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Product Reviews by KVR Members

All reviews by mclstr

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Surge XT

Reviewed By mclstr [all]
May 5th, 2019
Version reviewed: 2019-04 on Linux

Surge is a very powerful synth that can do amazing stuff. It also is very processor efficient.

It provides multiple methods of synthesis with lots modulators and routing options.

You can do some real sounding acoustic instruments as well as electronic sounds that are hard to create with other synths.

I tend to use it more than any other synth anymore.

You do want to read the manual to understand how powerful it is.

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Discovery Pro Sound Expansion

Reviewed By mclstr [all]
June 17th, 2018
Version reviewed: 1 on Any OS

Good variety, good value and made for a wide variety of styles.

Something for everyone.

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Caffeine Sound Pack for Discovery Pro

Reviewed By mclstr [all]
May 4th, 2018
Version reviewed: 1 on Any OS

This has got to be about the finest sound pack for DiscoveryPro out there, for my taste anyway.

Lots of unusual sounds that can be used in a variety of styles of music.

These sounds go beyond what I thought were possible with DiscoveryPro and squeeze a variety of tone and rhythm. Edgy, atmospheric, musical, dynamic, ...

Mod wheel, velocity and maybe others make the sounds expressive and dynamic.

A lot of multi-layer examples and banks demonstrating single layers. This is the sound pack to get if you really want to learn DiscoveryPro from someone who is an expert.

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Vertigo X-Wave Sound Bank

Reviewed By mclstr [all]
April 9th, 2018
Version reviewed: 1 on Any OS

This is the best example that I know of what can be done with DiscdoDSP Vertigo.

I am really slow at being able to create good presets with Vertigo. I'm still very much an analog/subtractive designer and am still slow to learn additive synthesize.

I can now see the potential after using the X-Wave bank and am inspired.

These sounds blend very well with subractive instruments and creates nice contrasts.

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Filmstrips of the 70's

Reviewed By mclstr [all]
December 21st, 2017
Version reviewed: 0 on Any OS

Correction the bank is called "Filmstrips from the 70's for Repro-1"

A very good well thought out variety. I think anyone would find these presets useful.

There doesn't seem to be a focus on any particular style of music style.

Response from blortblort from blortblort on January 11th, 2022

thanks so much for the kind words, mclstr.

so very glad that you appreciate the work.

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Bazille

Reviewed By mclstr [all]
August 5th, 2017
Version reviewed: 1 on Mac

I started with electronic music in the early 70's with modular synths, Arp 2600, Steiner-Parker and a few others.

I was using just hardware synths until recently and only started replacing the hardware with plugins when I discovered that they are far easier to deal with and in many ways more musical.

I was happily using many excellent plugins and only recently found out about Bazille. The fact that it is very modular and can run on Linux, which is my preferred OS, meant I had to try it.

It sounded like a dream come true to me.

I tried the demo and started patching it like I would a hardware modular synth and fell in love. I eventually purchased a license and have been using it as my preferred synth for a while now.

It very much feels like the older modular subtractive synths, but includes digital methods of making sound as well.

The sound can be very much like the 70's modulars, but goes way beyond that very easily.

Like the classics, it is very easy to get have bad results. Unlike most current synth plugins, you can step outside of the safety zone very easily and not understand what is going on. You can push the filters into oscillation, overload circuits, max out the cpu, get brittle digital artifacts, ....

But take the time to learn how to tame the beast and you have an extremely flexible synthesizer.

I have read other reviews and wanted to add my opinions.

1) People complain about it being too CPU intensive, .

Bazille has a lot going on and if you go crazy and try to pile everything on, you will max the cpu. Most synth plugins are far more limited and so your not so likely to go overboard as is possible with Bazille.

The more I use Bazille, the less CPU my patches require. I find many ways to optimize. I rarely need to pile everything on and don't need a ton of polyphony. It becomes too much anyway when things get that busy.

2) It sounds digital, .

It can sound digital, but it does a very good job of sounding analog if you limit yourself to sounding analog.

There is tendency to bring in some of the digital tools and then you end up with a digital sound. I have had very good luck creating patches that sound like the 70's, when I stick to subtractive synthesis rules. The delay can sound very much like classic Echoplex or Space Echo, the reverb sounds like a classic spring reverb and the distortion, which I almost always use at least a little, adds to the classic character by adding the traditional dynamic control the way the classic synths did.

3) It is limited to sounding like a classic modular synth, .

I suspect some people limit it to that, but it goes way beyond that. It can sound very contemporary and includes modern synthesis methods.

The flexible patching means it can produce sounds that you won't find with other plugins.

Anyway, I still use my other plugins from time to time, but Bazille gets used the most.

Why does the review box limit the OS selection to Windows and MacOS?

My system: Debian Linux, Bitwig, Zebra2, DicoveryPro and many others.

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Shimmer for Bazille

Reviewed By mclstr [all]
August 3rd, 2017
Version reviewed: 0 on Any OS

I found lots of inspiration from this.

Lot's of good original uses of Bazille's features by someone who seems to really knows how to tweak it.
It really shows off the benefits of Bazille's modular approach.

I learned a few new tricks by studying the patches.

One unusual feature that I really appreciated is the fact that most of the patches are lean on the CPU usage. It is very easy to max out the CPU with Bazille, but I had no issue with any of these patches.

It is especially good for soundtrack/atmospheric styles, but I can see a lot of use in many styles of music.

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