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Plugsound Vol. 1: Keyboards
Reviewed By Jake Johnson [all]
June 23rd, 2003
Version reviewed: 1.83 on Windows
For its acoustic piano set, this VSTI is excellent. The Rock Piano 3 and the Jazz Piano are my favorites (with some tweaking), although I'm now editing some of the others and like them more and more. (There's a dropdown menu called Best of Plugsound, but to my ear the instruments on this list aren't the best sounds.)
Sounds very good around middle C and everywhere. Great for both rhythm and lead.
My only real hesistation is over the interface: you can edit zones, but you can't see what zone you're editing: you have to press a key in the zone you want to edit, then make the edits. The problem is that since the pianos are well-sampled, the split points aren't always self-evident to the ear (thankfully), so there's a little too much guesswork, at first, in editing. In fact the problem gets magnified as you edit the pianos to your liking, since the split points get less and less evident, and you can't SEE what changes you've made, so you risk overwriting the edits you made last week.
A revision to the software that lets us see the breakpoints might be asking too much right now, but it would be nice if Plugsound put a map of all the instruments' breakpoints on their site (hint, hint). I requested such a map from Plugsound two months ago. Received a message saying it was being passed on to their developers. Never heard a word after this. Also had a reinstall problem after an unrelated virus deleted my Windows directory. Asked what I should do. Never heard from them. I was able to figure it out myself (just re-enter the challenge response), but it would have been nice to hear from someone.
But it seems that I'm emphasizing the bad aspects of the program. The good aspect is the piano sounds: a good variety of excellent pianos, many with longish samples (7-8 seconds before the loop), good effects, and ADSR control of both amp and the filters. It's my default instrument in my sequencer.
AFTER SEVERAL MONTHS PLAYING THIS PLUGIN:
I'll add that the sound still impresses me but:
1. A genuine pp\soft layer would be good to have.
2. You can't control the filters with velocity. In other words, you can't apply a low pass filter to softer velocities. Very strange.
3. The lower notes were a little muddy until I reduced the volume on the bass samples.
4. There's a little fuzz around the E 2 octaves above middle C on the Acoustic Grand patch. Very noticable if you sustain it and play it more than once.
Read ReviewSounds very good around middle C and everywhere. Great for both rhythm and lead.
My only real hesistation is over the interface: you can edit zones, but you can't see what zone you're editing: you have to press a key in the zone you want to edit, then make the edits. The problem is that since the pianos are well-sampled, the split points aren't always self-evident to the ear (thankfully), so there's a little too much guesswork, at first, in editing. In fact the problem gets magnified as you edit the pianos to your liking, since the split points get less and less evident, and you can't SEE what changes you've made, so you risk overwriting the edits you made last week.
A revision to the software that lets us see the breakpoints might be asking too much right now, but it would be nice if Plugsound put a map of all the instruments' breakpoints on their site (hint, hint). I requested such a map from Plugsound two months ago. Received a message saying it was being passed on to their developers. Never heard a word after this. Also had a reinstall problem after an unrelated virus deleted my Windows directory. Asked what I should do. Never heard from them. I was able to figure it out myself (just re-enter the challenge response), but it would have been nice to hear from someone.
But it seems that I'm emphasizing the bad aspects of the program. The good aspect is the piano sounds: a good variety of excellent pianos, many with longish samples (7-8 seconds before the loop), good effects, and ADSR control of both amp and the filters. It's my default instrument in my sequencer.
AFTER SEVERAL MONTHS PLAYING THIS PLUGIN:
I'll add that the sound still impresses me but:
1. A genuine pp\soft layer would be good to have.
2. You can't control the filters with velocity. In other words, you can't apply a low pass filter to softer velocities. Very strange.
3. The lower notes were a little muddy until I reduced the volume on the bass samples.
4. There's a little fuzz around the E 2 octaves above middle C on the Acoustic Grand patch. Very noticable if you sustain it and play it more than once.