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Product Reviews by KVR Members

All reviews by SmoothMountain

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Discovery Pro

Reviewed By SmoothMountain [all]
February 26th, 2020
Version reviewed: 6.9 on Linux

Great synth.

From the dates of other reviews, this bad boy has been around for a while... I use it a lot, for basses, comping/chords, wild synth tones, it's really versatile.

Glad I bought it.

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aardvarkkPhaser

Reviewed By SmoothMountain [all]
February 10th, 2020
Version reviewed: 1.05 on Linux

I really like this plugin! I've been looking for a phaser/flanger that can be manually controlled for a long time, and here it is.

I set it to "manual", set the LFO depth to 0, and control the "Manual" knob through any number of different automation parameters. It's great for adding some zing to a scratch sample, especially when I control it from the amplitude of the sample (kind of like an envelope follower, but with flange instead of a filter).

I'm running Reaper 6.03 native Linux (Ubuntu 18.04). Great stuff, thanks for supporting Linux.

One caveat; I have to use version 1.05. Version 1.06 won't run. Reaper gives the following error:

swell: dlopen() failed: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcurl.so.4: version 'CURL_OPENSSL_3' not found (required by /home/me/.vst/aardvarkkPhaser.so)swell: dlopen() failed: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcurl.so.4: version 'CURL_OPENSSL_3' not found (required by /home/songsmith/.vst/aardvarkkPhaser.so).

This is basically a libcurl V3/V4 issue. Ubuntu 18.04 uses libcurl V4. Odd that the newer plugin version (1.06) requires libcurl V3, while the older version (1.05) works with libcurl V4.

No worries on my part, I had already downloaded and tested the 1.05 version and had been loving it, so I bought it. When the 1.06 version wouldn't work, I just put the old 1.05 version back, opened it in Reaper, put my registration key in it, and am happy to support the developers of this fine plugin.

I gave it 5 stars even though I can't run the latest version (1.06) on Ubuntu 18.04 (the latest LTS release), because I'm having so much fun using 1.05.

A tip for Linux users: When testing plugins, start your DAW from the command line. That way, if it causes a crash, the command line will (usually but not always) give some useful feedback as to what the nature of the crash was. That's how I got the error message above.

My thoughts to devs about Linux support: It seems that devs are using Ubuntu 16.04 as the standard to build against. It is a Long Term Support (LTS) release.

looking at the Ubuntu release info, Ubuntu 16.04 was released in April 2016 (almost 4 years ago) and will reach the end of standard support in April 2021. 18.04 was released in April 2018 and will reach the end of standard support in April 2023.

It appears that Ubuntu releases a new LTS every 2 years. If you are using Ubuntu as the Linux "standard" (I chose Ubuntu because it's a popular and well-supported distribution), then move to the latest LTS release 1 year after it is released. That is nowhere near the bleeding edge of new releases, but not too far behind the Linux development curve, either.

Moving to the latest LTS version 1 year after it is released is not forcing us users or you devs to use a bleeding edge OS.

Just my 2 cents... and thanks again for supporting Linux.

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Couture

Reviewed By SmoothMountain [all]
February 10th, 2020
Version reviewed: 1.4 on Linux

Good plugin. I run Reaper 6.03 native Linux, and I have Couture embedded in a couple of drumset track templates. I've been exploring compression and saturation on drum tracks recently, and the ability to add saturation and shape transients in a single plugin is great, especially on cymbals.

I have a couple of drumset templates where I send the cymbals to a separate submix, and send that submix through Couture. The transient and saturation controls give me lots of flexibility while mixing.

I started with the free version, but wanted the saturation, so I bought it. I'm glad I did. I only use the Sin, Bass and Tube saturation settings, (the others are a bit too intense for me) but as I said, they work great on cymbals.

I specifically got it for drum tracks, and it does the job well...

Good stuff.

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