Product Reviews by KVR Members

Perhaps worth come coffee. I will soon find out. Disregard the 1 star for quality. Might be worth more. The 1 star is due to the fact that the product page sends you to a "buy me coffee" check out system. Impossible to get passed it if you have entered that page.

Both VST and VST3 get blacklisted in Cubase 10 and will not authorize in Logic X on my MAC Pro mid 2010, Sierra. No respons on mails to developers.

Finally: Got an answer from the developer that I needed High Sierra to run it. My bad. Disregard the one star. Perhaps it is a five star. I do not know. I corrected it to a 4 star. Deducted one star due to very long response time. Have no clue if that is correct but in all honesty I could not let the one star remain.

It is actually hard to pass out the right number of stars for this one as the sound is not an ordinary piano, neither is the interface. The piano tries to convey the atmosphere of the abandoned city of Pripyat, the center of the melt down disaster in Tjernobyl april1986. The result is both sounds and a visual interface (pictures) that is kind of "suspense" like. My thought goes to scores for horror movies. And what a horror the disaster itself must have been. So in that respect it is a full 5 star. The interface comes with a bunch of pictures from Pripyat and also convolution IR's that is recorded on different places in the city. The different IR sites is given as both presets and as a convolution menu to choose from. I was however kind of surprised that there was almost no difference between the presets. At first I thought it was something wrong with my installation, but I found a review on YouTube that took me through most presets and they sounded just like my installation. So no matter if the IR is in a huge hall or a small room, they sound much alike. In that respect it is not a 5 star. Also the installation procedure is a little querky and not up to todays standards, so that would also call for a lesser number of stars. However I have bought this for the sound and even if it is not for everybody, it fits right into my projects, and the sound is what it is all about, right?

Just thought I should give the reviews found on this forum a little balance as many give this synth 5 stars.

To me a 3 star is a very good synth, so Surge is very good, period. However, for better synths that cost zero I think I rather choose Synth1 and then perhaps some of the synths that comes in a stripped/limited version with Computer Music, the mag, like Dune CM. Not exactly free then, but at least close.

Compared to things like Diva, Omnisphere and Serum, Surge does not have a chance when it comes to ocilator sound and programability.

Somewhere in between, pricewise, there is Fathom. To me the "best synth" ever, all things considered. It is not that sophisticated as the three mentioned and it stills struggles a little with CPU load (version 2.3) but at that price!!.

Surge will never be my main synth, but it has a quality that makes me not to delete it from my plugg list. Some of the factory presets are quite good, and there is a bunch of good presets to be downloaded from KVR. Programming on your own is quite easy and the manual is fairly good. However you need good eyes or fresh spectacles as the interrface is tiny and for some people it can be cumbersome.

One of the best things with Surge is that it is open source so a load of peple can contribute to future development. Open source and a lot of people can however also be a challenge as there might be different opinions on directions for development. Those who lives will see.

Do not know how many soft synths I have. I lost count. Numerous and soon forgotten ones. Some stand out from the crowd. I still use the old Powercore Virus, the relatively new Serum and Omnisphere is my all time favorite. Then Fathom came along. The mono version was free, so even if the closet was already full I thought I should give it a try. Free is free right? What first struck me was the unfamiliar interface. Why did they design it like that? I fumbled around with it for some hours and it grew on me. By the end of the day I was in love. I have never really gone into the programming part of a synth. It seemed so cumbersome. I relied on others to make some presets. But now....one after another. It was more like playing an old video game. Moving all the parts around, connecting them to hear dramatic or subtle differences. Fun! Here you are the hero of the game, producing incredible sound with all the impressive features, FX, knobs and curves.

Well, a GUI is important but it does not make a synth. The SOUND makes a synth. And Fathom does not let you down here either. It is extremely seldom a free product sounds like this. It competes with the ocilators of my most expencive top notch synths. So both SOUND and GUI is GREAT, and did I say it was free??? Once again: The Mono version is free!!!! So free that I took 25USD out of my late granmothers wallet and bought the POLY version. 25USD!!!! For a top notch synth - incredible. I have played it forward and got more thanks than chistmas cards! (And I get a lot of christmas cards).

If you are still wondering if this is for you, try out the free (I said it agian) version. I promise - you won't be going to bed the first three nights.