Atmosphere

I reviewed Atmosphere on Patcharena after owning it for about six months, and gave it 4/5. I have now owned it for a few years and I'm going to give it top marks. Here's why I feel compelled to amend my initial thoughts.

Initially, my only complaint was that it was too professional, too polished, and stood out too much in my mix. Now computers, software and interfaces have come a long way, and I realise Atmosphere was just four years ahead of its time.

My Access Virus has taken over most of my VA duties, and with such a powerful synth I have taken to weeding my VST arsenal to those that can compete. Interestingly, my default setup is now all Spectrasonics.

I love its clean interface, and for me seeing this blue monster on the screen reassures me of its quality. The LFO sync 1.2 update really helped, too.

Sound quality is still second to none, and the presets are still amazing. Take any lead sound, add your choice of effect, and just play away. Eric Persing is a world class sound designer, and this synth shows that quality input results in quality output. The pads are especially good, and using the computer's power results in some sounds no waveform-based synth could produce. The strings and the ambience drones are still called upon weekly!

Features? Gets 9/10. The basis is still ROM, and as such you cannot alter basic waveforms or deviate too much from the base sound except using filters and simple LFO functions. It's more than compensation that the supplied sounds are so diverse and so impressive. The reason for 9/10 is the hope that any upcoming Atmosphere "2" will add RMX style 'chaos' and 'FX bus' sections.

Documentation has always been good, and this VSTi requires little in the way of manual page-turning once installed. Load a sound, play, eventually remember you're supposed to be recording something! Another issue is the Challenge/Response protection. The website is 24/7, and reinstalls are allowed indefinitely with a minimum of fuss. You feel that the whole setup is geared towards the jobbing professional, where downtime could mean lost revenue. If only all Challenge/Response setups were this simple.

Arguably expensive at £225, but three years of usefulness and more to come, with much lesser ROM based and synth based plugins in the same price range. I can think of a number of 'big name' plugs I feel are overpriced. This is underpriced [but don't tell Spectrum!] With even the benefit of hindsight, I'd pay as much or more for this as I did. And I'm sure Spectrasonics would be as reasonable with upgrade pricing as they were with RMX.

Reliable? This was the first VSTi I bought. I have, like us all, bought many since. Some I still use,but a lot I don't. And this synth has never, repeat never, crashed, blue screened, failed to load, lost registry keys or stalled my host; despite computer changes, hard drive formats, sequencer changovers. That's a 10/10 in my eyes.

No definite word on an update yet, but here's what I'd like to see: RMX style FX busses, more incredible presets, the ability to name your own presets, and the ability to layer more than two sounds. Perhaps even some tempo linked 'variphrase' style sounds from the 'Symphony of Voices' library, if that's at all possible!

Apart from that, this synth keeps getting more relevant to my musical needs. A thankyou to the Spectrasonics team!Read Review