The masochist's choice

This thing can technically produce some pretty good crunchy sounds, but your money is much better spent on even just a mid-tier VSTi and a keyboard. In combination with the abysmal presets, the Venom's major issue truly is its user interface. The menus are such a pain in the ass to go through that you'll rather contemplate quitting music than trying to get satisfaction out of this thing.

The knobs have no feel and are free-rotating because everything is digital and the keys feel like a child's toy, yet somehow the damn thing still takes up a metric shitton of space and weighs surprisingly much. I will say that for all of its shortcomings in usability for a normal person, there exists a very, very thorough and powerful editor that must be accessed on a PC via USB. Aside from the price point, that is the Venom's only saving grace, and it isn't much.

I'm only keeping this thing around as a discontinued freakshow curiosity. But never once while creating music do I think "Oh man, you know what this part needs? the Venom. That's what I'll play this part with."

I dunno, pick it up in a bargain dumpster if you have more free space than desire to create. Otherwise get a regular MIDI keyboard and literally any recent VST synth and you'll be much happier.

Diamond in the rough

Ok, so hold on don't just say "Its $150 used". This synth is actually great! The sounds are great for an EDM musician. The interface is a but under thought. By that I mean who the hell uses a knob for sound selection.. Really WHO? Ohhh M-Audio that's who. And the screen printing on the synth is in some ridiculous shade of gray/silver/f^@king invisible ink that can only be seen using lemon juice and a set of cracker-jack decoder glasses. But lets focus on the sounds. Great sounds!

A lot of missed oppurtunities.

The best way I can describe this thing is to say that it does a lot of good in it's sounds, but lacks execution on just about anything else. The controls are odd and clunky, they presets are strange, and the lack of any real sequencing or arpeggiation kind of killed it. What's worse is it seemed like they had intentions of really supporting this thing, and then just didn't with no real explanation.

On the plus side, it has a pretty neat piece of software that lets you share your presets with others... if you can find anyone else messing with the thing.

This synthesizer is a powerhouse

I recorded a synthesizer instrumental album only using this synthesizer and it did everything I needed it to do and better than Incoukd have asked for.

A great Synth to get crazy with modulation

Venom, the M-Audio Virtual Analog Synthesizer, gives a huge Modulation matrix for manipulating your sound anyway you want.

In spite of the obvious and clear digital quality, it has a lot of modules (OSC, VOICE, FILT, ENV, LFO, FX, etc.) that gives you the opportunity to come up with really good sounds.

Great sound, Not enough voices!

This synthesizer is really good for basses and monophonic weirdness, and some level of pads. Great as an audio interface as well... however it only has 12 voices and cannot produce high quality supersaw-like sounds.

For such a small price why not add one for the heck of it

I really like the analog modelling in this keyboard, the sounds are so impressive for such a small price.

Not in use

Well i'm not using it anymore, it have some great sounds and i really loved it, but i've gone more into smaller but bigger gear and software setup. maybe some racks in future

Synths

My synthesizer. Use it for playing synths while composing. And for sound design sometimes.

Audio Interface Midi controller and Sound Design...