Archetype Instruments

It's like a Juno 106 mixed with a bit of Virus B/JP8000. Really fat and modern sounding. It's almost like a Charlatan take on Sylenth1: you only get the essentials, but in return you get fast results.

The last guy bombed his review because he couldn't get the presets to work? Firstly this thing's so simple you don't even need presets if you have even a 5th grader's synth editing skills. Secondly, it comes with a LokomotivFactoryPreset1.lkb file. I didn't even install it, just extracted it to obtain the DLLs. You load in banks through the preset menu, it's not rocket science.

Anyway back to the synth. It oscillators sound great and super rich. The filter is good but boosting resonance cuts volume down in a bad way - I hate when filters do that, makes me never want to use the resonance. The CPU usage is a bit more than I'd like, but still serviceable. It's not a super versatile synth, so you won't need 100 instances anyway. It's really trying to force your hand to make leads and pads. It can do nice basses as well with a little finessing. GUI is needlessly large for those with smaller screens - it could've been optimized a bit better.

I like that the portamento is polyphonic. It doesn't do the best job at picking which notes to slide, but its there if you want it. The AutoPWM is a nice touch, freeing up the LFO for something else. However, multiple LFO destinations would've been appreciated. I like that the sub oscillator shape is continuous (morphs between each point). I like how the Hard Sync always stays in tune and has a lot of bite to it. A second Envelope for modulations would've been a good addition, but at least the filter envelope amount can be inverted. Also, it would've been nice to be able to tune the pulse and saw a fifth apart (lets be honest, they're three separate oscillators being layered under the hood...).

So overall, this is an incredibly usable synth you can master in a day. It's a great performance lead synth that cuts through mixes like butter. It's very late 90s-2000s, getting you that incredibly rich supersaw sound. It's a bit of a one trick pony, but if you go expecting that, you won't be disappointed.

Watched the demos. Sounds Great. Downloaded the exe and Installed it. Unfortunately, no presents! The preset file was greyed out. Anyone else with this problem. I would really like this vast.

Love the sound of this baby - very thick and ballsy synth. Like the simple interface. Beefing with good ole McDSP c101. Any updates on the horizon?

When I can get it to work I like it. Right now I have to search and manually open the default preset bank every time i open the vst. that means I won't use it, because it takes forever to get it functional. I installed it twice and i genuinely don't understand what's wrong. My VST folder is not the default VST folder, it's on a separate drive but still it makes no sense. will give higher rating if someone can help me fix this.

I don't understand what is the need to install the presets into windows documents. Had to make search in total commander to find them.

I love this Hard Sync.