Spire

This is one of the VST plugins that inspires me right from the start.
When I hear how it sounds, I just want to start making music. Even the init preset sounds nice, but when I tried various beautifully crafted presets, I couldn't believe I got that sound! I regret I didn't try it earlier in favor of native Linux VST plugins.
Even the process of selecting presets or creating my own is really pleasing.

Really great synth with lovely sounding oscillators, great detune, nice GUI and many different filters.

Probably the synth I use the most, so versatile, with amazing sounding presets, spoilt for choice.

If you are into any electronic type of music production and beyond, this is the one.
Listen to the pro presets, and you will be amazed at the quality and what is possible!
Cannot recommend it enough.

Good synth, nice GUI, good sound, easy to work with. Its famous synth for dance music from the past. I don't think its good buy today because for same money we can get better synth. Synth is just a basic one It needs to be modernised to stay competitive adding missing stuff like layers, sample oscillator and better ARP (16 steps only, no step gate).

There are lot of presets and sound packs for Spire. Buy Spire only if you are interested in these presets, otherwise let it die, authors are doing just tiny bugfixes over years. Don't give them your money, they are just sound pack resellers now.

This are so many presets! And most sound amazing. Usually you only find a handful of good sounds. But not with Spire.

Fantastic synth and a really great company and customer service.

Spire, as many have already attested here, has a superb audio quality and is really efficient and resource friendly within users projects, allowing many instances of Spire to perform simultaneously with no drawbacks, even on older hardware.

Spire also now has one of the best preset menu user interfaces around and in my opinion is practically a perfect plugin at this point.

I must say that in my own personal experience, Reveal Sound's customer service has been excellent, and even very recently reinstated support for very old Intel CPUs which I am currently using in my device, which has allowed me to continue to use their product updates.

Overall, a fantastic product and company, that I will fully recommend to everybody, both now and in the future.

Spire is a top notch synth with more sonic flexibility than most! The only reasons I gave Spire 4 stars instead of 5 is that parts of the GUI are not as intuitive or user friendly as I would like, and I wish that the ENV1 and ENV2 ADSR graphics reflected parameter changes. Other than that, it's an amazing synth and if you're in the market for a new one, it's worth checking out.

Great Plugin but couldn't get it to work with FL studio 20.

Cant use it for everything, mainly only for leads and plucks because the sounds are so hard core but its what the market likes now, so highly recommended.

Finally after updating my PC from old amd core duo to quad core i5, I have the best VST synth i ever used.

Sounds excellent, but were it shines is the GUI. Cool skins, so easy to tweak, and just sexy as hell on my Dell high res screen.

Also good feeling when you saved a little, 20% and are 100% content with you purchase.

Get a kick out of the "Lets get ready to rock" message on init preset Lol.

If they add some neat like 3d wave table scan latest rage, Spire would be GOAT.

I want to give it 10, but will be reserved and say 9, just because it needs a few more customize sizes, say 130 or 140.

150 is a little big even on my 24 inch.

I love this synthesizer, I really do... It has such a modern, "bombastic" sound, so punchy, so clear. That is exactly what modern producers need and use.

Oscillators are amazing, it is very hard to reproduce certain presets in other synthesizers to sound exactly the same, I find Spire always a touch bit better sounding than competing synths, just a little bit better.

Detune and unison section is nice, it sounds very sylenth-like, I find that not too many plugins can make that gritty and clear at the same time, low end saw bass, Spire (and Sylenth) does that perfectly.

Filters. They are good, plenty to choose from. I'm not a filter phreak, but they sound very good to my ear. I especially like "acido".

Effects section is quality as well. Shaper can sound really really mean, and reverb is an effect that could be justified as a standalone plugin, it's that good.

Other things I'm in love with are envelopes (they sound so snappy! I love it) and X-Comp module, which makes your sounds so clicky and modern sounding, helps them to stand out in the mix. It sounds especially good with envelopes set to short decay. I love this compressor.

Presets are top notch, they are "hit-ready" I would say, not like in other synths which may be packed with presets but only 1/5 of them is usable. Here you will find sounds which fit track perfectly and hence this synth is used by so many producers. It has great 3rd party soundbank support as well.

CPU usage... It used to suck, but now all is changed. I recently did a comparison with Dune and Hive. Hive, the so called "CPU efficient" synth was the most hoggy of all 3 and Dune was the most efficient. Spire was in the middle. It was quite surprising as I thought Hive will use the least amount of CPU processing power (as it is marketed) but well... Maybe it is just mine PC that does something in a different way. Spire's CPU usage is fine then.

In practice I didn't find any disadvantages, so I'm giving it a fair 10/10, as it is my fav synth and I can't quite find any other plugin with such features, such remarkable sound and overhelming amount of 3rd party presets.

The perfect synth, i haven't found it it yet.

Spire comes pretty darn close though.

I love its user-friendliness and the effect section, which has everything your need, and i mean everything.

I find the layout clear and the knobs big enough and easy to adjust.

Reveal-Sound has added a Matrix section in which one can hook up any LFO / Env / Osc / Arp etc etc to almost any other function of the Spire.

That makes it very versatile, but the way they set it up also makes it easy to get an overview of what is controlling what.

And then the most important thing: the sound.

I know i'm not allowed, so i won't, but i would almost leave it at WOW!.

The sound is simply great. Very deep to very sharp, very analog, but digital if you want it to be.

Once again, versatile. It can sound small or huge and both are easy to make yourself.

It four oscillators allow you to morph easily from one sound to the other. If one uses all 9 available voices x4 oscillators (36 voices!!!!) and turn the "Wide" knob to maximum on all oscillators... the word "wide" doesn't do justice to the amount of width you get.

There is loads more to be said about Spire, most of it good.

If i have one complaint, it would be that the LFO's apparently alway retrigger with every keystroke.

But if that's all that's wrong with it, then I can sure as hell live with it.

This Synth is so powerful clear and bright. Its amazing !! A must have and a new antagonist to Nexus2.

Spire is interesting. Out of the nowhere, in few days, hype like crazy. It reminds me of what happened with Dune few years back. Anyway, is it worth the hype? ...well ...yes.

Features: 8/10

This is the clever bit. It doesn't seem like, but under the hood, there is quite a lot of features. It starts with cute little oscilators being able to generate it's waveform by morphing, by FM, or by AM synthesis. Then it goes into unisono stage, which aside from classic parameters allows you to control even iregularity of detuning and way how voices are scaled from each other. Filters are cool. Few models to choose from. It ends up with badass effect unit. You see, why to have user choosing between regular distortion modes and bitcrushing, when all it takes is two extra knobs for having it all at once. This is the way of thinking I like. I'd love to see possibility to change order of effect signal chain though. It would take just one more tab at the FX area. The modulation stuff is just cherry on a cake. Whole bunch of LFO's, envelopes and step sequencers with (really) nice collection of destination to route them to.

Sound: 9/10

Really somewhere between Sylenth and Twin. Creamy, warm, but rough enough when you need it. It can lack "concentraion" on high frequencies sometimes, on the other side, when your sound needs to be "softer", Spire is right there for you. Even when you use stuff like FM synthesis that usually tends to be harsh. Effects have great quality to themselfs. Especially reverb is kind of cool for a built-in unit.

GUI 8.5/10

User interface is great. It's all really intuitive, straight nice flow. Where it needs to have some tabs, it has them, but only on small restricted areas, so the whole synth doeasn't dissapear when you need to adjust LFO speed, or something. Olny thing I'm missing is some kind of quick modulation assignment. Either knob related pop-up menus, or some drag'n'drop way. Just so we don't have to browse through the whole selection of destination.

Value 9/10

Price is set reasonably, eventhough I think seeing it permanently on discounted price would suit the synth much more as it is really nice bread & butter instrument. What makes it extremely valuable though is customer support. Developer is not just responsive, but also active, which is really breath of frash air having in mind another bread and butter softsynth of the history. ;) It still takes a bit higher CPU load, but developer is actively optimizing the code, so it got better already and it will continue to get in upcoming months. I strongly recommend you to try this little thing. Nice, fresh, easy, capable. Really appealing combination. :)

Cheers,
Martin.

Believe the Hype about this plugin and get yourself a demo to hear yourself.

This plugin came off as another run of the mill synthesizer at first, but as soon as I listened to the presets, its become my go to plugin for its brilliant balance of simplicity and sound quality.

GUI 8/10

The interface is laid out to be incredible fast to navigate, though it is a bit plain. I could complain about the modulation matrix, Its packed too small and over several tabs, but still does the job well.

CPU Usage 6.5/10

I have the new haswell core i7, sits it at about 6% idle, around 35% on playing complex sounds and caps up to 55% when pushed. This isn't as bad as the Diva when it comes to performance. But takes about twice as much processing as the Sylenth1.

Sound Quality 9/10

The presets are some of the best i've heard come with a plugin. Though not extensive, you'll immediately be wanting to use some of the sounds straight away. While the plugin doesn't do analogue warmth like the Diva or great trance leads like the Synthmaster. What it does do is a brilliant balance between warmth an electro grittiness. It sounds brilliant on mid range frequency heavy hitting lead and base sound. These are sounds that are gonna take charge in your tracks. PADs and soft chorded sounds came out sounding alot more plain and boring.

Price: 6/10

At 140? its not cheap. If you already have an extensive plugin library like me, you wont find anything new or crazy on it that'll tempt you to buy it. If your building your plugin library, Spire is a brilliant place to start, due to its great presets and ease of use compared with other plugins.

Id recommend this plugin to newbies or if your bored of your other plugins. It does sound great, but at performance and cost. If it were priced at half of what it is and used a bit less CPU it'd be a must buy.

Overall 7.5

Review by Blake Arius