It seems like there’s a million soft synths on the market. Most are pretty good, a few are excellent. Albino? It’s one in a million! Continue reading »
May 24
In 1981, Roland released the Jupiter 8 synthesizer. A true flagship, it offered, amongst other things, a massive (for the time) 8 voices, keyboard split and layering, a powerful arpeggiator, a unison mode…and lots of sexy multi coloured buttons. Most importantly though, it was more reliable and flexible than many of its contemporaries. Continue reading »
Apr 13
Absynth is one of the best sound design tools out there. Like its brethren, ‘Battery’ (reviewed below) and ‘FM8′ (review coming soon), it has recently had a makeover.
If you’re not already familiar with this soft synth, then check out my Absynth 3 review. If, on the other hand, you already know the score, read on. Continue reading »
Oct 08
Rapture is the third in Cakewalk’s trilogy of soft synths (as opposed to their soft synth, trilogy) and builds on its forerunners Zeta and Dimension Pro, by combining the superior sounds of the former, with the superior programmability of the latter. Intended primarily for electronic musicians, it ships with over 500 presets aimed squarely at the dance floor…the ambient…and everything in between.
Unfortunately the copy I was sent was missing its manual. Fortunately though it has a well designed, easy to use interface that’s very similar to the big Z and DP, so I felt immediately at home. Continue reading »
Aug 25
A few years ago, French company, Arturia, set about emulating the classic Moog modular synthesizer in software. Their resultant ‘Moog Modular V’ sounded so authentic that it earned the endorsement of no less a luminary than the late great Dr. Bob Moog himself.
Since then, they have released several more highly acclaimed soft emulations of classic synths including Yamaha’s CS-80, Moog’s Minimoog, ARP’s 2600 and Sequential Circuits’ Prophet 5 & Prophet VS…my review copies of which seem to have got lost somewhere over the English Channel…but never mind, as their latest release ‘Analog Factory’, which arrived recently at Technofile HQ, offers 2000 of the best presets from all of these, in one mega package. Continue reading »
Aug 11
So you’ve spent large on a professional 24/192 soundcard, you have enough plug-ins to bring a room full of computers to a standstill and your tunes are happening, but every time you listen to your mix there seems to be something missing…sound familiar? If so, then what you might be missing is mastering. Continue reading »
Apr 09
Brought to you by the same team who were responsible for the seriously excellent Z3TA, Dimension Pro started life as part of Cakewalk’s music creation tool ‘Project 5’ and quickly proved to be so popular, that they decided to spin it off as a self contained cross platform plug in.
At the time, this was major audio news, because it was the first time in their history that Cakewalk had released a piece of software compatible with anything other than a PC, so it prompted speculation about the possibility of Mac versions of their other products… Continue reading »
Feb 08
If I ask you to imagine a synthesizer, the chances are that either you’ll think of an oblong box housing a plastic keyboard, various knobs, buttons and sliders, or you’ll think of the virtual software equivalent…though if you’re of a certain vintage…and still have the flares…(but no longer have the hair) to prove it, you might just imagine racks of electronic modules connected together with a spaghetti like jumble of patch leads, that looks more like the deranged experiment of some mad physicist, than a musical instrument, as, prior to the advent of the ‘integrated synthesizer’, that’s pretty much what a synthesizer was. Continue reading »
Oct 11
Look at the description and screenshots on the Z3TA box and read the manual inside and you’d be forgiven for thinking that Z3TA is just another soft synth plug in. Nothing could be further from the truth. Not only is Z3TA one of the easiest to program soft synths I’ve tweaked, it delivers some of the best analogue emulations I’ve heard. Continue reading »
Jul 21
Lock some of the world’s top sound designers in a room with a hundred copies of Native Instruments’ ‘Reaktor’ and eventually they’ll come up with an exclusive range of cutting edge synthesizers, drum machines and effects. Ask Photek, BT, Junkie XL, Speedy J, Richard Devine and others to create presets for these new instruments/FX, then release them as a stand alone package that’s based on the Reaktor Engine, but which doesn’t require Reaktor to run and you have Electronic Instruments 2XT. Continue reading »
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