or less a complete fx-section.

The fact that you can use the single sections separately or combined is a big advantage, so you can use echo, chorus and spring reverb as separate, independent effects as well as combined. Another "secret weapon" of this plugin is the Mod section, which can add some decent to very intense, beautifully sounding, additional (vintage) vibe to the echo section, different to the wow and flutter option.

The echo section itself also is exemplarily adjustable, you can adjust almost every aspect indivudally so that you easily find the perfect mix between dry and wet signals.

Highly recommended and a bargain for the price anyway.

At first glance a flexible Synth, but for me sounding much too cheap, flat, sterile and synthetic, no matter, which and how many knobs or sections I've tried to adjust or activate. I did not hear a single tone or voicing, which impressed me. Quite the opposite.

Unfortunately not my idea of outstanding or at least usable tones. So the question for me remains, who needs so many features and knobs, if not even the basic sounds are really convincing or in some way outstanding, so that they are worth some tweaking?

I gave Asper a chance, but these tones do not match my expectations at all.

No serious competitor for the wavetable and FM synths, which I usually use, for vintage analog based synth plugins anyway not. (Even without any "humanization", whatever this should be. Audible it was not for me.).

Could have more presets. Presets loading also lasts too long. No manual...

In my opinion the by far best and most authentically sounding and behaving simulation of this legendary preamp.

A lot of additional features make this plugin even more versatile than the real unit. In fact you get a complete, well equipped rack tube amp system plus a lot of good sounding and working effects.

Can be used as a preamp alone, with the included power amp and cabinet section as a complete (rack) tube amp or also in combination with another power amp.

Beautiful, highly dynamically reacting British clean to crunch tones, authentic, typical British overdrive to high-gain tones with a very flexible tone control and a lot more.

I just have been considering to buy the real preamp, but this plugin offers even an additional complete professional rack for much less money and sounds, behaves and reacts - in my opinion - exactly like the real device, so the decision was easy.

A must have for every Marshall sounds fan, I think, but not only for them.

Really very good sounding plugin, also with a lot of useful additions and improvements, if compared to the original pedal.

The only complaint, I have, is, that you cannot deactivate the cabinet/speaker/microphone section in Normal, Lead and Bass mode or are able to additionally activate it in Modern mode. Not that these sections sound bad, quite the opposite, but if Arturia adds on the one hand a lot of useful features, it does not make much sense to me, if it on the other hand limits such an important section as the cabinet/speaker/microphone section only to a fixed, built-in option.

Adding another IR, if there already is one built-in, does not make much sense as it will not improve the sound, but I think, I am not the only user, who would - at least sometimes - like to use his own IR's sometimes instead of the built-in one or just to have this option too.

Of course you can use an external IR for the modern voicing, but if you prefer eg. the Lead or Bass voicing instead, you cannot deactivate the built-in one unfortunately.

On the other hand some new features like the Pre-Drive and Post-Drive filters/eq's are really very useful for perfect sound shaping, just to name some of them.

Apart from my single complaint, from which I hope, that it maybe will be added in a future upgrade, a really very good sounding and working plugin, not only for guitar and bass. To be honest, I have already heard worse sounding guitar or bass tube amp plugins, which usually also sonically are less flexible.

This sonic flexibility also makes this plugin to a simple, but effective all-round option for a lot of different, good sounding results, especially, if you look for some quick, easily adjustable, but good sounding results.

Arturia quality, meanwhile also available for guitar and bass are good news. At least for me.

One of the best sounding Tweed amp plugins, which I have heard up to now.

Great dynamic reaction, convincing, naturally sounding and reacting tube tones, also a - for this amp - good microphoned speaker selection.

A nice hidden feature is the MIDI expression pedal accessible bridged inputs gain control (CC11), which increases gain a lot, nice, if you look for eg. this typical "broken" Neil Young Deluxe tone, but also nice for some additional gain if you use the pedal more decent.

Works and sounds fine with Strats or Teles, I personally found bass sounding a little bit too loose for my taste with humbucker guitars, at least with PAF pickups, but an additional (eq or) HP filter with a center frequency around 100Hz (or slightly less or more) in front solves this problem easily. Then you get even with humbuckers beautiful vintage clean, crunch and even intense, great sounding overdrive tones with still good dynamic reaction, you can even adjust some tones, which already come close to a Plexi.

Tremolo also works and sounds fine.

Add a vintage spring reverb, a vintage phaser, Leslie or Univibe, or even a RAT or SD-1, and you're in sonic heaven - at least as a guitarist and do not look for any Metal-tones.

My only personal wish - maybe for a future upgrade is to add an option to be able to deactivate the built-in speaker/mircophone section optionally, so that you can also use external IR's instead. Not that the built-in ones sound bad, quite the opposite, but the are limited tho this amp and speaker and especially this amp also sounds excellent with other, larger cabinets and other speakers.

Nevertheless highly recommender if you look for really good sounding Tweed amp tones.

Price is fair for the quality.

I have several phaser plugins, but - to be honest - not many of them really give me the sounds, which I expect from or associate with a typical phaser.

Quite the opposite here, already the default setting sounds convincing, the tones are widely individually adjustable and the sound quality is very good.

I even am considering of buying the whole Modula Suite, if the quality of the other plugins is similar to this one. (I have just downloaded the tremolo demo and it also impressed me in the same way as the phaser did. Good tones, no frills.).

For the quality prices are fair, even more the ones for the suites / bundles.

The Nembrini plugin version of this legendary amp the first one, which gave me - after having learned how to tame this "beast" and adjust it properly - a convincing impression, why an ODS really is so legendary.

Some sort of Blackface on Steroids, I would say.

After having tested the plugin, I first was a little disappointed, until I found out that this plugin is not the sort of "You press the button(s), we do the rest!" plugin, some controls need to be adjusted properly, but if you do it, you can get a lot of really excellent, also very differently sounding tones.

My PAF-Humbuckers obviously already had been too hot for the default setting, so I had to reduce Input and Output a lot, so that the signal levels did not start to distort. Concerning these controls here less definitely seems to be more, but afterwards the "sonic sun" was starting to rise.

The basic tones are very American / Fender voiced, nice, very transparent, open, fresh, dynamically reacting tones with really a lot of treble, but also enough mids and bass, if you need them.

I personally found a proper treble adjustment essential for really good tones, as the amp can offer more treble reserves than you most probably will ever need. Also the microphone, speaker, cabinet selection affects the tone - in my impression - much more than usual.

The Overdrive itself sounds nicely harmonious, American voiced, but - depending on the individual gain and tone settings you can change this basic character also to a more dirty, rougher sounding one, even more if you deactivate the tone stack. Nevertheless you will not completely reach this typical British brutality and aggressive tone, also because of the existing mid-scoop, but you can come a little closer.

What makes the difference to a lot of other amps are the incredibly intense, vivid harmonics, which here have their own, unique character, different to the harmonics from modern high-gain amps or Marshalls, the overdrive is a typical, but intensely beefed up vintage overdrive with a sweet and at the same time really biting tone, intense treble and a lot of sustain, but without ever sounding too flat or over-compressed, quite the opposite.

The clean sounds are equally good (of course), also very flexible adjustable, the Clean channel alone is capable of producing a nice vintage overdrive, so you also can not only adjust a good clean but also alternatively an excellent crunchy rhythm sound and a more intense overdrive lead sound and do the rest with guitar volume. The possible combinations of Volume (first gain stage) and Lead (second gain stage) allow a lot of different tones.

Certainly not the perfect amp for modern Metal or really heavy stuff, but most probably for almost everything else. For me the typical SRV, Carlton, Ritenour, Ford, Sayce tone, which even alone sounds great, without any additional pedals or reverb.

Interesting speaker/cabinet selection. For me the 15" Faceman / JBL became the best choice, buat also the Vox / Fane combinations sounds very good, only completely different. If using external IR's, I found that alnico Creams or Rubys as well as Creambacks do a good job, but also an ET65 or ET90 harmonize well with this amp / plugin, maybe even better than Celestions, as they add some nice, decent compression and sweeten treble a little.

For me personally most probably the most convincingly sounding and working simulation of this legendary amp.

But - it needs more proper adjustment, especially concerning Treble, Presence, Input and Output, as much as the right cabinet/speaker/microphone combination, to find the really great sounding sweet spots.