Product Reviews by KVR Members

I owned this instrument for quite a while some time ago, but ended up selling for reasons described below. I'm a songwriter guy, so that will reflect on my review.

I'll start with the PROs:

• The dynamics and round-robins are great, this might be my all time favorite kit in terms of feeling "alive" when you play it. At times I had some issues with keeping the dynamics in a certain range, but that can be solved by setting the response curve.
• The sample quality is outstanding, NI and Abbey Road are sure 2 good companies.
• The room mics sound lovely, definitely add to the "alive" feeling, I liked the control over mono and stereo room mics for various applications.

The CONs (for my specific situation):

• Being a song writer, I want my instruments to load within a certain time range, so they are ready when inspiration strikes. Due to the long loading times, I found my self often waiting for the VST to load, so I wouldn't recommend this as a songwriter tool.
• I couldn't manage to make the drums "sit" in the track. I suspect this might be due to the specific sound of the gear and room used @ Abbey Road. Whatever I did with the drums, I never was happy with the result as they wouldn't blend well with the rest of my recording. I never experienced this issue with another drum library, I tried my best, in the end I just became frustrated and sold it.
• Again, this one might be my personal taste, but I couldn't find a basic, generic, bread and butter snare drum that would fit my music. They all sounded kinda fancy, but I couldn't find a basic, ol' pop-rock snare drum, or at least not the kind I was looking for. Again, I never experienced this issue with another drum instrument.
• At the time I owned this product, the cymbals and snare drums couldn't be used between the 2 provided kits. Meaning, if I liked the cymbals in kit 1 and snare in kit 2, there just wasn't a way to use them together. I found this incredibly annoying, knowing the ride I like is there, but couldn't be matched with the kick I liked.
• Routing and working within Kontakt was cumbersome and left me frustrated from time to time.

I don't really think MD is a bad product, the quality is definitely there but I think a potential buyer should take the above mentioned CONs into consideration before buying. Maybe watch a youtube review or at least listen to the samples on NI's page.

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Having dreamed of having Waves plugins for some time, I decided to demo some bundles and get me something that would improve my mixes. These days I mostly mix my songs in a hurry (being married, a father and running a business), so I decided to check out the Artist Collection series. My choice fell on the Maserati. Why?

a) versatility.

I consider this bundle the most versatile, since it covers most mixing purposes (from vocals to acoustic guitar, bass, drums, synths to groups and mastering). Also, it doesn't alter the sound as much as the others.

b) sound

While it's a one (or two) trick pony, the trick it does is quite impressive. I use it to mix Rock, Pop, Ambient, Dance stuff and while it might not be always the ideal option (sound wise), the end result always sound "professional". My guess is that the individual plugins divide the frequency spectrum in a professional way which leads to a good mix. Also, the provided effects are decent - not a lot you can do wrong.

c) ease of use

Really, there's almost nothing you can do wrong. I like that. I don't have time to fiddle around with matching EQ's and compressors, effects and so on... The inner presets are great, and instead of tweaking 20 parameters I use the 2 provided (the others change internally automatically). My mixes sound better now and I spend maybe around 10-20% of the time mixing I used to.

Naturally, the Maserati collection won't do any magic and make your music sound like Toni mixed it himself, yet they are great time savers and for people, that don't have many years of experience and aren't pro mixing engineers they might be the best solution. They are definitely worth checking out ;).Read Review

I have been using this plugin for quite some time as my coloring mastering eq form my own projects and have to say it's amazing. it really adds a kind of "sheen" and "sparkle" to the record. it also makes the whole track sound "rounder" in a very musical way (this depends on your person settings, naturally). for me, right now I can't imagine finishing a mix without it.

It took me some time to get the controlls figured out, but after some time I got used to them. There are planty of sound tweaking possibilities which come with the selectable tube models for top and bottom section of the eq.

the only real downside I see to this plugin is that it is written using SynthMaker and custom assembler codes, which does make it a bit more heavy on the CPU and memory. the positive thing that compensates for this is the price - 38€ isn't much for this eq. i used it succesfully on vocals and acoustic guitar and it added quite a unique character to them.

all in all, i consider the Pultronic a "no-seller" in my plugin collection, i enjoy it's sound that much :).Read Review