Product Reviews by KVR Members

Loopcloud could have been a great service using great technology, but instead the brand chose a literal bait and switch (they changed contract details after I paid them up front for 12 months).

The Loopcloud desktop browser interface and DAW plug-in, if you are a sample-heavy musician, can offer a powerful and useful UI and workflow, as well as helping you keep track of existing sample libraries. It has BPM and key matching and speeds up sample digging IF (big if) you are willing to pay their constantly drifting prices.

When I first signed up for a trial account and early in my paid plan, I found that I was able to acquire many samples individually or in packs that felt competitively priced against other sample sellers. However this changed 2 months into my 12 month subscription.

Each month Loopcloud gives you "points" to spend on samples, and the average cost of singles and packs of samples varies over time, including bizarre peaks and valleys in prices not connected to sample quality or length. Over time my monthly allotment in points seemed less and less valuable, with more content creeping up to 5-10 points each, or forcing you to buy entire packs when you only wanted a couple samples.

Additionally Loopcloud gave you a budget of free samples each month. These samples would be in the "free" filter on the website or browser. Each paid plan had a certain budget of these free points that you earned on top of the premium points. 2 months into my plan, all mention of the free points and samples disappeared, costs for majority of samples and packs went up, and my own plan details (paid up front) changed. I contacted Loopcloud about this and they agreed - yep they bait and switched my contract. So they gave me some "free samples" to placate me, even though we both knew I had a legal claim against them at that point. I chose to end my relationship with Loopcloud at that time.

Side note: after a few months of sample digging, on top of the other issues above, I noticed I started having more trouble finding useful samples. It felt like I had gone through most labels and categories, and I was finding less and less. Not sure this would ultimately be of value after 4 or 5 months anyway, even without the bait and switch.

Being a patron of Brian Clevinger/Rhizomatic and a huge fan of Absynth and the more recent Plasmonic synth, as soon as Synestia was released I took it quite seriously, and this advanced multi effects processor immediately became one of my favorites of its class.

Synestia features a physical modelling synth engine that does interesting sympathetic sounds against input sources, it works well as a creative guitar effect, and it features a large palate of effects including granular processing, tuned effects, triggered MIDI effects, etc, and Synestia sounds good.

I have a few older synths, such as a microKORG XL, and putting Synestia on that channel really breathes new life into more classic synth sounds. For guitar, too, Synestia shines brightly in a sea of average plugins designed for similar purposes, and is worth the price. If you watch, Brian puts this on sale 1x or 2x/year and you can get it for around 70 USD.

Ive been searching for a reliable midi-from-audio extractor for many years, and I do not need something as expensive as Melodyne and the free tools I've found also didnt really work, so when I saw that a version 2 of noteGRABBER had been released(I missed version 1) I was excited to do a demo.

I tried out the 14 day trial and then purchased the full license within minutes because it was obvious. I was able to do exactly what I've wanted to do with high accuracy (so far no extra notes or weird notes), and the plugin also has some decent extras like built in sounds to preview what a capture will sound like, auto and manual note grabbing, gain & range knobs, DAW sync, etc.

Manual note selection after detection (instead of only automatic extraction) is a great feature! You can save a couple steps with this.

Overall 5 stars. Developer responded very quickly and I had my license within 5 minutes, and then I got 3 or 4 more additional emails with video tutorials, FAQs, introduction to the dev, etc. No issues running this in Bitwig 5.3.12 or Cubase 14.0.30. Price, especially with launch discount, is competitive for a product like this, and in fact there really isnt anything else like it.

Ive owned Kinetic Metal for a few years now, having purchased it as part of (if I recall) Komplete 12. Maybe 13? This review is for the product as it was around 2021 - before NI became a shadow of their former selves post private-equity acquisition.

This product is one of my favorite modern offerings from NI (Ive been their customer since around 2003) in the category of kontakt instruments. This instrument is fun to use and creates many gritty, crunchy, ringing, metallic foley-sounding tonal sequences and textures that range from psychedelic to industrial, and its easy to create movement and transitions using the default macro mappings.

In a sea of uninspired, forgettable, low-value sample instruments, also from Native Instruments and 100s of others, this (along with Kinetic Toys) is an inspired, interesting, useful instrument. Not sure why it just showed up on KVR.

Ill start by saying, this is a NICE sounding, playing synth and I am not the usual audience for Moog products, especially the new post-acquisition Moog. Im really not into "classic" or analog sounding emulations or new offerings from that space, and I see classic/analog as a small part of just one modern synth. I got this because of a steep discount and only wound up paying $40 for it.

That said, Im giving Mariana 3 out of 5 stars until CPU performance is improved a bit. This thing sounds huge, it has meat on its bones, and the various sub frequencies it pushes are super fun and propulsive in my music, but the CPU consumption of Mariana borders on broken on my modern studio workstation.

Using Cubase 14's enhanced realtime ASIO meter(it makes a graph), you can easily see Mariana causing huge (80%??) ASIO peaks without any other processing, any other instruments loaded into a project. I was so confused about what was doing this on my project that, before I looked at the meter, I was removing/powering off other instruments first, then realized it was Mariana.

Mariana has quite a bit more sound character than merely a "bass synth", which is another pleasant surprise. So far Ive found great ambient/drone sounds, huge bass of all flavors, and even many bass tones or presets which just sound like interesting leads or pads when played on the higher octaves. This is a great synth --- it just REALLY needs an optimization pass to reduce that CPU use.

edit: oh, also there is a fairly small number of stock presets, and... an there is a store to buy new preset packs from... which is another reason I took 2 stars away.

I own most of the SSL X series and a few of the 360 plugins, and X-comp is immediately my very favorite bus limiter for most projects. If you A/B test the sound signature of this limiter vs for example the native steinberg limiter, the bx_limiter, BWS 5.2.7 native limiter, or NI's limiter, especially when gluing a mix, the X-limiter has a noticeable 'sweetness' and 'musicality' to the sound post-process that is not as prominent in other (simpler, less dynamic) limiters Ive used.

I do not own any hardware approximations of these plugins nor do I have too many other brands in my library, but the few widely used limiters I have do not sweeten or glue the sound as well as this. The visual waveform display with color mapped limiter activity is a really nice visual way to check on your mix as well, and I really appreciate the sound signature, UI/UX, and processing load of these plugins. 5 stars for sure.

This synth is free (if you make a Klevgrand account), which is a very compelling price indeed.

The idea behind this synth is simple, and I really love it! The idea is all your presets are inside a 360 rotating sphere, and you rotate that sphere to blend and mix different presets together. You can visually see how the presets are related to each other (ie: what % of each signal is being mixed), and the simple interface is instantly understandable and functional.

I give this 3 stars because ultimately many of the preset sounds are fairly similar, which doesnt quite create the desired effect -- or does not create a STRONG enough morphing transition between different sounds. Its hard to tell where all the presets are (its an endless sphere lol), and the only mixing options between presets are limited to what is currently visible inside the sphere. So, like 4-6, depending. Most of these sounds actually sound like the same preset or the same oscillator with "morphing" happening between parameters on that same sound.

This could be SO MUCH better, in my opinion, with more oscillators and sound sources so that the morphing is more effective. I love the idea of rotating the knob and mixing presets, but it would be great to be able to create my own mix of presets to morph into one another. If Klevgrand updates this, Im sure some of those things could be possible.

When I began writing this, with Babylon 2 still running on my DAW as I wrote, I gave this 2 stars and began writing an angry review about a product that seemed poor because as soon as I installed Babylon2, it immediately hard locked Cubase 14. My C14 install hasnt crashed once in 6+ months, so this was a surprise.

So I reloaded C14 and gave this another shot, and played with it for an hour or so. My initial thoughts were "ohhhh, brother. Here is ANOTHER analogy sounding, "classic" sounding throwaway synth that I have no use or attention span for."

Then, as I played more and more presets, skipping past some of the boring presets at the very top of the list, I began to hear a sound signature that my ears began to like. Does it have many layers? Many interesting oscillator types? No. Its 3 oscillators + a noise generator, a filter, a few basic effects that sounds pretty basic, but it has a tone that my ear genuinely likes, over other cheaper, simpler synths in a similar category. There is a... warmth, purity, and cleanliness that I appreciate, and even with 8-10 note polyphony, it "rings" clearly in my ears like a high fidelity signal instead of a dirty, aliased dime-a-dozen analog emulator.

I like this synth. It has not crashed Cubase again in 3 hours now, so this is good. If it kills Cubase again I will update this review with that info, but In the end I gave this 4 stars for audio quality. 1 star removed for limited oscillator types and narrow sonic character and things like 5 clap sounds that are identical, but its overall a good SOUNDING synth imo.

-when opening more than 1 instance of this plugin in my DAWs(Cubase 14, BWS 5.2.7), sometimes the additional instances that are opened dont respond to sound. At first I thought this plugin only supported 1 instance, but after deleting and adding it back to the channels I wanted it on, it eventually worked and they all processed sounds.

-It barely works as a send no matter your input or plugin settings, and has a *very* weak effect on the sound. This can be 100% wet and also set to +6.00dB on input and you can barely hear the effect on any sounds. Switching it to an insert makes it much louder and cleaner in both my DAWs.

The filters this includes are interesting and can have a strong and decent effect on sounds, and the envelope follower does good things to drums and sounds with hard attack, as well as others. This little plugin is good and best acquired as a free add-on (Bitwig is giving it away right now, PluginBoutique gives it away, and it is often in larger bundles), but by itself $50 is probably too much for this. The sale price is $24, and this is an ok price imo.

This is weird -- Im writing a review for Fluid Chords, but I also REALLY REALLY want to review their new product "Eternal Arps" but that product isnt on the KVR product list. Too new??

Fluid Chords is a decent product, and you really should have a sustain pedal to use with it if you do not already. The Bome virtual MIDI driver that is included with FC works well as a virtual MIDI device and all of this works with DAWs or in standalone mode without any trouble. The chord bending this does is really interesting and inspiring(makes you sound like Ratatat lol), but it doesnt always work 100% well with synths and devices you connect it to. (They have to be MPE synths, but sometimes it still doesnt work right). Ive used this on and off for about 2 years now, having previously used Fluid Pitch. 4 stars for Fluid Chords.

But.... Eternal Arps is a FABULOUS plugin!!! In my opinion this is an elevated product with superior playability and features than the other plugins this developer makes, and I instantly love it!! The way it handles deep, articulate arpeggio generation from live MIDI input is a little similar to Harmony Bloom but EA is very much in its own category with features like realtime variation sliders that let you visually and audibly sense pattern timing changes and a vast preset library. It also includes tons of patters and scales, 12 fully sampled instruments, and like their other products you can connect it directly to a synth's input. 5 stars for Eternal Arps!! lmao I will fix this review and put it where it belongs when they update KVR. Sorry for the double review.