Product Reviews by KVR Members

First there was ORB Synth, very simply synth with some bugs (never fixed) and with really basic stuff. Then it becomes ORB Synth X - basically the same synth with FEW improvements, but still very basic with lack of many important features. And it was paid upgrade (lol). And now it's ORB Synth X rebranded asa LANDR Synth X - the same as ORB Synth X. IMO that basic synth should be priced no more than 10 euros, there are free synths on the market that are much better than this one. But for some reason it's pretty expensive (except some promos and giveaways) commercial product - don't know why. Two wavetable oscillators, two LFOs, one ENV (plus env amp), 4 effects (delay, reverb, drive and chorus) not very good quality. Not worth your money. Seriously.

It could be interesting small bass synth, but is not. You can craft pretty nice sounds here, but it's very buggy and annoying. First of all - version I have (latest while I write this post) do not store proper its own settings with DAW project. It somehow rely on preset names (and do not update them even proper), not on synth data itself. So after I save project - it reopens wrong, with different sound. Second - one oscillator synth with 4 effects (plus drive in osc section) is not something people expect from paid product. And third - annoying activation (before update it asks for activation frequently, we will see if this is fixed with new version). I like AIR products, they're not great, but pretty good. Except this one.

The only reason to use this synth is the challenge of "make at least one good sounding preset". And it's a very, very hard challenge. This synth is called for some people the worst synth for a reason. It can easily compete for the title of worst commercial synth (if there was such a category) - right next to "4G Multi Synth" (by Produce-RNB; I don't know which one is worse).

If you don't afraid spending some time to learn how to made sound in this one of most complicated synths - you'll be rewarded by huge number of options to shape your sound. Basically all Melda FX plugins are inside ready to use (doesn't matter if you have license for them or not). But I must warn you - it's not easiest synth I was using. In fact is one of two most difficult synths I have.

If you don't like to craft your own sounds - there is also LE version, much cheaper, where you have access to all sounds with limited option to tweak them. What are limitations? Well, at start, let me explain something that isn't obvious when you first time run this synth. You have two types of sounds - first are regular presets which are available in "Global Presets" menu. It's not the same as Meda Instruments, even if they're made using the same options. Global presets are basically normal presets like in any synth - no graphics, no tweaks (except deep edit if you have full version, not LE), just sounds. And there are instruments - and this is something different. Imagine that you have any synth with macros, so you create your own prests and assign some knobs to these macros, so user can change your preset in the way you designed your macro knobs. Most of synths have 4 or 8 macro knobs and that's all. In MSoundFactory you can assign up to 256 macros to any element in your preset. And then you can add your graphics to these macro knobs. And then, when you assign all your macros - you can create instrument (your mega-preset with its own knobs). And you can create presets inside this instrument using your macro knobs (because you have so many assigned parameters, you can create even your own complex synth!). And from time to time Melda adding (free of charge) additional instruments into your MSoundFactory (LE and full). And it's not always just different type of generated sound, these instruments can contains large base of samples as well, so you may expect a lot of different stuff (sampled strings, drums, pads etc).

So, as I said, if you have LE version, you have limited option to tweak sound - you may tweak all instruments using their internal knobs and even save your own presets, but you can't dig deeper and tweak global presets or edit parameters in instruments that are not connected to knobs. So - even LE version have lot of option, especially if you're not sound designer.

What can I say - it's not an easy synth, but it is great. Will not be a love at first sight, but it will be sooner or later. If you are patient enough to learn it.

Ah, one more thing - imagine that you have full version if MSoundFactory and your friend have only free version. If you create your own instrument, you can share it to your friend and it will work! No limits like in Kontakt Player, no full version required. You decide if you want to share your own self-made instruments for free or if you want to protect them by your own serials (and sell them for example).

I played with it for a while and after a long time learning I managed to figure out this poorly designed (user interface) synthesizer. And at first I was even happy - I got some pretty cool sounds. I even wanted to use it in some song, but... two things that absolutely put me off - first, it can crackle a lot, has no good control over crackling. Second - after reloading the project, first you will hear some default preset, after a few (dozen) seconds the sound turns off, and after another few seconds you finally hear our sound. As if the plugin was slowly setting/restoring all the saved settings. On top of that, terribly slow, sluggish, with a long loading time. It's a pity, because the potential for sound designers is there.

I don't understand this plugin at all. Most of sounds are really bad quality, plugin stability is in question, loading presets are painful slow etc. It's a mess that need to be rewritten from zero to work proper. Sometimes I have an impression that presets are from some incompatible earlier version. I have no patience for this plugin. I checking it from time to time (after updates) to check if it changed for good, but no - still the same problems. Do I really must see "loading preset" window every time I want to load preset? Sometimes sound do not play at all after loading. Sad, because I see that developer tries so much, but lack of solid coding gives bad results.

Well, it's true that this is re-made old Union synth. But it has fixed serious bug that made Union unreliable on Windows (don't want to describe it longer, it's not opinion about Union after all). WaveOSC (Union too btw) sounds warm and nice, it has its own character. Few options are missing - unable to connect velocity to anythng but volume and no modwheel support. But every synth is different and I guess this one may be a nice starting point for anyone who wants to create interesting sounds.

Problem with WaveOSC is that for some reason (money?) they created it the way so old presets from Union cannot be loaded (even if format is ALMOST the same and it's probably just intentional to block that possibility). Second problem is that it's just made like "we make this synth and that's all". No updates, no new functions, no plans for development, nothing.

So 3 stars, because it can sounds nice, is not complicated and it works ok. And can be bought for a small amount of $.