Blue 3

Version 2? Oh boy, it's good! FM8-like matrix is there! (Behaves a bit differently, but anyway!) All OSCs have all possibilities now as CPU power is higher nowadays. It has some nice samples in OSC's and it can use them to modulate or be modulated! Proper stereo unisono. More FX slots, more FXs. I can play with this thing for looong hours.

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It's quite time ago when I've got copy of Blue from second hand. I didn't understand it back then, so I wasn't using it untill about four months ago. Then I rediscovered it and love it! :)

I want to start with a sound of it. At first sight it might seem a little bit "unstable", "not thick enough" and it's true for some uses. Imho It's not the best synth for subbasses for example. But when you dig in and use it's FM engine, you discover amazing sonic pallete. Someone somewhere called it cinematic. Can't agree more. It has some richness, something that just "tells the story" you play. It's especially handy when you have big track full of background layers and no freaking clue what to give on the top of it.

Another use is as really pleasant substitution for FM8. Especially now when Dubstep is wub-wub-wubbing everywhere, FM8 becme known again. Blue can do lot of similar sounds and it has it's own "extra" charater that diverse it from FM8 pretty well. Again, it just can tell the story. Emotionally. Can't describe it well. Just demo it. :) And as a bonus, it's sawtooth sounds much better then FM8's.

Handling of this synth is bit confusing at first, but when you get yourself around what FM is and how it works, it becomes pretty clean and quick. (Unless you're not preset hunter. Then it doesn't really matters...)

Featurewise also crazy. Not many synths alows you to tune precission of every single OSC's for example. :) Modulations are also great. Those multimode envelopes are really cool. ...and so on and so on. :)

Support is amazing. I've found a little bug it was performing with Ableton Live. Contacted guys, Jon opened those 6 years old codes and fixed it for me in literally no time. (2 days for bug fix like this is really a lightspeed) Bugfix was also included in next update.

Only bad thing is unisono engine that is oldfashioned and mono. But I've got a little "oficial-ish" roumor that version 2 is in planning, so no "dev-poke" point down thistime. :) (but it was close :p)

Summary? Well I believe it's one of most overlooked synths ever. It can really bring colours to your songs, which is amazing complment for all this "sometimes too clean" NI synth stuff everyone's using lately. Great sound, great possibilites, great FX, great developers and amazing potential to the future. Can't go otherwise than full score.