Product Reviews by KVR Members

I experienced the Avenger release as a really bad start for a good plugin. There were problems with downloading the installer as well as the content, bugs with registering and installing the content, crashes during initialization, a website dedicated to this plugin (?) and so on. But they kept up their effort and started fixing. Unfortunately it seems this wasn't the right time to start doing it. It should have been done earlier. I never had that many problems with their earlier releases.

The factory content is about 4.5GB in size and is one of the selling points and price justifications. This seems very much but keep in mind that there are about 4GB of multisamples, drumsamples and wavtables. There are 899 presets (not over 900 like stated on the website) if one can trust the results of the plugins search engine. Personally I don't care about drum samples and SQ presets at all. I would rather consider 2 pricing models for Avenger: a 1st like it is now and a cheaper 2nd one with only the at least needable wavetables and settings.

If you compare the Avenger expansions with the Nexus ones you'll definitely notice a big overlap. Some sound designers work for both (or more companies) and you can hear that. Eventhough the dev said these are 2 different plugins for 2 different uses (of course what else should he state) one might get in a content conflict if you already own one of them.

The ui doesn't feel good or inviting to me nor does it fit my taste. Compared to their old ones this feels steril. I think this is the price of vector based graphics and future proof. Although it's claimed to be skinnable I didn't find any info or way to do it. I could imagine I'd like more with a new skin, maybe flat, maybe more warmth, maybe more clear.

Pros:

• some workflow features are really nice (e.g. time shift in Drum SQ, mod matrix groups, transpose arp patterns, macro controls).
• routing and modulation possibilities are wide open and with good visual feedback.
• send and master fx.
• fx modules from their 2 EFX bundles.
• ui is resizable.
• presets and expansions can be made from 3rd party sound designers.
• preset library has a search and tag system.
• serial copy protection (didn't bother with the dongle at all but this is quiet comfortable too).

Cons:

• still buggy, instable and needs a big amount of CPU optimization.
• overwhelming ui (small blurry font, many controls, focus on preset librarian).
• can cover many topics but lacks of features available in specialized plugins.
• lacks of basic features (e.g. phase invertion in drum editor, Drum SQ itself is not usable in songs like this, FM/RM/PM from osc to osc, arp MIDI file loading).
• lacks of features their plugins already cover and they can't be inserted (metrum for example would be a nice osc module).
• 8 osc, arp, step sq, pitch env, mod env, but only 4 amp, filter, shaper, LFO, fx (seems a bit illogical for building 8 independent layer sounds).
• multiple similar fx modules (6 reverbs, 6 flanger/phaser/chorus, comp/limiter/mb limiter/waveshaper).
• sounds "normal" and too clean while other synths wrap the sounds with their character.
• presets are ready to use (like songs) and arp presets play ready to go melodies.
• strong focus on modern edm.
• there is no online patch list for the sounds available in expansions.

In conclusion it is a nice toy but it definitely needs some work to polish it up - featurewise, bugwise, performancewise. Maybe with version 1.5 or 2.0 then. If you already own some synths you'll get nothing new with Avenger but you'll get it wrapped within some workflow goodies. You also have to like the workstation, layer and 1-finger-song approach. But if your new to edm production you'll probably like it. Please check Nexus and Rapid too, because Avenger could be another expansion collection plugin and you'll definitely don't need 3 of them. I'm looking forward to the time where the first 3rd party expansion will appear and I'll try to investigate the plugin again.

After demoing some new plugins I still find myself using Sylenth1. I don't exactly know why. Maybe it's the ease of use, the sound quality or just the performance and workflow. I love how limited it is in a good way. You can't mess up a sound, it's just not possible. But nonetheless you can get wild cross modulations and depth out of it. The latest ui improvements perfectly fit into my definition of good looking.

It's a bread and butter synth resulting in so many available widly genre spread soundsets. So the lack of own creativity can get balanced with the work of other professional sound designers.