Product Reviews by KVR Members

Okay, I'm a huge fan of the Sound Canvas line of synths. I love the sound, I love the usability, and I love the concept. The Hyper Canvas is, in a word, awesome, and it stays true to the Sound Canvas name. This synth simply rocks if you're into oldschool rompler sounds usually found in video games.

User Interface:
It's just a simple rompler, so you shouldn't have any trouble getting around this thing. Some of the knob values can go into the negatives (they begin at 0), which is kind of awkward at first when you want to tweak vibrato or something, but I got used to it really quickly.

Sound:
BEAUTIFUL! Well... almost. First the bad news: the recorder patch goes out of tune when you adjust the attack, the shakuhachi goes out of tune when you hold a note down longer than 4 seconds, and the attacks of some of the woodwind instruments sound REALLY unnatural if you adjust their attacks, to the point where making adjustments is useless (I work around this through automation, which actually makes the sound more useful.)

Now the good news! This thing is truly a beauty. This is the Sound Canvas sound I love so much and grew up with as a kid... only it's been cleaned up and sounds... a lot better. Really, a lot of people will disagree with me on this, but the old Sound Canvases don't have anything on the new SD/Hyper Canvas models as far as overall sound quality goes. Now I say that never having used a hardware Sound Canvas itself, but having about two of them (SC55 and SC88) sampled and growing up hearing these sounds on the SNES, PSX and countless other systems. I love it, despite a few flaws (what rompler DOESN'T have issues?!) Oh yeah, and unlike most other romplers, these samples don't have vibrato in them (the recorder has SOME, but not enough to really be noticeable in a mix), so you won't run into any weird vibrato problems when you move from one note to the next. You have to apply the vibrato manually with the LFO. It doesn't sound super authentic, but again, no one will notice in a mix.

The Hyper Canvas uses a different engine than the SD/SC synths. The sounds are lighter and fluffier, and they mix together very, very well. Usually I don't need to even do any EQing when I'm done making a track!

Features:
It's a basic rompler. I gave this such a high score because the features it does have are all VERY useful, and what's even better is the ability to have 128 user drumkits and 512 user melodic instruments. That's... like... four times the amount of its sister Sound Canvases the SD80 and SD90. What's even better, is that by adjusting the various knobs and stuff, you can get very accurate emulations of most of the SD90/SD80's sounds out of this thing, except the church organ.

Documentation:
The manual is USELESS. Completely, utterly useless. This is by far the worst Roland manual I've ever come across, hehe. Typical.

Presets:
Awesome! Simply awesome! These are all the sounds my heroes use! 256 presets that all come from the old Sound Canvas synths! Some of these sounds come directly off of the SR-JV expansion boards (like the SC88), and Edirol made them even more usable than they already were. The brass is amazing for a rompler. Listen to the BriteBone preset and you'll hear what I'm talking about! There're a few duds here, like the shakuhachi, but when the hell would you ever need a shakuhachi? I write game music, and I've needed one all of... one time, that could've easily been replaced with a pan flute (which is TO DIE FOR) or a silver flute. The strings need work, and at first I really hated them, but once I figured out how to use them, I started to love them. 256 might not sound like much, but these sounds go a LONG way, especially once you get to tweaking them. Believe me.

Customer Support:
The Hyper Canvas, the SD90, SD20 and SD80 were all discontinued. Edirol no longer supports them. Can't get any worse than that. Thanks Edirol. :(

VFM:
American Musical is selling these for 50 bucks a piece. For ten bucks more than the VSC, you get yourself a professional GM module that's still being used today by pros in the game industry (listen to Tales of Symphonia or Castlevania: Lament of Innocence.) That's damn good value for the money if you ask me, especially when the $800 SD90 has these same sounds (well... most of them.)

Stability:
Rock solid and reliable. This is my main box and I rely on it for... well... everything.

Conclusion:
Best Sound Canvas ever! I know, I know, lots of people will want to shoot me for saying that, and I really shouldn't say that seeing as this is my first *real* Sound Canvas, but I really love this thing. I've become sooooo attached to the Hyper Canvas, it's unbelievable. For fifty bucks, how can you go wrong?!

I love it! :DRead Review

I got Ravity to replace my expanded Roland XP synth, so that's what I'll be comparing it to throughout this review. Ravity doesn't offer as many features as your standard hardware ROMpler, but you can bet it sounds every bit as good as one, and in many cases even better!

GUI: Fabulous GUI! Absolutely wonderful! It's actually FUN to make your own sounds in Ravity! I've made more sounds in Ravity in a week than I did on my Roland in a year. This is the biggest advantage Ravity has over any hardware synth available. Ravity makes you WANT to make your own sounds, which is a first in my book.

Sound: Ooh boy! Ravity has a character unlike any other synth out there. Some of it sounds like a Roland, but it has a cleaner, smaller quality to its sound. In other words, Ravity mixes MUCH better than my Roland did, but still has that "sound module" sound to it. Everything from the effects to the samples sounds great and the sound quality is always consistent. It all sounds the way a ROMpler should.

One thing I hated about my Roland was its looping. My Roland had weird loop errors in it, which made many sounds completely unusable. I'm happy to report that Ravity's samples all loop very smoothly, to the point where I didn't even notice the looping most of the time.

Features: Like I said, not as many features as your standard hardware synth, but everything you need is right there. Ravity also makes up for the lack of features by allowing you to put eight samples together to form one sound. That's twice the amount of samples per patch as my Roland (and most other hardwares). Not only that, but Ravity lets you have 1,260 user sounds. Most Rolands give you 128 or 256! So you can have a field day with this thing.

Documentation: Finally a synth manual that explains everything the RIGHT way. Roland guys could learn a thing or two from Luxonix in this department. ;)

Presets: Most of the presets are good, but not great. Most of the presets just sound "okay." Some of the synth sounds are awesome, but many of the acoustic presets suck. In fact, the acoustic presets are what made me turn away from Ravity in the first place. It wasn't until I really sat down with it and made my own patches that I began to love this beast! And don't kid yourself, it IS a beast.

Customer Support: Luxonix has good customer support. Skycha and Yeap on the forums are very nice people and they do a good job of answering your questions.

Value for Money: 140 dollars for a synth that puts my 1,000 dollar XP to shame! Hah! Luxonix is the best.

Stability: Never crashed. Ever. Rock solid and dependable. A REAL software workhorse!

Conclusion: Ravity is fun, inviting, easy on your CPU and it sounds fantastic. The day I got it I wrote two songs with it without any problems whatsoever. Great! Ravity easily sounds as good, and in most cases better, than my XP-30. It's FAR more usable, too. This was the best piece of software I've ever bought!

So can this replace my Roland? Of course it can! I'd even bet this thing could rival a Yamaha Motif ES if you worked hard enough on the sounds (and I have heard the Motif ES in action *a lot*). Ravity's main weak point is its ethnic instruments. The sitar needs work and there're no kotos or shamisens, but really, when will you ever need those instruments? There're also no drums; you need to buy Ravity R for those, but my XP-30's drums were unusable, so it all works out. Other than that, Ravity can do anything my Roland can, and because it's so fun to use, I'll do more with it than I ever did with my Roland. :)

Great synth, great price, great sound. Luxonix will go far, and I'll be using this baby for years to come.Read Review

A while back, I had reviewed this in the forums and I gave it a good score. Now I regret having done that, because purchasing this software was an expensive mistake.

First off, MSI comes with a PACE iLok dongle. As I said in my old review, this is a piece of crap, and as I used MSI more, it got worse - to the point where my PC would freeze because of this thing after every third time I tried to choose an instrument. PACE has pretty much screwed over everyone who buys this software. Maybe it'll be fixed in an update... but I'm not waiting around to find out.

User Interface: MSI's main redeeming quality is its GUI. This is probably as good as it's going to get right now. Everything you need to tweak a sample is right in front of you. Hit one button and you can go into key-switching and crossfading, etc. Great.

Sound: Some of MSI sounds good. It comes with a lot of extras you might find useful (like a ton of wonderfully sampled recorder instruments), but unfortunately where it counts (strings, brass, woodwinds) this thing falls flat on its face. Basically many of the instruments have attacks that're WAY too slow. Not to mention the strings aren't multisampled enough, so you're plagued with vibrato problems and really obvious rosin noise (friend, who's not a musician, even noticed it and said it sounded real bad) in many of the violin and viola ensemble and solo instruments. The strings aren't completely unusable, but don't expect this to be the be-all and end-all of budget orchestra. The brass (most of it) is excellent for the most part, no real complaints except for pitch ranges (see below). The woodwinds are a joke, though. The flute is out of tune on certain samples and again, some of the attacks are too slow. The woodwind ensembles are terrible. The clarinet is okay and so is the oboe, but they aren't great. The brass and woodwinds have pitch ranges that're WAY too narrow. The oboe is missing about 8 notes from its pitch range. What gives, MOTU!? That's bull! The overall quality of the sound is good for the price, but there're too many unforgivable little quirks that make it largely unusable as a stand-alone orchestral instrument.

Features: Good filters, good tremolo effect, good EQ. If you're unhappy with the french horn solo sample (like I was) just run it through a lowpass filter some and you got yourself a pretty basic french horn patch that sounds the way a solo french horn should. You shouldn't have to do this in the first place, but whatever.

Documentation: Decent. Great that it offers a few tables that tell you how much memory each sample takes up.

Presets: Like I said before, they're largely unusable. To get the most out of this instrument, tweak your own stuff.

Customer Support: MOTU's customer support is great when you can get a hold of them. Also Unicornation's MSI forum has a bunch of people who are willing to help if you have a problem.

Value for Money: 300 dollars for something I can't really use? I don't need to go into this anymore.

Stability: What a joke. Granted, MSI itself doesn't freeze my PC, PACE iLok does.

Conclusion: Get GPO. 'Nough said.Read Review