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SynthMaster 2
Reviewed By elipsis1 [all]
November 21st, 2011
Version reviewed: 2.5 on Windows
Synthmaster 2.5 is an excellent synthesizer hybrid offering a wide variety of synthesis options.
The sound quality is amazing, and the gui does a nice job of making it easy to tweak your sound and provide visual feedback.
The presets are excellent, and the onboard Reverb is very rich.
It has been very stable so far.
The online preset browser is a welcome addition :)
Check out the demo for sure, you will fall in love with this synth.
There are many wonderful things you will discover when you start scrolling through the presets.
I was amazed at the filters, they were very musical and deep sounding, tweaking them was an inspiration in itself.
The GUI colors are a nice feature as well.
The CPU usage seemed to be very acceptable on an intel i7 machine.Read Review
The sound quality is amazing, and the gui does a nice job of making it easy to tweak your sound and provide visual feedback.
The presets are excellent, and the onboard Reverb is very rich.
It has been very stable so far.
The online preset browser is a welcome addition :)
Check out the demo for sure, you will fall in love with this synth.
There are many wonderful things you will discover when you start scrolling through the presets.
I was amazed at the filters, they were very musical and deep sounding, tweaking them was an inspiration in itself.
The GUI colors are a nice feature as well.
The CPU usage seemed to be very acceptable on an intel i7 machine.Read Review
This plugin has some very unique features that put it above the rest.
First off, the included samples are very good quality. As you scroll through presets, the kit that is loaded also includes pattern data, so it makes for a great browsing experience.
Another cool feature is that you can change all samples in the kit with one click of a mouse. Holding the ALT key and clicking the load button will shift to the next wav file in that pad's corresponding folder. Very cool. You can also use the alt key to perform global pre calc effects as well.
The pre calc effects are a great feature to have, as they take up 0 cpu time after you are done tweaking the sample. The precalc effects are what give you the sculpting power to really dial in your sound or experiment.
Another awesome feature is that you can unlink the pattern so that each pad can have it's own sequence length, doing so also allows you to enable the random button, which will trigger a random pattern number, so that there is a lot of variation going on.
Also, the kit samples are embeded into the file save, so no managing folders or losing/browsing for samples.
You need to see the LFO in action to really appreciate it, you can assign it to so many parameters. This is a well thought out plugin.
The triggering via midi is also a welcome feature. You can play the kit on a keyboard, or trigger patterns, or trigger the different values on the repeater.
There really is a whole lot more to nerve than what I have posted in this review. This plugin is definately worth giving the demo a whirl, and in my opinion, well worth the purchase price.
Steve has been great at answering questions via email as well as his response in the forum. It sounds like he really is listening and planning to implement changes based on user input.
This is a hassle free serial number copy protection scheme, so no worrying about dongles or anything.
Your creativity will really flow freely with this plugin.Read Review
First off, the included samples are very good quality. As you scroll through presets, the kit that is loaded also includes pattern data, so it makes for a great browsing experience.
Another cool feature is that you can change all samples in the kit with one click of a mouse. Holding the ALT key and clicking the load button will shift to the next wav file in that pad's corresponding folder. Very cool. You can also use the alt key to perform global pre calc effects as well.
The pre calc effects are a great feature to have, as they take up 0 cpu time after you are done tweaking the sample. The precalc effects are what give you the sculpting power to really dial in your sound or experiment.
Another awesome feature is that you can unlink the pattern so that each pad can have it's own sequence length, doing so also allows you to enable the random button, which will trigger a random pattern number, so that there is a lot of variation going on.
Also, the kit samples are embeded into the file save, so no managing folders or losing/browsing for samples.
You need to see the LFO in action to really appreciate it, you can assign it to so many parameters. This is a well thought out plugin.
The triggering via midi is also a welcome feature. You can play the kit on a keyboard, or trigger patterns, or trigger the different values on the repeater.
There really is a whole lot more to nerve than what I have posted in this review. This plugin is definately worth giving the demo a whirl, and in my opinion, well worth the purchase price.
Steve has been great at answering questions via email as well as his response in the forum. It sounds like he really is listening and planning to implement changes based on user input.
This is a hassle free serial number copy protection scheme, so no worrying about dongles or anything.
Your creativity will really flow freely with this plugin.Read Review
DUNE is simply stunning. The sounds can be very complex, yet there is great simplicity in using it and tweaking parameters.
The MOD matrix is VERY powerful, lots of options available.
I was amazed at how quick and easy this synth is to program.
The CPU usage is very low in my opinion, I have used it on a Pentium D, as well as an intel i7 quad core.
Low bass notes are very defined, you can really get some nice deep basses out of this synth.
It is also very stable, the only reason I gave it a "9" for stability was an anomaly caused when Ableton Live somehow got set to 22kHz sample rate, and DUNE made horrible crackling and distorted sounds. This may have been related to the system I was using, once I corrected the sample rate, all was good.
Now that I think about it, Dune is very stable and I am modifying my score to a 10.
Great Synth! And, at $139, it is a VERY good deal! Buy it, you won't be disappointed.Read Review
The MOD matrix is VERY powerful, lots of options available.
I was amazed at how quick and easy this synth is to program.
The CPU usage is very low in my opinion, I have used it on a Pentium D, as well as an intel i7 quad core.
Low bass notes are very defined, you can really get some nice deep basses out of this synth.
It is also very stable, the only reason I gave it a "9" for stability was an anomaly caused when Ableton Live somehow got set to 22kHz sample rate, and DUNE made horrible crackling and distorted sounds. This may have been related to the system I was using, once I corrected the sample rate, all was good.
Now that I think about it, Dune is very stable and I am modifying my score to a 10.
Great Synth! And, at $139, it is a VERY good deal! Buy it, you won't be disappointed.Read Review
