mdaDubDelay - Dub madness from the VST Stone Age!

I do not know when this VST effect saw the light of the world. It must have been long before the time when I even thought about to produce music digitally. And it even gathered dust in my collection for quite a long time without ever being used. This was, because there were enough shiny plugins with a well-designed user interface, which had, in my opinion, everything I needed for my Dub adventures. It was just some time ago, when I realized that this plugin has some good, already "well wired" features, is very resource-saving and simply great fun to work with.

mdaDubDelay brings no own GUI, which is why only the look in FL Studio is shown above. This plugin uses the VST GUI representation of the respective host application. As briefly mentioned above, I have neglected this baby because (Image Line and the fans of the FL GUI may forgive me) the representation of native VSTs in FL Studio simply is not appealing. Yes, even I am sometimes guided by the appearance of something ;). The developers at Smartelectronix probably did not want to waste much time on superficialities.

Under the hood, the mdaDubDelay has a lot to offer. As the name suggests, everything is centered around the delay effect. Anyone expecting an all-in-one Dubmachine is wrong here. Allow me to describe the controls one after the other:

• Delay - Sets the time interval between the repetitions. Since the effect is based on old tape-based effects, herewith also the pitch of repetitions is determined.
• Feedback - In the positive range, as for any delay effect, this determines the length of the effect. The negative range allows the so-called Delay Feedback saturation.
• FbTone - Determines using a simple filter, the sound frequency of the repetitions.
• LFODepth - Sets the oscillation amplitude of the modulation.
• LFORate - Sets the oscillation frequency of the modulation.
• Output - Allows a decrease or increase of the signal at the output

Here I would like to say that I, as someone who likes to automate effects, do not use the LFO functionality for modulation. Somehow the mdaDubdelay unfortunately cannot be synchronized to the VST host. When using the LFO functions, this causes the effect to sound different, each time the song is played. What is perhaps even desirable for live dubbers, drives you rather insane when automating. My solution to this is, to automate the "Delay" knob, which actually produces the same effect. If you want get the same effect of the built-in LFOs without synchronization problems, just automate the "Delay" knob using a corresponding sine function.

Another thing to note (at least for less experienced people in using extreme effects ) is as follows: The use of certain, especially extreme settings can very quickly cause very loud or extremely low- or high-frequency sounds. A limiter and the well known equalizer precautions should not be forgotten here. TIP: If certain automation causes very loud signals, this can be easily solved by automating the "Output" knob... and that before the signal crashes rampantly into the limiter ;)

As always, I close this posting with the stability and resource use: For a dinosaur amongst the VSTs such as this, I do not really need to say anything about the use of resources. What ran smoothly on a Pentium of the first generations and with minimal RAM, runs more smoothly on today's equipment. Also crashes or freezes of the DAW never occurred. I can not say anything about the use of multiple instances, because I never had more than one instance per song project in use.

The mda DubDelay comes together with many small useful VSTs in the free Smartelectronix VST Bundle. It can be downloaded (for Windows and MacOS) HERE.

Have fun !

Looking for the absolutely simplest VST synthesizer ? Here is "Charlatan"!

When I tried to explain the basics of sound synthesis recently to a friend, I had a bit of a problem: Most of my beloved sound generators are quite complex. It is absolutely not a good idea to use a monster synth, overloaded with functionality, to explain this to somebody, who just wants to get into the basics. Not only that, in order to begin, one must first reset each parameter to its initial state. Everything is quite quickly becoming confusing.

So I was now looking for a synthesizer which was preferably reduced to the basic functions. Not so easy as one would think. I found some sloppy clicked together VSTs, made with SynthEdit, quite soon. But these had mostly the disadvantage that the sound was accordingly bad, and/or the user interface was a nightmare. Others swallowed, despite their simplicity, an amazing amount of CPU power and were therefore also useless.

In my distress another friend helped, who told me about a plugin with the unusual name "Charlatan". And here everything was just right: "Charlatan" has a clear and logical user interface, structured in the way of vintage synthesizers. It has everything that is necessary to enter the realms of sound synthesis:

• 2 oscillators
• a simple structured modulation section
• a Noise Generator
• a filter section with the common functions and filter types
• LFO section
• Settings for polyphony/monophony, legato, Retriggering etc.
• typical ADSR section for the sound and modulation envelope

The only missing feature was an oscillator setting for pure sine sounds but that was to get over the end. The "Charlatan" provides an excellent sound and performance characteristics through the efficient use of resources. It also has native 64-bit support what avoids the dreaded "bridgeing" in FL Studio, which pretty much got each and every  FL user at least once into a bit of trouble.

I use the "Charlatan" since then quite often, when it comes to just quickly do a sound experiment. This VST is certainly not for the musicians, who prefer complex monster sounds "out of the box" or are really happy only with extensive preset banks. But hey: That thing is free, high-performant, resource saving and extremely stable and in addition, it also delivers a great sound.

CLICK HERE TO GET TO THE CHARLATAN WEBSITE WITH THE DOWNLOAD LINK ->

Tone2 Firebird - The only VST synthesizer you really need!

The Firebird with my favorite skin

After a long time I 'm writing in this blog again. Yeah, my other projects keep me quite busy ;). And this time I present a real pearl amongst the free synthesizer VSTs. And as already announced in the title of this post, this should not be missing in any VST collection. I personally use this synthesizer recently very often, especially for my project "Willma Poppen" . If you want to hear an example, in which I make excessive use of the Firebird and its many possibilities, please listen, for example, to my latest production "Blauer Montag". But also in my other projects there is for quite some time hardly a piece for which the Firebird was not used. The possibilities of this synth allow to use it for virtually all styles of music.

My absolute favorite features of the Firebird include the huge amount of filters (altogether 38 types), and in particular the "M-Shape Filter". Especially to those of you, who always wanted to create those nice rough and screaming filter experiments, I strongly recommend this filter. But beware: A limiter is recommended for virtually all sound experiments of this kind, but especially here. And the usual basic EQ settings which avoid extremely low and high frequencies should also not be forgotten. But to which serious sound fiddlers do I really have tell this? ;) .

The user interface can be described justifiably as innovative. At the first glance the interface looks pretty simple, but hidden under the hood there are truly inexhaustible possibilities for any form of sound design. Many effects which require quite complex settings in other synthesizers can be very easily and intuitively be achieved with the Firebird, such as a vast variety of modulation effects. The Firebird offers a perfect starting point for every level of skills and you can then, just as you like, dive deeper into the sound fiddeling. For the pure preset user, the 437 factory presets already offer a nice sound arsenal. But I tell you: You will definitely start to experiment, because, as I said, the innovative user interface will seduce you to do so. Since I usually love to put every single note carefully by hand, arpeggiators are usually now something that I look back at with a nostalgic smile ;). But the arpeggiator of the Firebird drives me recently, at least at the beginning of a production, to use it. Together with the already mentioned various modulation options, your absolutely unique groove is just a few clicks away.

One of the absolutely baffling key features of the Firebird is, in my opinion, its absolute resource friendliness. Particularly with several automated parameters, most powerful synthesizer VSTs force even the strongest studio computer mercilessly to its knees. Not so the Firebird. I've actually, even with many automated parameters, never managed to get my studio computer to a huge CPU usage. This also applies to multiple instances of Firebird in a song project. Yes, and the Firebird is also 100% multi instance capable. Whereas other synthesizers often reveal funky side effects when using multiple instances, I never had any with this VST. Also the stability is top notch. I have not experienced a crash of the plugin, a freezing DAW or other well known and feared effects.

If you want a complete overview of the features of this masterpiece, you find a detailed list on the Firebird website, linked below. I have used the Firebird in FL Studio 10 and 11. I can not say anything about the usability in other DAWs .

Click here for the website of the Firebird with a detailed description and the download link.

"Asian DreamZ" - A small but useful Ethno VST!

Of cause, this absolutely free VST can not compete with the big ethno sample libraries, but it is free ;). The sound is more than ok, but the number of samples is rather small. Available are: Pipa (single shot and tremolo), Luan, Guzhen, Erhu and a complete set of asian percussion. You never heared about some or all of the instruments mentioned? Exactly this is the reason why this VST should not be missing in the VST collection of artists who use ethno sounds from time to time. There really is no abundance of free ethno VSTs, and if you are looking for sounds of rare and/or not very well known instrument, you find them, if at all, only in high priced commercial products.

The GUI of "Asian DreamZ" is, as expected quite spartanic. But you don't need more:

• At the left you see a picture of the currently selected instrument. IMPORTANT: Many users do not know first, how to change the current instrument. You do this by clicking on the picture. It then switches to the next instrument.
• In the middle you find the settings for a typical ADSR envelope. You can achieve some pretty interesting effects by using it, because the original instruments of cause have no envelope generator ;).
• Also made for experimental fun is the filter section on the right. You can choose between a highpass and a lowpass filter and there are sliders for setting the cutoff and resonance values.

Quality: The samples are, in my opinion, high quality, but they sound rather flat without using external effects. I personally prefer such dry samples, because they bring less or no own reverb and cause less problems when putting own effects on them. On the other hand I heared about people who were scared away from "Asian DreamZ" because of the rather flat sound it presents to novice users. The builtin filter section is... well... usable. For simple experiments or LoFi oriented projects it is just right.

Conclusion:

• rare and (to most) unknown instruments
• high sample quality
• flexibility because of the dry samples
• absolutely low CPU and RAM load
• easy and well structured GUI
• stable and multi instance capable (FL Studio)

DOWNLOAD ASIANDREAMZ FOR FREE (CLICK HERE)

Phenome Soundfont Player - Everything you need and more!

Yes, this Blog has been abandonned for quite a time, but now it goes on with a real goodie. In the ole times, when the Internet was still steam powered and VST Plugins (with sufficient quality) were either rare or not existant at all, there was a file format for audio samples, which went out of fashion these days: The Soundfonts. You can imagine a soundfont pretty much like a script font, just for audio samples. Sounds of real instruments were sampled on different notes and then packed into a soundfont. The format allows it also to store more than one instrument in a soundfont file, thus you can create sound libraries with soundfonts.

Now the musician of the year 2013, who is spoiled by often quite sophisticated simulation VSTs, asks himself, why one should use that "dinosaur format" still today. I found out, that most of the loving handcrafted soundfonts, which are by the way mostly free these days, sound a lot better than some of the quite expensive VST simulators. And you can find real gems out there, and sometimes instruments of which no other digital representation is available.

So, a while ago, I stumbled again across my huge collection of soundfonts and thought I was up for some nostalgy. In the end that proved to be a good idea, because I urgently needed some "ethno sounds" for some songs I was working at for my project Cimelium. And I found exactly those sounds amongs my soundfonts.

The problem now was, that the VST plugin I needed to use soundfonts in my DAW (FL Studio), a Soundfont Player, was only available as a demo version in my FL Studio. So I couldn't save and load projectfiles using it. I needed a good free soundfontplayer VST. I used the SFZ Soundfontplayer by rgc::audio in the past from time to time, but the problem with SFZ was, that if you put more than one instance of it into a project (at least with FL Studio) it creates a hell of a noise. This tells me, that it is not threadsafe coded  and one instance interferes with the other. Because the songs for the Cimelium project required the use of more than one soundfont, I needed a replacement. I browsed thru some forums and only got one answer: "SFZ, what else?".

By surprise I found a link to the Phenome Soundfontplayer and I was instantly excited and puzzled at the same time. I just wanted a simple soundfont player and not that... complicated... looking... THING! Well, I understood right from the start, what the knobs were doing, but still it was more than I expected. After a short while I understood the basic handling of soundfonts with this VST and it worked really well. By and by I learned also about the little addons, which revealed their secrets by and by to me.

The first thing I really liked was the fact, that it would be a really rare occasion to have to use more than one instance of the plugin in a DAW. Phenome offers the possibility to load up to 8 soundfonts and trigger them via MIDI channels. This in combination with multiinstrument soundfonts should do the job. I still tested the use of multiple instances in FL Studio and came across no problems.

Part of the basic feature set of a usable soundfontplayer is the envelope, which of cause isn't missing in Phenome. Phenome is also not the only soundfontplayer which comes with an effects section featuring Reverb, Delay and Chorus, but Phenome delivers, not just for a free plugin, a great ammount of quality here. Additionally there is a distortion effect and a knob labeled "LOFI", which I identified during tests as some kind of a ringmodulator. Those two knobs are in the filter section, which, in a spartanic style, offers everything a filter section needs.

A nice extra is the, also spartanically/classically designed arpeggiator section, which surprises with a nice and usefull chordfunction. The arpeggiator runs solid and does no gaps and glitches. A nice other feature, especially in combination with the arpeggiator, is the pitch envelope section, which allows a variety of interesting sound experiments.

You see: The Phenome Soundfontplayer is not just a spartanic sampleplayer, but a full featured playground for sophisticated soundfiddlers. Many dusted soundfont oldtimers get a second life and the gems from the collection also sound in a brandnew way. Conclusion: A must have!

DOWNLOAD THE PHENOME SOUNDFONTPLAYER FOR FREE!

Simply moogish - Micromoon by Elektrostudio

Those who know my sound, especially on the album "Electronic Spacerock" but also from the Willma Poppen project, know that the one thing I like especially when it comes to VST Synthesizers is replicas of analog synthesizers by Moog. Quite some time has passed, since the only way to get a moogish sound on a computer were the (my opinion) rather expensive products by Arturia. Today the internet is literally bursting of digital clones of, for example, the Minimoog, Moog Modular  etc. Analogue synthesizer emulations are en vogue these day.

Being overwhelmed by the shere number of analogue modeling VSTs one could easily miss the Micromoon by the polish developers Elektrostudio... what happened to me, to be honest, for quite a time. Today I view the Micromoon as a reliable, ressource friendly and easy to use partner when it comes to the synthesis of of epic analogues style sounds. If I should pick only one of the outstanding features of that Synth, it would be indeed the ease of use. You do not have to fiddle around with dozens of parameters so this synthesizer gives a good sound. Just a few things have to be set and you are on your way. Still there are enough possibilities to satisfy passionated knob fiddlers and sound architects. Another thing I recognized at the Micromoon right from the start, was the nice warm and powerfull sound it delivers. This is no typical small squeaky softsynth where you have to blow up the sound using external effects to use it. This synth delivers pure power all by itself. Another nice feature is the ribbon controller, which is real fun, especially when used with propper MIDI controllers. The only thing one could find not so good at the Micromoon is, that it is monophonic. So it is not really suited for thundering supersaw chord orgies. HINT FOR FL STUDIO USERS: Layer channels fix this, as the Micromoon is absolutely ressource friendly and able to run in multiple instances in a DAW. I use the Micromoon, for example in the latest Willma Poppen releases, for the purpose it was created for: Bass and lead sounds. And here it does a marvellous job. The Micromoon ships with a small but great selection of presets, which serve as a great starting point for own sound engineering.

CONCLUSION: Ressource friendly, absolutely stable, multi instance use is no problem (I tested it with up to 30 instances running simultaneously), easy to understand and use, great warm and powerfull sound. A absolute must have not only for analogue synth enthusiasts.

Micromoon is part of the great Oryg 10 Analog Pack and can be downloaded from the website of Elektro Studio. CLICK HERE!

GreenMachine Amp - Everything a guitarplayer needs!

After I presented the Extremist VST some time ago, some folks asked me on Facebook etc., if I knew about a real great Amp Simulation VST, of cause a free one. And of cause I know some. Today I want to feature the one plugin of that kind, which was the most fun for me to work with. This means, all other free Amp Simulation VSTs had their weak spots. At GreenMachine, on the other hand, I had never the feeling that something was missing or didn't work as I expected. It is a solid piece of software, which has features, for which you have to pay a lot if you use GuitarRig etc.

To describe all features of this plugin in detail would really be too much for a blog posting. But every guitar player who plugged an electric guitar into a quality amplifier should be able to grasp the GreenMachine intuitively. Of cause GreenMachine offers all a standard Amp or Amp Simulation has to offer and a lot more.

Quality: GreenMachine is a very old plugin and a former commercial product which was set free by it's programmers some time ago. Because of that there's no support for GreenMachine. But you will not need any support at all. The extensive PDF manual tells it all. The GUI is not TOO clean but well arranged and should be easy to grasp for even semi experienced musiciens. The plugin did never crash, and is RAM and CPU friendly. Multiple instances in one DAW? Are you crazy? Why should one need to run multiple Amp Simulations simultaneously? Seriously: I never did that ;)

Conclusion: GreenMachine is in my opinion todays best free Amp Simulation for guitar and bass. If you want to play and record guitar with your computer and don't want to pay a cent, GreenMachine is your choice. For guitar- and bassplayers a must have!
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD GREENMACHINE!

Steinberg Virtual Bass - A real Veteran!

Today I want to feature a real veteran of the Bass VST Plugins. It is the Steinberg Virtual Bass. Until today I had the old version, which had, from my point of view, everything the new version has, and looked like that:

While searching a download link for you today, I came across this newer version, which is kindly provided as a 64-Bit version also:

I want to set clear one thing first: If you expect to get a realistic sound of a real Bass equipped with strings from this plugin, you will be disapointed. The whole thing really sounds too synthetic. But this plugin is the one, which comes closest to the sound of a real E-Bass of all, commercial plugins included, Bass VSTs I tested so far. If there's somebody reading this and thinks he knows a VST which does this job better, please tell me about it. I allways love to learn. But keep in mind: We are not talking about expensive sample players with gigabytes of sample libraries, but pure BassSYNTHESIZERS which do the job without using samples. To emulate the sound of a real stringbass is, as the sound of a real accoustic guitar, a hard job to accomplish for a synthesizer. And here the Steinberg Virtual Bass does a quite good job. The settings are kept quite simple. One can change the position and shape of the plectrum. Also one can smoothly change the position of the pickup. Dear bassplayers: Try this with your real hardware bass ;) There is also a control for the damping of the strings. But this damps the strings just to a certain degree. You will not get the PLOPP of a 100% damped string with this. Also there is a control for the release time of a string, but extreme values do not work here either. After all one can achieve quiet good results, especially when using automation of the controls.

Quality: One should expect from Steinberg, the inventors of the VST technology, that they did a great job at this plugin. And that expectation is not disapointed. The Steinberg Virtual Bass is a stable, rock solid and ressource friendly VST with a GUI which even not very smart people, who have a basic understanding about what an E-Bass is, should be able to grasp. Because this plugin is very old, it runs great on very old computers. I didn't test multiple instances in a DAW, because one very seldomly needs more than one bass unit in a single song. ;)

Conclusion: The Steinberg Virtual Bass is, from my personal view, the VST Plugin which best mimics the sound of a real E-Bass. It is ressource friendly and incredibly stable coded. I indeed think, that it should not be missing in any VST collection.

STEINBERG VIRTUAL BASS IS PART OF THE STEINBERG CLASSIC COLLECTION VOL. 1
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD!

Extremist - Rough Heavy Metal Sound for Guitarists!

Today I want to feature a VST effects plugin, which is ideal for all guitarists looking for THE extreme Heavy Metal Sound. It is no full featured Amp simulation, but a distortion effect, which has some special features. The plugin has all stuff, neccessary to get a really powerful Heavy Metal sound from your guitar. First, there is a really nice Noisegate, which makes it possible to not let humming or other disturbing sounds get into the signal. You can also "creatively abuse" the noise gate to get some special unusual effects. Additionally this VST has a stereo 14 band equalizer. There are also a few presets, which convincingly mimic the sound of certain Heavy metal subgenres. The spartanic Reverb section of the plugin, does not really convince me and therefore I personally recommend to turn it off and use another reverb plugin with Extremist. Even if Extremist is intended for the use with guitars, I also recommend to test it with other sound sources, such as drums and synthesizers.

Quality: The VST is running stable and did never crash or cause my DAW to freeze. The only unpleasant thing I experienced with Extremist is, that with certain settings it rarely gives no sound at all. The Extremist is not REALLY ressource friendly, but also no ressource hog and should work without problems, if your computer is not too ancient.

Conclusion: Extremist is for sure not the best plugin for guitarrists, but it delivers what it's name promises: Extreme guitar sounds without compromise. Because it is no fully featured Amp simulation, it is neccessary to use it with a couple of other plugins in the effects chain to get the full guitar sound out of a computer. I don't want to say that this VST is a must have. There's simply too many great guitar plugins available for free out there to do so. Still it does no harm to have Extremist in your VST collection.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD EXTREMIST!

Absolutely no knobs, but great sound - Goldentine by Safwan Matni

Once again I feature a small but great Synthesizer VST by Safwan Matni. And because this plugin has absolutely NO settings, this will most probably become the shortest description of a VST so far. I am talking about Goldentine, a plugin which does not look like it has much to offer if you first look at it. There is a picture of a golden table fork... yeah, and that's it. But there's more than you would expect in this VST. It is the best simulation of an E-Piano I have heared so far. What I like about Goldentine is the unexpected variations of sound it is able to produce. Depending on the velocity  it sounds from silk soft to solid like steel. The lower tones sound smoky and earthy while the higher tones sound bell-like. I used Goldentine myself in some of my productions and each time it sounded great. Listen to my Song "Gettin' Old" to hear Goldentine in action.

Quality: I am not using Goldentine for such a long time like most of the other plugins I featured in this Blog so far but long enough so I can say, that this VST is absolutely stable. It did never cause any problems. It is also very memory saving and doesn't cause a big CPU load. Goldentine should also be able to run on very ancient PCs.

Conclusion: Goldentine surprises with a absolutely authentic sound and a soundvariety, which one would not expect from a VST with absolutely no knobs and controlers to fiddle around. A must have!

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD GOLDENTINE!

My favorite Delay - Kjaerhus Classic Delay

Because of todays of good weather, I want to do a a bit shorter feature today. So I want to feature once again a very simple but wonderful VST effect plugin: The Kjaerhus Classic Delay, by the Kjaerhus company which passed away much too early. I personally use this delay in most of my productions, and you will, if you know my music, surely recognize the sound immediately. With few exceptions, I actualy use no other delay effect. This is because of a bit of lazyness and on the other hand it is because of the quality and the sound of this plugin. The Classic Delay is quite easy to use, because, as with all products of the Kjaerhus Classic series, ease of use is a key feature. You really don't have to fiddle around a lot to achieve superior results. However, this delay comes with some surprising functionalities, which are usually only found in commercial products.

From left to right one finds the following:

1. an input level control, which determines the panorama of the input signal. TIP: This is especially important for the Ping-pong mode described under 7.
2. an often-overlooked little button by which you can convert the input signal into a mono signal. Sometimes this is quite a useful thing.
3. a switch for delay simulation types. The are three choices:  tape, analog and digital delay.
4. two numeric fields, which you can change by clicking them with the left mouse button, holding the left mouse button and moving the mouse up and down. The values set here apply only if the sync button described below is set to ON. In this case, the tempo of the VST is synchronized with the host application. The upper field specifies how many beats a cycle of the delay covers. The second field now indicates how many "echoes" are to occur within the period set in the upper field. I want to be honest and say that these very precise and easy to set up parameters are, in combination with the superb sound of that plugin, the cause for making it my favorite delay VST. Below those fields, there is a small button that determines whether the settings made in those fields are determining the effect and the tempo of the VST is synchronized to the VST host application, or whether the tempo of the effect is asynchronously to the host application. In the latter case, everything is determined by the Time(s) control, described under 5.
5. a Time (s) controller, which only works if the sync button, described under 4. is set to off. Then the tempo of the VST is not synchronized with the host applications tempo and the the settings  of the fields described under 4. are absolutely obsolete. The purpose of the Time (s) controller is to set how long a Delaycycle is. If the controller is set to the lowest level, every 0.05 seconds, an echo is generated, which is too fast to hear it at all. It only leads to an amplification of sound. At the highest setting of the controller every 5 seconds an echo is generated. TIP: If you need accurate echoes, make sure the sync button is on and leave the time(s) control alone ;)
6. a feedback controller that indicates how long the delay will be heared. Sorry, I'm not an expert in electronics. Therefore, I can not tell you much about how it all theoretically runs. One thing is clear: At the lowest setting, the effect stops somewhat immediately. At the highest setting, the sound echoes almost forever and will overlap. NOTE: Sometimes very loud signals are generated by setting this control to the highest value. Danger of clipping!
7. a ping-pong button which sets the pingpong mode on and off.
8. a control to set the sampling quality of the effect. If your computer is not too antique, you should set this to "HI", because the Kjaerhus Classic Delay is really programmed to be not too CPU load intensive.
9. a low cut knob that allows you block out low portions of the sound from the effect.
10. a high cut knob that allows you block out high portions of the sound from the effect.
11. a controller that determines how the relationship between the effect signal and the original signal on the output is. Turning the knob to the left, you get the pure original signal, turning it fully clockwise, you get only the output of the effect.
12. a controller for the volume of the output signal. TIP: The Classic Delay makes the sound a little more quiet. Therefore, if one wants to rehash the original volume of the signal, turn the knob a little higher.

Ok, that became somewhat  extensive ;) So we get straight to the quality: The sound is even superb if you set the "Quality" knob to the lowest setting. As with all products made by Kjaerhus, much attention has been paid to resource-friendlyness. The VST has been working, even with multiple instances simultaneously, already on my Pentium II 233 Mhz with 16 MB of RAM back then in 2004. So you really don't have to worry that your computer might be too old. Crashes, freezing the DAW and other problems? NEVER happened since 2004!

Conclusion: One of the truly essential and most used VST effects in my arsenal. Especially for dub reggae this VST is absolutely wonderful. A must have!

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE Kjaerhus Classic Delay!

Crystal - Creativity is the limit!

Today I want, once again, to feature a VST Sythesizer, which crossed my path just recently. I am talking about Green Oak's Crystal. First: This Synthsizer is nothing for beginners, at least if you don't want to use the quite extensive presetbank only. For all to knobfiddlers, soundmanglers and mad axe murderers of audio synthesis, that masterpiece of a Synth is just right. To list all features of Crystal would really be too much. Some of you allready told me, that I am writing too long features. But here are the most important facts. For the sake of my own lazyness, I simply quote from the Green Oak Website and hope they do not sue my ass over it ;)

Crystal features both subtractive synthesis and frequency modulation (FM) synthesis. It offers abundant modulation control with over 90 parameters which may be modulated, multi-stage envelopes with graphical editors, extensive tempo sync of envelopes/lfo rates/delay times, built-in effects for chorus/flanging/comb filtering/echoes, and a band splitter for effects processing by frequency band. Not only that, Crystal has wave sequencing and granular synthesis. (Source: http://www.greenoak.com/crystal/Crystal/Crystal.html)

Ok, so far for what Green Oak themself say about the Crystal VST Synthesizer. I really want to point at some features I find really interesting and important at that Synth. The builtin comb filter comes in handy for each and every sound massacre. The so called mixer section does not only at the start look complicated and promises much fun. Here it is, where outerdimensional sounds get their final dose of madness.

And now to the... errrm... THING I love most about the Crystal VST: The Breed-Function! Did you ever breed sounds? So theres Mama Sound and Papa Sound and when they make love, then there is Baby Sound... OR MONSTERSOUND! Hmm, how can a MONSTERSOUND happen, if Mama Sound doesn't smoke, drink and eat funny pills during pregnancy? Well, unfortunately, there's that nuclear plant right next to Mama and Papa sounds house... What? Has Sonny finally gone mad? What is he talking about? Yes, dear friends, all I just wrote makes indeed sense. With Crystal, you can breed sounds. And indeed you select a mothersound and fathersound (both existing presets) and from those a new sound is generated. The new sound is not just a mix of the parents, but is deformed more or less by the influence of a mutation parameter. And here we are at the nuclear plant topic, which kicks in, if you increase the value of the "mutation" control. Because not just the mixing of the parentsounds, but also the mutation value influence all of the countless parameters of the VST, there are also unviable and totally crippled results of breeding sounds. Well it's not allways a good idea to build nuclear plants next to a obstetrical clinic ;) But is is indeed possible to create nice (or not so nice) sounds using that Synthesizer and it's Breed Function. You just have to click a few more times, compared to Oatmeal with it's outstanding randomize functionality, to get usefull results. But it is by far easier than with the randomize functionalities of most VST Synthesizers. And unless you do increase the mutation value too musch, the monstrosities will be not too many.

Quality: On my setup/machine/DAW Crystal did freeze the DAW a few times. This means it crashed fataly. It doesn't happen very often, but still it is a good idea to often save your work. The CPU load was a tiny bit high here. No wonder if you imgine what goes on in that Synth. The memory usage is quite moderate. If your PC is not too ancient, Crystal should run well on your machine. I think a Pentium II or better should do the job. The graphical user interface of Crystal is quite complicated and especially newcomers will have a hard time to understand it. Many users will give up when they see the chaotic/cryptic mixer section, and that's a pitty.

Conclusion: The level of creativity (and patience) is really the only limit, if you use the Crystal VST Synthesizer and it's vast possibilities of sound manipulation. With it's Breed Function, this Synthesizer brings a completely new way to create new astounding sounds with just a few mouseclicks and it promises many hours of fun. This Synthesizers should not be missing in the arsenals,especially of soundfiddlers. Because of the many presets and the many free downloadable presetbanks, Crystal is also suitable for presetusers.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD CRYSTAL!

Taurus - A legendary Basssound!

Being a fan of the rockband Rush, I came across the sound of the legendary Basssynthesizer Moog Taurus quite early. My first album by Rush was the album "Moving Pictures" from 1981. And that album was strongly influenced by the sound of the Moog Taurus. That sound fascinated me since I heared it for the first time because of it's powerfull characteristics. When a friend of mine told me a time ago, that there is a VST developer at Smartelectronix, who developed a free VST replica of the Moog Taurus, I was kind of sceptic first. Would that VST be able to really reproduce the sound of the original. The first preset gave a definitive answer, and that answer was YES! If one plays that preset, one hears exactly the same sound which one knows from the intro of "Tom Sawyer", the first track on the album "Moving Pictures". The setting possibilities are exactly the same as on the original Synthsizer. The operating is not unneccessary complicated. Despite the simple user interface, the Taurus is able to produce a big variety of sounds.

Quality: Little RAM usage, small CPU load, no problems with multiple instances. The Taurus didn't crash or cause any other problems ever.

Conclusion: This is a Plugin which should be in every collection of Vintage Synthesizer VST Replicas. The sound is deliberate synthetic and is immitating the original directly. Who is looking for sounds of real String Basses, will not be happy with the Taurus. But if you are looking for the 70s and 80s Synthbass, you will love the Taurus.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD TAURUS!

Kjaerhus Master Limiter - One knob, much fun!

Today I want to feature a VST Effects Plugin after featuring sound generators only in my recent posts. And as the first VST effects plugin, I want to feature a tool for which it would be an understatement to call it essential. It is the Master Limiter of the free Classic Series by the company Kjaerhus. It seems like Kjaerhus is no longer existant, which is a pitty, because all products by Kjaerhus were allways top notch. So let's have a minute of silence for a company which passed away long before it was time.

What does the Master Limiter? It limits, easy as that! ;) This means, it prevents the output signal from getting too loud and thus prevents clipping and distortion. It simply eliminates those ugly red peaks in the levelmeter. The Kjaerhus Master Limiter does a very great job here, because it doesn't cut everything above a certain level away in rude way, but in a quite soft way, so that most of the times you dont even recognize it. With other limiters I experienced most of the time, that it felt like the sound was bashed against a concrete ceiling. This may be intended by some folks some times, but most of the times it is not wanted.

But that's not all: Der Kjaerhus Master Limiter also has a builtin Compressor, which will pump up sounds, which would otherwise drown in the mix, to a good level. One can pump up the whole mix using the Master Limiter, so it gets more punch. The plugin is, as the name says, mainly intended for usage in the master channel of the DAWs mixer, but it also does a good job in single instruments channels. An unleashed monsterbass, for example, can be tamed by the Master Limiters, so it does not peak. And you can controll the overall level of that monsterbass, so other mixer channels get a chance to be heared. If you do a filter-o-rama with loads of cutoff/resonance craziness, it takes care of that the sound doesn't clip at extreme parts and that the ears and speakers of the audience stay intact. That's one side: The avoidance of too loud signals. But it also works in the opposite way: It happens, that this particular synthesizer sound, which has most of the time just the real punch, certainly drowns in the mix. If the dynamics of that synthesizer sound are not too essential, one simply puts a Kjaerhus Master Limiter on the mixer channel of the synthesizer, and voila: A good level all the time.

Great! A panacea for all sound problems, which turns everybody into an audio mastering genius, right? No, that's NOT true! The disadvantage of using an All-In-One compressor/limiter combination is, that the dynamics of the mix are going more or less down the drain. What is great for Techno, Dub, Dubstep and other rather loud music styles, is not that good for classical music, orchestral music and rather celestial music and flushes the dynamics completely down the toilet. It is therefore advisable to think twice, before one puts a Master Limiter with treshold turned up to the max on each and every mixer channel. That makes only sense if you want to blast your audience away. The compressor takes care of the punch and the limiter prevents the levelmeter from sticking in a always red state.

The operating of the Kjaerhus Master Limiter is grandiosely simple. There is JUST ONE KNOB, which defines the limiting treshold, at which limiting should kick in. Then there is a VU Meter which shows quite precisely how much work the limiter has to do eg. how much loudness was cut off. If this VU Meter is allways half or even fully lit, then one has done something awfully and fundamentally wrong with the mix. One should carefully check all mixer channels then, because something is MUCH TOO LOUD!!! From this point of view, the Kjaerhus Master Limiter is not just a tool to improve the final mix, but also teaches one to avoid limiting by clever mixing. Because limiting is in most cases the result of a bad mix.

Quality: Like with the previosly featured plugins, I can say only one thing for the stability and ressource hungryness: Everything fine here! No problems of any kind. I never experienced problems when using large numbers of instances of that plugin.

Conclusion: Absolutely indispensable! Most of the times it is enough to use the default preset of the Kjaerhus Master Limiter. That one knob has to be tweaked just occasionally. So to work with the Master Limiter, one has just to put it into the mixer channel, and that's it. The software is rocksolid and ressource friendly. If the Kjaerhus Master Limiter did not exist, it had to be invented.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE KJAERHUS MASTER LIMITER!

The most underrated VST Synth - Oatmeal

This is a VST Synth I discovered just recently, but some people say that ancient Sumerian musicians allready used it. Jokes aside: It is said to be very old. How could that Synth not get my attention earlier? Well, I think the reason is in the title of this posting. The Oatmeal VST Synthesizer seems to be the most underrated VST Synthesizer of the world. So not many people are talking about it and thus it didn't cross my path earlier.
 

Oatmeal Default Large Skin

Is there a reason I know why that Synth is underrated (I will talk about the quality later)? Well I think so. The Oatmeal VST Synthesizer comes with a default skin / GUI which is ugly, to put it in a very kind way. The colors are awfull and the GUI tells, that this Synth must have been designed in ancient times, because it seems to be designed for Computerscreens with a very low resolution, thus the knobs and other controls are very tiny on todays high resolution screens. But there is a solution for that problem, which may be missed by many first time users. There is tiny (especially while using the default skin ;)) button which says "Skin". If one clicks on it one is able to select a different skin. There is a skin named "large", which comes with Oatmeal, which fixes the resolution problem even on my 1680 x 1050 screen. But the colors stay ugly as they are. But there is a fix for that too. There are many custom made Oatmeal skins available on the Web, which make Oatmeal pretty.

Ahh, this looks better! Oatmeal with the Blueberry Skin

In my opinion the most clean Skin for Oatmeal: SteelCut

So that's why I think that Synthesizer is underrated. Is there anything else why Oatmeal could be underrated. Yes it is. A HUGE load of knobs and widgets, which are often, especially for the average VST user, not self-descriptive. Ok, Oatmeal comes with a HUGE load of presets and there is also quite a lot of preset banks made by users available on the web, but who wants to use presets all the time? Many folks want at least to tweak the sounds a bit. And such a vast number of knobs and widgets scare most of the people away. Not me, but most people like their VSTs to be simple and easy to understand.
So, that was a lot of negativity. But it is just to describe, why Oatmeal maybe doesn't get the attention it deserves. I would not say in the title that it is underrated, if I would not think that this is a great, if not to say, marvellous, VST Synthesizer, which has features that make it stand out from the crowd. The presets alone, which come with Oatmeal, tell a story, that this is a superb Synthesizer with loads of capabilities. Once one has understood just a bit about the user interface, a completely new world of Digital Sound Synthesis opens up. I spent whole evenings just turning knobs and tweaking gadgets. I am a sound designer from the heart and I love complex Synthesizers which give the possiblity to explore new worlds of sound. Oatmeal is exactly the tool for that job. And while we are at that topic, let's get to the feature I love most at the Oatmeal VST Synthesizer: The randomize function. Ok, many VST Plugins have a function to randomize certain or all parameters. The FL Studio DAW has it built in for all Plugins. But, let's be honest: Most of the time the results are unusable. You have to click the randomize function a lot of times to get usefull results... if at all. Most of the time you get ugly results or even no sound at all. Oatmeal is different here. I don't know how the developer of Oatmeal did that magic, but many times you get a usefull sound by clicking the randomize button just one time. I found out that most of the time 3 or 4 clicks on the randomize button give a usefull result. I created whole preset banks just by using the randomize function. Sometimes the sounds need a bit of tweaking, but if you want to create really new and interesting, sometimes baffling sounds, Oatmeal and it's fantastic randomizer are the way to go. Ahh, while we are at the randomizer: Oatmeal has a very funny autonaming feature for the sounds created by the randomizer. Just watch the status field in the lower left corner and you'll get more than just one good laugh.
Quality: The sound and capabilities are overwhelming. Since Oatmeal seems to be ancient, it runs on ancient computers also and eats up very little RAM and CPU. Multiple instances in a DAW are absolutely no problem. I have a track in production where 24 Oatmeal instances are active at the same time. I think that tells a story. The Plugin is VERY stable. It didn't crash or freeze and caused no other difficulties. The preset bank management is straightforward and works great. I think this is why so many preset banks created by users are out there.
Conclusion: Oatmeal may seem ugly and irritating if an average user sees it for the first time, but the uglyness is quickly fixed by using one of the many custom skins. And the complexity is only a problem at the start. You will get used to it. If you are a preset user, there is nearly no reason why you should learn about all the knobs and gadgets. There are LOADS of user created preset banks for Oatmeal all over the web. You can spend ages to explore them. If you are a knob-fiddler or sound designer from the heart like me, you will simply love that Synthesizer. The Oatmeal is a great new weapon in my sound arsenal and I cannot believe that there was a time I didn't have it. A must have! 

DOWNLOAD OATMEAL, CLICK HERE!

OATMEAL ALL IN ONE BUNDLE (OATMEAL, ALL SKINS AND PRESET BANKS), CLICK HERE!

Triangle II - A Bass Monster and more!

I didn't have to think alot about which VST I want to present to you in the first Post of this Blog, because there is really only one music software companion, which was so VERY usefull from the start for my Digital Music Production. It is the Triangle II which was released by RGC Audio and is now on the Cakewalk site for any reason. I like the Triangle II especially for FAT Bass and used it a lot for my (Dub) Reggae productions. But it is also usefull for any other kind of Music, such as Techno and Electronica. The first presets of the VST really tell that this Synth is ideal for creating Bass. The Bass Controls at the left bottom of the interface are your way to create a real Monster Bass, from mighty Subbass to crunchy Techno Style. Just another bass VST? No, there is a lot more: Once you hear the Presets after the 26th one, you will enter the domain of total synth madness and will hear what this VST is able to do. For legal reasons, I refrain from copying the technical specs of the VST to this Blog, but you can easily read them on the Cakewalk product description site. Stability and Quality: The Triangle II is one of the few VSTs that never crashed my DAW and never caused any problems. The Interface is clean but for beginners a bit hard to get into. There's just too many knobs to learn about what they do. The Triangle II runs smoothly even on ancient Computers. I think I remember, that it even did it's job quite well on my old Pentium II 233 Mhz. Multiple instances running at the same time are also causing no problems. Conclusion: The Triangle II is an indispensable Tool in my sound arsenal and should be part of any serious VST collection. CLICK HERE TO GET THE TRIANGLE II VST !!!