Product Reviews by KVR Members

I finally got me one of these last week and, so far, it has exceeded my expectations. They've renamed it for the "pro" market to Roli Piano M but it's the same thing. It is the very definition of a "basic MIDI controller" but what it does, it does very well.

The keybed is great. Key travel is no worse than any other mini-key setup; shallow but quite playable. It feels much less cramped than my KeyStep or Akai MPC Mini so I was surprised to discover that the keys are actually a bit narrower. What makes them feel much better to play is that they are around twice as long, so your hand doesn't get as cramped trying to play black keys. I found the same thing with Korg's Monologue and Minilogue synths. It makes a huge difference. It's a Roli product and whilst it's not full MPE, it does feature velocity sensitivity and polyphonic aftertouch, so it is quite an expressive instrument. It really is a joy to play.

Construction feels a bit flimsy when you hold it in your hands but when it's flat on a desk it is absolutely fine. It's also tiny, around 2cm narrower than my 60% mechanical computer keyboard. It comes in a sturdy cardboard box which, with a few strips of gaffer tape to protect the edges, I will be using as a road case for it.

It works well with Roli Dashboard. By default the backlighting is very bright but you can turn it down to a less distracting level. The multi-coloured keys you see in all the pictures are optional, the default is white light all around (the black keys are still black), which is my preference. The way they have moulded the plastic makes the lighting look really cool.

It also connects with any of Roli's Black products, so I have attached a Lightpad M and a Control Block to mine. The Lightpad can be used as an X-Y pad or a few sliders or just as two more octaves of keys. A button on the side means I can switch layouts on the fly, which is kind of cool. The Control Block gives me transport and record controls, once I set it up in my DAW, which I find very handy.

Buying one of these also gets you Roli Studio, which is a very good ROMpler with a gazillion or so sounds, including all the samples and patches from Equator and Equator 2. It even has nice, usable drums. It's probably worth half the purchase price on its own.

Overall, I couldn't be happier at this early stage. So happy, in fact, that I ordered a second one yesterday, while their Black Friday sale is still on ($50 0ff plus free shipping). I can definitely see this becoming my default choice for both the studio and on stage. It is not cheap but the playing experience is so much better that it I feel it is worth the premium.

The original hardware was a preset machine, offering just 30 timbres that you had almost no ability to customise, but Cherry Audio have opened it up so you can patch it however you like, which unleashes a monster! On the face of it, it's just two layered monosynths, each with a single oscillator to work with. Without any cross-modulation, it's not as versatile as, say, a MiniMoog but it can hold it's own against pretty much anything from the era in terms of sheer balls.

Sound quality is great, as in really good. It's got that undefinable "something" you can hear in the best analogue emulations. The synth engines are identical and fairly basic. Their layout will be familiar to anyone who uses any other ARP synths. It is ultra-logical and so easy to get your head around. You'll be all over it in a few minutes.

One amazing thing I discovered is that, even though it's a really good effect, adding distortion ruins a patch as often as it improves it. Normally a bit of subtle tube distortion can really lift a patch but this thing has such a big sound that it doesn't need it. One of the things I like about the distortion effect, though, is how the TONE parameter allows you to really zone in on a specific frequency range. It works better than any other tone control on any other distortion I've used. It's really good.

Unusually for me, I read the manual. The synth has a few unique bits that I wanted to understand better, like the Resonators and Growl. It is so well written I ended up reading it from front to back, just for entertainment. The resonators were intended to simulate the resonant body of string and wind instruments. They are basically a series of notch filters you tune to taste. Growl is a fixed LFO that is used with aftertouch to simulate that kind of growl a sax player can get from his instrument.

Layers can be stacked or split, or you can use just one layer (the "Top" one). Some of the best presets use per-layer Arps, with different intervals, to create great syncopated rhythms. You can easily swap and copy layers within a patch, via a drop-down menu. I most often use the layers to get the same sound an octave up or down, as you might with a normal two osc synth.

The hardware was one of, if not the first commercial synth with aftertouch, proper polyphonic aftertouch, years before Yamaha's CS-80, and Cherry have taken full advantage, turning it into per note MPE. Other Cherry additions include an Arpeggiator per layer, SuperSaw mode for the oscillator and a mod matrix that gives you a lot more modulation flexibility. Six slots per layer may not sound like much but it's such a simple synth, it's all you're likely to need. You also get a suite of effects, which can be modulated via the MM, as well as up to 16 voice polyphony. Effects and the Arp can be per layer or global.

The only downside is the interface. It wastes a lot of screen space for no real benefit. I kind of understand why they did it that way, as the original didn't have any controls on the top surface, unlike most other synths. The thing I don't like about the way they have chosen to do it is that the actual synth controls are quite small, so you basically have to have the instrument taking up the full width of your screen, which is stupid for something so relatively simple. I think they could have been a bit smarter and exposed both layers in a more standard looking interface, one above the other, with the global controls and a smaller keyboard below that in a more 2D interface. But it's not a deal-breaker because the synth sounds so good and is still very easy to work with.

I've only been using this for a couple of days, so I'm not going to give it 5 stars just yet, but right now it's already a favourite, something I can see myself using a lot. If I still love it as much in a couple of months, I'll come back and give it an extra star. It's definitely worth your time to download the trial and give it a go for yourself. I'm confident you'll be impressed.

How are there no reviews for this already? This is one of the best VSTi money can buy. Does it sound exactly like a real Odyssey? Probably, certainly more than close enough to make your own Odyssey-like sounds or to use in place of the hardware in a mix. What's more important is that it sounds great. It has both the grit and presence that made the hardware such a stand-out in the late 70s and early 80s. I don't think Billy Currie could have done what he did with any other synth of the era. His synth solos are the stuff of legend, made possible by the unique way the Odyssey works.

This is not an easy synth to get to grips with. Where every other manufacturer was laying out their controls to reflect the signal path, ARP had the idea of putting things together that a player might need to tweak on stage. So the layout is, quite frankly, weird and it takes a lot of getting used to. But once you get your head around it, even a little, you can do some amazing things. Two oscillators with a distinctive hard sync sound that is easy to dial in, a low-pass filter that doesn't disappoint (although neither is it a standout), two envelopes (1xADSR and 1x AR), an LFO and a Sample & Hold modulation source give it remarkable flexibility. It does great basslines, beautiful pads and great leads. The hardware came with three different filters over it's life and you can choose any of them in the VSTi.

Korg offers a range of extras, including polyphony with unison (the original was duophonic), a sequencer and a range of built-in effects. Accessing the effects and sequencer is a bit unusual, you have to use your mouse's scroll wheel to scroll up to reveal them, or use the different UI sizes, which reveal more or less of the UI, rather than the expected bigger or smaller interface. The effects are useful, if not outstanding. You can also choose which of the hardware's three generations your VSTi looks like, that choice is saved with your patch. When it came out in 2017 it had a reputation as a bit of a CPU hog but these days, on modern computers, it's not bad at all.

Ultimately, you buy this for the amazing sound quality. It is a synth you can use almost anywhere, for almost anything, and it will always give you what you need. You put up with the unintuitive layout and the non-resizable GUI because when you hear it, none of that matters any more. I also have Oddity (2 & 3), which are also great but there is just something about this one that really works for me. It's a very special instrument.

This is a terrific little synth. It's not really an emulation, although Baby Audio obviously started out with the Yamaha CS01 as inspiration. They have taken it much further, though, adding extra features that take it way beyond the CS01, whilst keeping the original's simplicity of operation (and some of the limitations that go with that). Sound quality is excellent, very much in the spirit of the good ol' days but right up there with the best emulations and V/A plugins.

You get two oscillators with the usual V/A waveforms and tuning options. FM modulates Osc 1 with a sine wave for a gnarlier sound. The low-pass resonant filter does its job, without standing out in any way. There is just one ADSR envelope and a single LFO (sine wave only). At the end of the signal path is a decent suite effects - sidechain (ducks the signal to a 4/4 beat if there is no input), Tone (EQ), Drive (two kinds), Delay, Reverb and Chorus.

The instrument is velocity sensitive (on/off) but doesn't respond to aftertouch or a mod wheel (even though the CS01 had pitch and mod wheels). It all sounds a bit basic and mundane but the reality is that all the elements work together really well, to create something that is much greater than the sum of it's fairly simplistic parts. BA-1 ships with several hundred presets to prove this point. Hitting the "re-gen" button also shows that it's pretty hard not to make a useful patch, even when assigning random values to everything.

The Version 1.5 update added a basic arpeggiator and a few "hidden" controls to extend the synth's functionality (look for little dots in the cracks in the UI). While we are talking about dots, there are a couple of labels on the bottom row with dots next to them - press the dots to change the functionality, as per the screen. V1.5 also gives you an effect VST with the BA-1's effect chain, which is a nice addition. The updated preset browser is also pretty good, allowing you to tag presets with three different colours.

There are a couple of weird, unique features I feel are perhaps unnecessary and take up a lot of space on the GUI. The speaker sim is kinda cute, I suppose, but it's pretty limited and doesn't need to take up so much space. The Battery emulation is supposed to mimic the effect of running out of juice but it feels either too subtle or too full-on, there's no real sweet spot where it feels useful. The sidechain can be used like a second LFO on the VCA so it has its uses.

There are also a few things I'd like to see added to this synth, limitations that feel unnecessary to me. Being able to modulate the FM amount with the envelope or LFO would extend the usefulness of the feature. In fact more destinations for the LFO would be welcomed, as would a few more LFO waveforms. I also feel the LFO's modulation depth isn't always enough. HP, BP and Notch filter modes would be nice, too. Being able to assign the Mod Wheel to various parameters would make the synth a lot more playable. Maybe the speaker box could be halved to make room for the chunky wheels of the CS01, which I always thought looked really cool. They'd be particularly good for the standalone, if not so much for the VSTi (where you can more easily assign controllers). The biggest improvement I'd like to see, though, is the addition of a unison mode so I can stack all the oscillators into even bigger sounds.

To be clear, none of those things stop this from being a really good little synth, just as it is. The sounds I can get out of it are incredible, from soft and subtle to monstrous and scary, and all the while it delivers a high quality sound that always seems to work in a mix. You can use the re-gen feature to build your own bank of unique, usable sounds in no time and tweaking those sounds to get them working in an arrangement/mix is about as easy as it gets. As I said, BA-1 is a lot more than the sum of its parts and it has become my "go to" synth for most things.

Puncher 2 is a great tool for putting real thump into your drums, especially kicks. I used to use it on kick channels and it never failed to improve the impact and cut-through. These days, because I don't separate my drum channels any more, I put it on the drum mix and it works just as well. I would never even think of doing a mix without it.

It definitely works best on kicks but when used on a drum mix it can also add a bit of an edge to the other percussion sounds, too. I mostly just use the presets it comes with, one of the first 5 or 6 will always give me what I want. Trying to dial it in manually feels a lot more hit and miss, probably because I've never bothered to try and understand how it works. There is no need to. The CPU hit is minimal, the interface is simple and clean and it has never failed to give me what I want.

I try not to give 5 stars too often but this is definitely one effect I would never want to be without. Give it a go, put it on your kick channel and try a few presets and you'll understand why.

For the second time, my review has been removed so let's hope it's third time lucky. It took a lot of back and forth between the developer and I to get the demo license functioning but eventually I got the plugin working. You need to authorise it on their website first, and then again on the plugin itself before it will do anything.

In terms of funcitonality, it does what you'd expect of an exciter. It adds a bit of sparkle to your top end to give your mixes that last little bit of polish. I'm giving it 3 stars because it doesn't do anything a dozen other plugins can't do equally well and many of those plugins can do other things, too. Overall, there is no reason not to use this but, by the same token, there is nothing here that is going to make me switch from my go-to exciter effects like BBE Sonic Maximiser or STA Enhancer. But if those things are bit too overwhelming for your sound, T-Exciter might be a better option. You should try the demo and decide for yourself.

I am a huge fan of the SEM sound, so I really wanted to like this, but I find this instrument is way too hard to work with and it doesn't sound as good as some of the other SEM-like emulations around. My advice would be to wait until bx_oberhausen is on sale and buy that instead.

I was enamoured with Olga when it was first released, a long time ago now, but at the time it cost more than I was willing to pay. I loved the GUI and the sound was brutal, just what I like. Someone recently mentioned it in a forum thread, which made me go and check it out again, and I am really glad I did.

There are still only a handful of presets but it's not such a complex beast that hundreds would be of any benefit. This time around, I started from the last preset in the list and worked my way forward, tweaking presets I liked the sound of and saving them off as new patches. What I ended up with was a dozen or so patches that make great starting points for getting Olga into a song.

Whilst it is obviously designed for big, brutal sounds, I have found it surprisingly versatile. The multiple voice modes mean you can dial in exactly the amount of fatness you need and if you don't pump the big, scary dial up too much, it can sound quite nice, easily cutting through even a dense mix without dominating. e.g. I used it instead of a piano in Ultravox's I Remember (Death in the Afternoon) and it does a great job. I've been using multiple instances of it in some projects and it always seems to deliver when I need it to. Olga is almost starting to feel like my new "go to" synth, which I would never have imagined possible. So, needless to say, after a few weeks with the demo I bought it and I'm really happy I did.

As it's been around for a while now, and was designed to run on far less powerful machines, Olga uses very few system resources on a modern computer. It's a very straightforward instrument and I found that after a week or so I no longer need to turn on the English language labels. I imagine, though, that some people will find the GUI too small, even in it's larger size, which is a shame.

Overall, Olga looks amazing and it is so easy to work with that you won't care that it doesn't come with many presets. It also has a big, aggressive sound that can easily overwhelm a mix but, equally, it is capable of some real subtlety when that's what is needed. However you patch it, though, it always gives you want you want with a minimum of fuss. If you download the demo, start from the last preset and work your way forwards, I think you'll be impressed.

I'm done with Pigments. I so want to like it but I just can't. It's a really well thought out instrument that is a joy to work with but, at the end of the day, it simply doesn't sound good enough compared to the other synths I work with every day. I've had it for a couple of years now and I've only ever used it for generic sounds/parts to fill out a mix, never for anything where you might actually notice that it doesn't really sound all that good.

I love the layout and the visual representation of all the modulation - that whole system is top shelf. I like the way the "Engines" are implemented and the filter section is pretty good, too, without setting the world on fire. The GUI/UX is intuitive, well laid out, lends itself to a good workflow and there are more modulation options than I'd ever need or want. The on-board sequencer, too, is second to none, although it doesn't do anything I can't do in my host, so I've never used it.

In the end, my rating comes down to the sound. It just doesn't sound good enough in our mixes. It can do the little filler type things well enough but then so can dozens of freebies I use regularly. Where it can't seem to hold its own is when I am looking for a prominent part - a lead or a big pad kind of thing. It just doesn't sound big enough for those things, no matter what I try. It seems to have all the requisite parts - the V/A engine is very well featured, the Wavetable engine has loads of modulatable options, the Granular engine is quite capable, the newer Additive engine does what you expect and beyond that the filter is OK and there are plenty of other features to get the job done - but somehow it all falls a bit flat in the end. It's so frustrating because I really like working with Pigments, I just can't get it to sound as big as I need it to.

As with Hive, I have come to the conclusion that maybe I am just not the target audience for this synth. To me it feels like a Swiss Army knife. It does a lot of things well enough to get by in a pinch but when it comes to the big, important projects, there is no substitute for a good set of specialised tools.

2024 EDIT:

A while ago I bought one of Ploki's skins for Hive, which not only looks amazing but has made Hive 2 much easier to work with, to the point that it's changed my mind about this synth. I'm actually amazed at how something as simple as a skin has had such a profound effect on my feelings about an instrument, so I'm re-writing my review to reflect my changed attitude/opinion.

The core sound of Hive is quite good. I find it particularly suited to basslines and arpeggiated rhythms and stuff like that. It comes with a gajillion presets, which are well handled by the best preset browser I have ever used. The browser is amazing. I spent a week or more going through everything and colour-coding any preset I heard that I thought we might be able to use. Then I started looking for opportunities to use it in some of our songs.

Where the stock interface/layout feels like two separate synths slammed together, so you are forever flicking from one side of it's gigantic interface to the other, trying to work out how the patch has been set up so you can tweak it. It wasn't too bad in v1.2 but the update to v2.0 somehow seemed to make it harder to work with (for me at least). Ploki's skin fixes that, placing everything in a more logical order, laid out to follow the signal path, which makes it far easier and more intuitive to work with. These days I actually like working with Hive, where previously I kind of dreaded it.

Hive comes loaded with a million features, most of which don't interest me in the slightest, and when you look at the list of features on the product page here at KVR, you'll notice that the most important things about any synth - it's oscillators and filter(s) - barely rate a mention. In fact, there is no mention at all of the filters. Normally I hate that but with Hive it's easy enough to ignore the stuff you're not interested in and focus on what you are. It's still a bit cluttered by the skin I'm using has improved that situation a lot for me, as the clutter is more out of the way. Nothing in the synth really stands out but, by the same token, there's no area where it isn't at least competent, so you know you can always get something usable from it. I suppose that's a good definition of a workhorse synth, which is exactly how I see Hive.

I now find myself reaching for Hive fairly regularly. It has a solid sound, it doesn't use too much CPU and, with the skin I'm using, it has become easy to work with. I don't think it will ever be part of the core list of synths I love using but it definitely has its place in my arsenal, in no small part because of its very flexible skinning system.