Product Reviews by KVR Members

A really great sounding, intuitive and okay on the CPU-ish drum sampler with some kind of a twist.

Pros:

• Loads fast: At least on my machine this plugin almost loads instantly even after a cold start of my system. To me this is a plus, since it avoids breaking the creative flow.
• Fast and intuitive to set up: You can literally draw and shape the sound with the blob grid. But I also really love the Modify section on the right with which you also can shape the sound quite intense yet detailed. Also the GUI is very clean and easy to understand.
• Sound is astonishing: At least to me it is. If I load the same sound into another sampler it just sounds and feels different. This might sound a bit esoteric, but I assume that this tool seem to break down the audio and rebuild it somehow different instead of just playing it back. Especially when it comes to editing the blob it gets clear that it's no plain playback. What really like is that you also can change a model for the velocity. This quite changes the sound somehow interesting. So something special is going on under the hood (to me, haha).
• Effects: Normally I do not like to use inbuilt effects in an instrument plugin, but here I actually like the compressors. Maybe the others as well, if I'll use the tool more and more over the next time.
• Modulation: I love modulating things. Here you can! But it could be a bit better, though. See my Cons.
• Superb demo: I just hate subscriptions and/or demos which are quite time limited. Give ma a muting or a noise, totally ok to me, but let me test the tool also one year later again, for example. And then there is Vicso: giving a hint screen which gets longer to wait for with every new GUI start. And this seems to be all!? I bought it quite fast, since it just flashed me, hehe. But if I understood the demo restrictions correct (also from the website) it really only gives this "demo prompt to upgrade". How kind is that? Really great, thank you.
• Price fair: To me the price is fair. Considering the intro price, which even is nicer. I guess there could be other companies, who would charge way more for such a plugin after all. So I am grateful for the kind price. Also: no subscription or iLok crap.

Cons:

• Modulation could be improved: The modulation possibilities are great already. Yet the sources are only limited to 8, which can feel a bit restricting sometimes. Also a quicker and intuitive linking from a modulator to any knob would be great.
• FLAC support: I love using FLAC, yet you cannot drop FLAC files onto the plugin.
• Save dialog path: The saving dialog always uses the last location, which was used from the DAW, I guess? It would be great if the path/location of the dialog would be in the correct folder already. E.g. if you like to save a preset, the presets folder should be chosen already.
• Undo missing: There is only an undo button when changing the blob, yet nor for the whole plugin. This would be great to have, since it can happen quite fast to chose a preset without saving the other one and thus loosing something.
• Further ideas: I'll contact the devs as well, yet wanted to write down here as well. It's not quite a "Con" list, yet still something where I think the plugin could be even better: Randomising a single track instead of the whole plugin, a Button to switch the elements for a track (the blob), better copy&paste features, note stretched out through whole keyboard mode (like Microtonic has, for example), choosing the part of the dropped audio, simple cleaning of unused blobs.

Overall I love this plugin already.

This organ emulation has a nice sound and is quite highly configurable. It is also very easy on the CPU. Also it's just totally free, which always is a big plus for me - quite honorable: so thanks to the dev.

Edit: it did crash Reaper already, though. Also it does not store presets in the project nor the Reaper preset system. What a bummer.)=.

This reverb has a great sound and versatile possibilities to alter the sound. At the same time it has a low CPU usage - even compare to other products from the commercial domain I have here. Kudos to the dev for making this one free. Thanks.

I've never really used grain stuff, from now on I certainly will.

Good:

• Easy to use with a great minimalistic yet intuitive interface.
• Light on CPU and seemed stable so far (v1.1.1).
• Versatile options to set up a sound / preset / programm; what I also mean with this is that there are intuitive and many ways to modulate certain values inside a preset / programm (e.g. with random generators, LFOs, envelops, etc.).
• The price almost is ridiculous. I tried other grain synths, which were five times as expensive as this one. This one is so affordable yet at least equally powerful.
• Used sounds can be saved inside the preset or (as I personally prefer it) not in the preset, but with the path to a file (this saves storage space, in case you'll use the same sound again and again).

Could maybe better (ideas which could make some aspects maybe better in this plugin - so basically some kind of feature wishes):

• The amount of modulation is sometimes a bit hard to set up. On the one site it would be cool to have also some kind of numeric value to at least see when setting up the modulation amount, on the other site it would be great to be able to enter values. The detailed-tweaking you can get while holding Ctrl is rather weird, since it can jump quite quickly suddenly. IIRC other plugins did behave similar; so this might be some typical behaviour when it comes to detailed knob tweaking? Or framework dependend? What I want to say here: it's hard to set up minimal tweaks in knobs sometimes.
• Some values like the "position speed" cannot really be linked to an internal mod, AFAIK. It can be automated in the host, though.
• Not that important, but still would be MAYBE nice to have in some very rare situations: curve control for the envelopes.
• Nitpicky here: the default preset has the 8 slots spread through the whole keyboard, while I often times just want one slot for the whole keyboard. I made some own default preset having only the first slot spread through the whole keyboard (you can set it up luckily!!), which gets loaded in Reaper when I open this plugin. It's a really tiny and maybe stupid feedback here, but I just wanted to say it, since it felt weird that the first slot is set to one very low octave by default. (-;

Overall a big thanks to the dev! I am not sure if the development of this plugin is still going on. Writing this in 2022, while I can only see year numbers like 2015 or 2016 on the devs page, unfortunately. I wrote the dev and asked if the development is still going on; I'll see about that. But for now this plugin already works great. (=.

Also: some review here wrote that they bought it and never got a licence: I cannot second that. I bought it and immediately got my plugin. The price is so low anyway, omg ... seriously! (-;

A very bizarre yet cool synthesizer with a new approach to "designing synths sounds".

Pros:

• Easy to understand workflow / handling.
• Can sound very good and clean and organic.
• Unbelievable low on CPU, seriously low.
• Never crashed so far.
• Is inspiring, since it's not a common way to get / create synthy sounds.
• Still in development, as far as I know; also Sonic Charge is very responsive via mail and their forum, which is also a big plus.

Things could be a bit better, in my opinion:

• The principle of preset designing could be taken even further, imo. E.g. having different aspects of the sound character to be randomized instead of the whole sound at once.
• The price might be a bit high for what it is, but in the end - as far as I know at least - the future versions are included for now. This might change, according to what I've read in the Sonic Charge forums, but in the end it's cool to know. So this is no real pro or con point tbh. :D.
• One review said that the preset system is good. Well to me it's not that good. It is good indeed to be able to click on a preset and directly be able to play it. This happens in the systems open dialogue box, though. So what might be missing is some kind of tagging functionality to better search through presets. The way it is now is: click and play and see if this sound fits. With THIS specific synth, it's no biggies, while the principle is to generate new random sounds anyway. So it's okay to me.
• New random sounds are often a bit too bizarre and not usable to me. Rather experimental, but this might also be a matter of taste or genre. I tested other random synths in the last weeks and Synplant indeed does a really good job in the end compared to ther synths, which generate random presets. So again: it's a rather subjective con point here again. And also not 100% negative.

ValhallaRoom by Valhalla DSP is my most favorite reverb. Its sound is just incredible; even after testing it against other reverbs quite frequently (yes, I do it once a year at least ... kind of some OCD ...). The controls are intuitive and the GUI is minimalistic as always with Valhalla plugins. The CPU consumption is low. There are even some algorithms included, which need even less CPU. While mentioning all this, especially when comparing to other products (just basically think of almost any reverb out there), it is even the most affordable reverb. Also it has no silly protection system with which you have to install third party stuff and also no dongle is needed. It's also interesting to mention that ValhallaRoom gets still updated and even gets some new algorithms from time to time. I just love this reverb.

Only thing that could get better is the preset system. It feels a bit clumsy sometimes, but you can work with it at least.

With ValhallaPlate Valhalla has created a very intuitive and fast to use plate reverb, which is friendly on the CPU and sounds incredible. The GUI is minimalistic as always from Valhalla, which I personally really like. There are helptexts in the bottom, which describe the knobs (by hovering over them) or the selected algorithm character (if mouse is not hovering on a knob). The preset system could be a bit more complex, though.

In a way this is the next version of Free Clip, but with more features, yet the same minimal CPU footprint and the same fast loading time. The sound is great, it has cool oversampling features and there are even distortion and a wavefolding distortion option. Furthermore the is the custom section, where you can combine such algorithms for the posiotive and negative site of the audio signal and do even an intended offset.

What made me buy this little cool tool is the GUI. It is so nice to use and the visual feedbacks of the signal is just great. More plugins should have such graphics. Totally worth the money; while it even does not cost that much at all! Thanks to the dev! (=.

This is a useful clipper with a nice sound and nice oversampling features. Also the CPU usage and loading time is just incredible low. The modes do sound different and are easy to access. Only thing I did not like that much is the GUI. The input and output volume is a bit clumsy to set. Luckily I found the "next version" of this plugin, which isn't free, but costs not so much: V-Clip. While this gives you more options, which are not always needed.

For people with a small budget this Free Clip is a really nice and useful clipper for free.

The ChowTape is easy to use and it sounds incredible. Also it is not only totally free, but also open source, which I find really likeable.