This was one of my first synthesizers, so i´ll start with it:
User Interface The GUI is easy to handle. The colours are more a matter of taste, but i like them and somehow they fit to the sound. The layout is well thought trough and there are no popup-menues where you don´t wear (or click) yourself out. Everything is right at hand. One weak point are the graphical envelopes: they´re a nice addon, but if you programm sounds with a bigger lenth, the envelopes vanish at the edge of the window. A plus point is the switchable fx-section.
Sound It would describe the sound as more or less glamorous with a nice, brilliant shimmer. The sound is often very recognizeable, due to the filtermodes and the resonance. Personally i like both of the notchfilters for making brighter/ wider sounds. Also remarkable is the noise-osc. It´s not a normal noise, it´s very harsh and more FM or AM like. What bothers me is the fade in of the res, i think it becomes too quick too loud. Another problem is the env-speed. Good drums and percussion are hardly to achieve cause the envs are too slow and don´t give you enough punch, especially in lower registers. I think the strength of Wasp lies more in "metallic", stronger sounds (hard to describe) and/or in "strange" fx-patches.
Features At first sight, Wasp seems not very extraordinary, but it offers a lot of options. It has FM, Ringmodulation, PW, Keytracking, Lfo-Sync, a sort of chorus and a distortion unit. The modulation-routings are in fact not numerous, but this forces you to plan your sound-design better. One thing i think to mention are the lfo-shapes: apart from the standard sine and square there are saw and noise (and what kind of noise!:-)) Furthermore Wasp offers a 7-band eq and three bread and butter fx-units: reverb, phaser and delay. The presets sound good and are quite useable, but personally i dislike the phaser-patches.
Documentation The docs are very short and dry, so for a beginner they´re maybe not sufficient enough. For the more proficient users the manual offers no extra information.
Presets Light and shadow here. Some fx and "wired"-presets are nice, but for me the distortion-unit is used too much. The pads are also good, but the drums and some leads are crap. As always i miss some of these "mellow-mood sounds". All in all i think the presets don´t show the full potential of the synth. I would add some classic fm (ringmod) presets (as possible) and/or more less "crude" patches.
Customer Support I never used it, but the fl-homepage has a big forum with many users for well-founded assistance.
Value For Money In my opinion the vfm is excellent. For the money you get a lot of soundpotential.
Stability Wasp crashed sometimes in FL-Studio when i selected some presets in the fx-panel. When using a lot of fx (in my case, 1,3ghz, 256mbram) the cpu load can up to 15-20% with four voices. Normal patches use about 10% on an average.
Summary: Wasp is not a "neutral" synth. It has a well defined sound wich puts it in its own niche, so you like it or you like it not. I don´t know if it sounds like the hardware-pendant, but i recommend this synth to all who are looking for an extra sound possibility with easy programming.Read Review
