Product Reviews by KVR Members

Hive 2 is the most outstanding synth i've ever imagined for sound designing it just literally blew me away. The sound quality is so impressive, very clear and even no artifacts what so ever. Even loading my own custom wavetables I was so impressed of how they sound. I feel this is now my new primary soft synth i'm using along with my old hardware synth. I'm just barely scratching the surface of what this thing can do. It would be nice if they included a ring modulator or maybe a phase distortion to modulate Osc 1 and Osc 2 together for even more sonic possibilities. Overall I just feel Hive 2 belongs to an elite class of today's top software synths such as Omnisphere 2, Zebra 2, Padshop Pro, Dune 3, Electra 2, Diversion, Pigments, Synthmaster 2, Serum and other top ones. I should say this is a darn good synth in it's own ways of making music and manipulating sounds with lots of potential behind this software beast. The only limitation it has is your creative imagination. The sky's the limit of what you can do with hive 2. I would say this is a tough act to follow but sure wonder what Zebra 3 will turn out to be when it comes out.

I just simply wanted to say this is the most outstanding VST synth I've ever played and I was totally blown away by the sounds of this virtual instrument. Very versatile and the sound quality is beyond normal for importing even your own wavetables just in case if your using the right separate utility for importing your own waves. The sky's the limit you can only imagine what you can do and what unusual sounds you can come up with. Price wise it's kind of high but you'll soon realize you'll be quite happy that you've made the purchase after all.

This is perhaps one of the most oustanding soft synth i've ever heard ever since Dune 2, Halion 6, Electra2, Harmor, Alchemy, etc. The possibilities are endless and that i'm barely scratching the surface. One of the amazing things I like about this additive/subtractive synth is it has 4 oscillators and 2 waveforms per oscillators. With that being said you can morph between 2 waveforms for final waveshaping purposes. I look at it as a partial wavetable synth but it would be nice if it were to be a true wavetable synth and being able to cycle through the waveforms. This is only a single cycle synth but has so much potential behind it that your not really missing out on anything. Very good and unusual effects to choose from and apart from everything else it even has microtuning files to choose from so anyone can get really creative and get really crazy. The sky's the limit.

I have to admit that this is one of the best software synth in it's class and can be very addictive. I come to realize that the possibilities are endless that I'm just now scratching the surface of how easy it is to program. The most thing I really like about it is it's programming potentials and another best feature is the arpeggiator mode. You can even record and export your own MIDI files and then later import your MIDI files you've already recorded and play them as an arranging instrument. (Hey not bad). Not too many software synths has that kind of feature as what Dune 2 has and what its capable of doing. Dune 2 is such a great software synth as it is as with Halion 6 and Serum. Icarus on the other hand has great sounding potential but programming Icarus is very limited. With that being said when programming Dune 2 you are creating your own patches from scratch and importing your own custom wave tables and at least you have something to work with in a better feel and nothing else is missing. This is just one of many software synths I'm comparing with Dune 2. All I can say so far that this is an outstanding software synth and I went nuts over it. You guys keep up the good work there since I'm looking forward for dune 3 later in the future.

Pros. Great innovative software synth with just enough everything you need for your work flow.

Cons. May not replace your hardware synths like the maybe yamaha DX7 or the casio vz-1 etc.

Overall. Great instrument to have along with with your other digital instruments you may have since the sky is the limit.

Beautiful sounds and strange mosaic textures this one is by far beyond anything I've ever heard before ever since with other software synths utilizing granular properties like omnisphere, absynth 5, alchemy etc,.. The granular synth engine of padshop may be different and different sounding from the others since it has it's own personality but I certainly feel this belongs somewhere on the top 10 list of today's best software synths. When it comes to manipulating sampled sounds into something rather strange and unusual even with the right effects and LFO's built inside this little machine the possibilities are endless. Padshop on the other hand is very intuitive, easy to program and thanks to Steinberg for the time effort they put in with padshop.

Pros. Best new granular synth, wide range of factory patches to choose from as well as single patches, very easy and intuitive to program your patches out from scratch once you know the basics, and amazingly low priced of what it does.

Cons. What you see is what you get, cannot sample your own sounds to be manipulated, it only works with DAW's that only supports VST3 but may need updating in some areas for padshop to work properly.

Overall. This is a must have and especially for the sound engineering artists working on movies and sound tracks. Not only that, but this is also suited for any music you have in mind but this will sure take you out on a sound journey into the unknown. Again the possibilities are endless with padshop.

Finally the wait is now over and this is the software synth everyone's been talking about. In many ways there are lots of similarities compared to like having a Roland VariOS but only in a software version. This one goes even deeper with enough synth options to blow your mind. I'm just now scratching the surface of what it's capable of doing and I feel this belongs to an elite class of today's top software synths like Omnisphere, Alchemy, Absynth 5, Vertigo, etc. Even in the same catigory of what it does, well I should say this one is darn good in it's own ways of making music and manipulating sounds with lots of potential behind this software beast. What's also good about it is that Harmor is a very small synth program and it doesn't take much of your HD space to install like most others do. My rough guess it's only a 10.6 MB program it's very small and you'll be very happy with the size and very happy with it overall. Image-Line sure did it again.