Product Reviews by KVR Members

I'll start by admitting that I already own a couple fart instruments and a handful of fart samples, and I've been trying to become knowledgeable and invested in this genre for the last few years. I may or may not have created a few of my own using a good field recorder and some mics, so I know the perils and pitfalls of mic placement, room acoustics, and of course what sort of meal makes the best muse to get started.

Right now Flatulus is the king of the kontakt instrument fart sounds game for sure, with Fartman and Fartman2 being essentially just as good but with slightly less good audio quality. Flatulus has many farty, sloppy, protracted fart sounds, well mapped key switches and banks/modes for mod articulation lololol, effects, and some presets. There are a few farts in Flatulus that will blow your mind, including some just really, really long farts. I love it. I will undoubtedly have some of this on tracks at some point.

Its another mediocre analog-sounding synth, and I got it inside a larger Pluginboutique bundle where I was forced to accept it along with other products. I think this was inside the bundle to force me to give UAD my email address and install their product portal.

I honestly didnt need or want any more analog synths, and this UAD PolyMAX synth is extremely regular & extremely mundane. The presets included arent numbered- for good reason. There are roughly 100 presets, and they are all sounds Ive heard 1000x by now and can create myself on my dozens of other synths.

If you are all about that analog sound and have no analog hard or soft synths, this can be acquired for $29 along with 8 other products inside a pluginboutique bundle they just put out. The free synth 'Vital' and also 'SurgeXT' have comparable analog sounds if you dont want to spend $, and there are dozens of other higher quality multi synths out there that do these sounds plus a lot more for your money.

I have been stretching, warping, manipulating samples for a long time, at least 26 years now, but I am always looking for the best creative stretch algorithm and I just havent found exactly what Im looking for in all that time. Mind you I have not purchased any of the more expensive time/tone bundles or tools, and I dont own any of the cinematic voice effect tools. I have always looked for affordable or free time/tone tools, and Im always left wanting just a little more creative freedom.......

Then I found PaulXStretch, and my life has been altered lol. Quite seriously, I found this tool last night and have spent almost 12 hours straight making gorgeous drone and ambient music using multiple instances of PaulX on my workstations's desktop. I havent even opened my DAW in 12 hours, and this is weird. I have generated 100s of new drone samples for my projects, and I feel like I have a new workflow that will be with me for many years to come.

The stretch quality of this free (GNU) software is on par with paid products, native DAW tools (such as bitwig or cubase's algorithms), serato, etc, but goes WELL BEYOND any of these tools in terms of creative freedom. I can turn a 5 second sample into a 20 minute long drone masterpiece if I pick the right source file, and I can run 4-5 PaulX instances at the same time, creating a never-ending drone and ambient environment. I can stretch vocal samples to a point where other other stretch engines will lose most of the original sound character and vowel shapes, but paulX allows extreme stretching while still preserving that character.

This is an insanely fun, totally free creative tool and I cant recommend it more. I plan to donate to the dev because they deserve it.

This is a big meh. If I had spent even $20 on this, I wouldnt be happy.

Got this for free, along with the Loopcloud Sounds promotion. They claimed if I signed up for even a free trial, I would get this synth, so I went ahead.

I immediately noticed the UI seemed a little thin, with lots of wasted space and large knobs with labels like "bright/dark", "fast/slow", or "effect" and I saw that there are lots of "dice" icons everywhere to.. randomize. The number of presets included with the basic "USYNTH core" is right around 100, and the interface immediately goes to work trying to get you to buy new preset packs from UJAM. Paid presets say "available for download" without any indication they are premium preset packs, and if you dont know this and click to download one, then UJAM yells at you and demands you buy this pack.

The sounds that come from USYNTH are mediocre. Some are thin, narrow, 1 dimensional and I believe I heard a little bit of digital distortion crackling on a couple of them. Meter was not in the red. Not all the sounds inside USYNTH are weak, and I did indeed find some nice quality stuff, but overall the value just isnt there compared to many - if not most - other software synths. The playback mode is sort of nice (it plays a lot like UJAM's Carbon or other guitar synths, where you have keys that are switches and mode buttons, and then keys that trigger note/chords).

If this synth was $20 (or free), it would feel priced correctly in terms of the shortage of presets and the pressure to buy more. If UJAM added some more base content and really warmed up/expanded the synthesis engine, it might be worth trying out, but as of now it isnt super good. Im not entirely sure what sort of synthesis it even uses, and it might be a sample player for all I can tell. : /.

If you are someone who searches for more and more refined, purpose-built effects and/or transition sequencers/tools/toys, this is among the very best out there.

This brings to mind plugins such as NI's "The Finger" (a Reaktor-based effects sequencing tool), Sugar Byte's Turnado, or Cableguys Shaper Box, but imo the interface, sound quality, and overall feature set of Transit are more refined. The transitions and/or effects sequences you can design with this are attention-grabbing, mind-melting, liquid audio-style sounds, and I am immediately a big fan.

One star removed for (apparently) no MIDI mapping or binding?? I see a menu item that says "Randomize MIDI assign on/off/DAW", but I see no other options anywhere, including right click/context, that allow me to map anything. This was just released, so hopefully a patch? I cant possibly be missing something so obvious, and I've put some time into reading docs, etc. Ill add the star when I find MIDI mapping.

Update: dev got back, doesnt seem super interested in making MIDI map features any better, and Im not sure if this is just in Bitwig or all DAWs. I can make Bitwig and Cubase map MIDI directly and overcome this issue, but it would be nice to have a native right-click or mode switch MIDI map function for efficiency.

This tool, like the other similar tool from WA "Chords Pro", has a DAW playback issue. I reported the issue to WA when I got a free copy of Chords Pro, and they denied the issue and asked me to "record video of the issue happening" but made it very difficult to upload a video so I gave up because the tool was mediocre and free anyway.

So I heard that Loop Engine was supposed to have the best aspects of Chords Pro, and a more stripped down Instacomposer sort of thing, so I decided to try it on a sale. Loop Engine has the IDENTICAL issue that Chords Pro has:

Load Loop Engine as a plugin in your DAW - any DAW. Connect it to a polyphonic synth. Load any content in Loop Engine, or build your own. Press play on your DAW while the DAW transport is in loop mode. Loop Engine plays your notes as intended, until.... every time the currently defined loop ends and repeats. Whether it's a loop length of 1, 2, 4, 8, etc, Loop Engine always goes silent for a portion of the first note of the loop. It sounds like when you set "note length" to around 50% in an arpeggiator.

As long as your transport never loops, Loop Engine (and Chords Pro) continue playing chords and notes as intended, but as soon as you put your DAW transport in loop mode, the issue begins. On top of the loop playback issue, drag and drop export from Loop Engine does NOT work and partially freezes any DAW (Cubase 12, Bitwig 5) I've tried it in.

WA seems to ignore these issues, and the only reason I still give this 2 stars is that it works when not in looped playback mode.

If the dev doesnt solve this (and the issue with Chords Pro) soon, Ill come back and drop this to 1 star. How hard is it to get your "Loop Engine" to loop and export audio properly? Edit: its been months, and instead of a fix, the dev released a version 2 of Loop Engine.* Im not sure if I'll ever buy anything from WA again after this.

(deleted my original criticism because the dev has been *great* and the issue is resolved).

This product has great promise, and does a very good job capturing simultaneous MIDI and audio from your DAW, or from your whole system audio if you configure it that way. The "hands free" features it has (auto restart recording, gated recording, etc) make this a killer retrospective record system, and with recent updates made by the dev, this software is sweeeet.

EDIT: the price for this is not $24.99, it is $49.99. On sale, it is $24.99.

Any prior issues I had with this software, on any DAW (Im Cubase 12 & Bitwig 5), have been resolved, and the manner in which Rewind captures MIDI and audio is perfect. You can "smart drag" captured audio with "force loop/auto/on/off" set to make sure audio is timely within a project's BPM, and everything just works. Dev expanded the max capture window from 60 mins to 90 with a recent update, and this makes it all even better for those of us who spend hours in the studio every day.

I dont know of a single other retrospective solution, whether a native solution like what is in Cubase, or a 3rd party like that 'MIDI-cap', that is as complete and useful as this. This really can grab EVERYTHING at the same time, you totally forget its there, and now it appends project BPM into the track name! This is THE retrospective solution right now.

Ive been a music production hobbyist for 25 years, used cubase as my only DAW for 23 years, and I've used a ton of other software from many brands in the VST ecosystem. I have very high standards for stability, performance, and quality in a DAW and I never thought I would find a DAW that could replace cubase, but I am happy to say it's Bitwig!.

I've had Bitwig since just before 5.0 launched(about 2 months), so I began on 4 and just migrated to 5. Everything has been great, the application is rock solid and I love the multithreaded sandboxed plugins!!!! The main application comes with a large trove of goodies such as instruments, interesting MIDI 'devices' and modules, this very cool modular environment called "the Grid", and a load of other stuff that allows for very interesting, efficient, modern project workflow and musical expression.

It took me a few hours to understand my workflow and find my musical space, then just a few more hours of practice to already feel confident that I can do everything I need to do in Bitwig and much more. I am free of steinberg, at last, and I feel like Im trusting my large library of plugins and content with a DAW that is less likely to crash catastrophically and cause me headaches and lost time.

I cant recommend Bitwig 4/5 any more strongly, and so far I've had zero issues with anything Ive plugged into it or thrown at it in any way. The browser can be a little slow sometimes on startup (mine is set to check for library changes on startup). I love this DAW.

After nearly 2 years of experience with Synthmaster 2 and with the dev, KV331, I have decided to revise my review and drop it to 1 star. I wont be working with KV331 any longer.

Synthmaster 1 and 2, and soon 3, sound very nice and offer a lot of presets. When I originally purchased SM2, I knew it was buggy and had many longstanding issues (you can read about those issues on the KVR forums, inside the KV331 forum), but I chose to support the dev and try it out anyway.

I immediately noticed that SM2's modwheel did not work unless I clicked it onscreen, and the "midi learn" feature would crash the plugin in Cubase. Manual assignment within SM2 also failed. I tried various ways to fix this including reaching out to the dev, but I was never able to solve it and the dev ignored my questions.

Recently the dev emailed all customers about Synthmaster3, and offered a new upgrade deal. I considered this, but wanted to make sure the modwheel issue was resolved before spending more $$, so I asked questions on the dev's forum here on KVR. The issue was denied, it was blamed on Bitwig (I started using Bitwig 6 months ago), and then finally it was very curtly blamed on VST3.

In the end, I have no idea if this issue still exists in SM3, but it certainly exists in SM1 and 2 and I am not interested in working with this developer anymore. The responses to my questions and then later to my frustration were inappropriate and dishonest, and I dont have time or patience for dishonest devs. Im done with KV331.

Ive been using Cubase since 1999, as well as many other plugins, processors, tools, FX, instruments, hardware synths, etc. I have built and supported live production environments at large Sports & Entertainment venues, as well as built networks, servers, desktops, and embedded systems throughout my 30+ year tech career. I've also used Reason, Fruity Loops, and Live, but very little.

That being said, I have had a 20+ year love/hate relationship with Cubase and Steinberg that has finally ended, and it ended on the hate side of things today. I've built and rebuilt 6 workstations for use with Cubase starting in roughly 2000 (when the Core2Duo first released and Steinberg began its long history of being unable to manage multithreaded/HT DSP), ending in 2022 with the final workstation. I've also used 2 laptops for Cubase. Ive used version sx2 through professional 12.0.60.

Cubase Pro offers a very robust set of features and tools out of the box and represents a DAW that was once king of the industry - and still could be with proper QA, development, and customer support. Cubase's UI/UX is top notch, with MIDI and audio routing systems that set the standard for other DAWs that came after, not to mention the high quality of the internal signal path, native DSP plugins, MIDI timing, etc etc. Cubase really has so much under the hood, it is mind boggling.

Here is the reason I give this DAW (And Steinberg) 2 stars, despite everything that is positive about their software, and despite the 20+ years I spent with it: Steinberg QA and Steinberg customer service, as well as the inherent instability of Cubase.

If you've used Cubase much at all in the last 20 years, you know what I mean about multithreading/hyperthreading issues, and you also know what I mean about customer service. (2 months+ for email replies, public denial of major issues on their forums, shifting the blame to customers).

I spent YEARS trying to work with Steinberg to determine WHAT HARDWARE PLATFORM they recommend for a stable Cubase workstation host, and yet they never offered a "supported hardware" list and let users figure out which platforms (MB chipset + CPU combination + power management features like speedstep) the hard way. So I spent *years* tweaking systems, removing all of their CPU power management features (resulting in higher power use), altering, disabling, and reenabling hyperthreading, rebuilding machines to make sure I did my diligent testing and troubleshooting FOR Steinberg, all the while dealing with projects that always crashed on exit, projects that randomly crashed, and the occasional file corruption that would result in a rebuild.

I spent HUNDREDS of hours of my own time trying to find the magic combination of hardware that would remove the dreaded "ASIO internal overload" issue caused by Cubase's inability to manage multithreaded audio, and what did Steinberg do for me, the paying customer, that entire time?

Steinberg FOUGHT me, they denied my issue on the forum despite 1000s of others reporting the same issue, they claimed "you are all alone - the only one really reporting this issue" back in 2018, and then their moderator "Steve" disabled my account when I became extremely angry about the way they were handling this. I went from being a die-hard Cubase user and proponent, to a bitter, angry, unproductive musician and I spent the next few years... not making much music and feeling extremely frustrated because Cubase was my only DAW.

Then I built a new machine in 2022, and found that Cubase 12 now finally performed perfectly, despite that machine having many of the same features that caused cubase to overload and pop/glitch the audio stream on earlier machines. Then Cubase 12 crashed during one of my projects and corrupted its licensing process, leading to high CPU every time Cubase was ran.... and....

I rebuilt the machine again, installed Bitwig 4, spent the next month using ALL my spare time learning Bitwig, and you know something? After a decade or more of frustration, YEARS worth of back-and-forth in email and on their forums, abuse from their moderators, etc?? Forgive my French but FUCK Cubase! More importantly, FUCK Steinberg for the years of stress and frustrating music production. I became connected to Cubase emotionally (it was my instrument) and so I kept dealing with stress I normally would not have, but now I have a new DAW and I'll never look back. Bitwig is 100% more stable than Cubase already, in my identical environment, with my identical hard and software libraries. Its more stable on any PC or laptop we own, where we have to carefully pick and choose to see if Cubase will work or not.

Steinberg customer service is THE WORST, and their inability to manage modern, multi-threaded audio is the reason for the CLAP protocol being developed, which may replace VST some day. The frustration with Cubase being unable to handle multithreading led to CLAP, and this should inform any new digital musician seeking a DAW -- Cubase/Steinberg are a dead-end today, and the level of dishonesty Ive seen from them about the issues in their platform is the icing on the cake.