Product Reviews by KVR Members

Nice plugin for some fine-tuning or "vintageizing" of sounds and signals.

The upper section rather alters to sound with Sidechain Env, FET Comp, (4 different) Preamps, Sag, Width, Mix, Clipper, Limiter, Final Tailoring (HP/LP filters basically), Output, while the lower section adds things, mostly noise (White, Pink, Brown, Blue, Violet, Green), Rain (with different options), Motion and a noise filter.

Sometimes well usable, sometimes maybe not so much, but you also do not have to use everything at the same time, but this plugin offers a lot of useful options, for which you otherwise often need different plugins, so some nice "Swiss Army Knife" for a lot of different ways of signal optimizations, I would say.

Fair price too.

Interesting delay plugin, which differs form most other ones. A 15 tap delay with a lot of separately adjustable features for each tap! So rather no plug and play plugin, but a paradise for tweakers and delay sound freaks.

The global parameters are limited to Mix, Output and Spatial (Binaural), while each channel/tap offers Time (0 - 4999ms), Gain, Pan, Feedback, Mod Rate, Mod Depth (nice for some flexible phasing or chorusing, even more, if combined with additional, differently adjusted taps), Auto Pan, Pitch (o, -8, +8, if activated with Shimmer option too), Type (Reserve, Vintage), Series (Chain instead of parallel routing), Phase Invert.

With all these options almost endless combinations are possible, so something for players, who really look for different and more complex delay and modulation sounds, which more "normal" delays do not offer.

The presets allow a first impression of the capabilities, but of course a lot more also is possible. The taps can be activated separately, so you can also use a single tap alone too, which I personally recommended first, to discover, what all the controls do and how the results sound and afterwards you can better adjust more complex multi-tap delays.

The delays sound nicely musically, not too sterile or too digitally. I personally am not the biggest delay fan, but I must admit, this plugin offers nice and creative results, if someone looks for more unique and more complex delay sounds between adding some decent dimensionality and very complex, cinematic or experimental soundscapes.

A very unique "boutique" delay, I personally do not know a comparable other one. Fair price too.

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.

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.

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...

Surprisingly good high-gain amp sounds for a freeware plugin. Does, what it should and this very musically. No typical digital shrillness or harshness, but nicely balanced sounds, which can make a real tube amp obsolete. Dynamical reaction is good, so is the harmonics reproduction.

For my ears no typical Marshall, Rectifier, 5150 or Soldano sound, it has something of all, but no too intense uniqueness, but the result sounds really good and is widely usable, in my opinion not only for Metal.

Three complaints nevertheless: No informations about the used cabinets/speakers, for me 1 and 2 sound very useful, while 3 sounds too thin for my taste (I think, this is based on an EVM12L or Legend cabinet), while the addtional cabinet section controls are very useful.

The second one concerns Transpose, for my taste, even if I followed the manual instructions, too much latency, I also had preferred a mixing option with the original signal, so that you could use this function rather as an octaver.

The third concerns the noise level, without using the noise gate you will not become very happy with the sounds, but the noise gate works good and this problem you also have with a lot of other high-gain amp plugins too.

In comparison I find the full version a little bit overpriced, but it certainly also will find it's fans. I think. Good work, so certainly worth giving it a try.

This is an interesting product, but I do not really understand, why it only works as standalone program and not also is offered as (vst) plugin.

Good Marshall sounds, no doubt, a lot of tweaking options, only the way, the patchbay works, I have not compelety understood up to now, the pop-up descriptions do not really explain much about, what really happens there. So a more precise, real manual informations instead of update news only would be helpful and not onyl for me, I think.

Excellent, if it (maybe) becomes usable as plugin too in the future...

I already have a lot of saturation/distortion plugins, but most of them I hardly ever use. So I did not expect too much, when I installed this one. But I was very positively surprised.

Wonderful sounds, which both can be used subtle and intense, the different types match the characters very well, only Bitcrusher is not so much my taste, but the setting does, what a Bitcrusher should. Class AB and Class A Tube really sound different, Tape adds more smoothness in a very musical way, while Overdrive adds the typical transistor/op-amp bite with reduced bass response.

Drive and Mix allow really perfect intensity adjustments, Tone does exactly, what it should, turned to the left, the sounds become warmer, but not muddy, turned to the right, brighter, without becoming too shrill or too harsh. The additional HP/LP filters allow even more fine adjustments, while Rip and Analog even add more flexibility.

The sound quality is excellent, as a guitarist (mostly) I could even imagine, to use this plugin instead of an amp plugin, maybe even with two stacked instances. Add a cabinet IR behind and you get excellently sounding (amp) tones easily, if you look for clean to semi-clean to vintage crunch sounds with a lot of - well adjustable - character, what you can get a some almost perfect pedal platform tones, which even standalone sound great.

What I really like are the very organically and naturally sounds, the results - if properly adjusted - do not sound digitally at all.

Also works great for bass or keyboards, synthesizers, too add some more character to the sounds. Most probably also for drums, percussion, vocals, ..

Already made some positive experiences with ViatorDSP plugins a while ago, this one is for me a masterpiece for good sounds or professional sound improvements, some kind of swiss army knife in some way for additional harmonics, saturation, overdrive, distortion, tube or tape character.

Highly recommended and for me much more than just a distortion plugin.