jimmarchi1's Reviews

I should use this more often.

I think Prism is oen of my favorite reactor instruments. I tried the free version for player and it caused me to upgrade. Nothing sounds like it. It makes these organ pluck and hammer sounds, strange digeridoo drones and such and it all sounds like a real acoustic instrument from another planet! Like moon men playing their moon xylophones or something. Its such a cool instrument. Just nothing else like it. I could try to talk about the features and how it works but I don't even get it entirely. its one of those few pieces of gear I just fiddle with at random until magic happens.... like programming a DX7 from scratch. A lot of unpredictability because of the bizzare architecture. There's probably a manual for it but whatever.

its getting old and it wasn't particularly good when it came out

you can use this for background analog style twittering when you don't have a real synthesizer and you wanna sound generic.... I wouldn't feature it on bass though! Its meant to be like a bass station 1 but I had a real bass station 1 back in the day and this sounds so much thinner though the top end is right and for an older VSTi its got a solid enough filter that barely aliases. There was a time when I used this and v station more but I have more synths now and even most modern free virtual synths leave this little guy in the dust. They give it away because you would be a fool to buy it... low CPU hit though :-)

pretty nice

This is one of many decent pultech simulations. I tend to choose it in shootouts over the G-sonique even though it looks less accurate. it sounds nice, good curves and is a cleaner sound to my ear.... this often holds its own against the waves Puig-tech which is also really nice but different.

hard not to like it sometimes

This is one of many decent pultech simulations. It works like a pultechand sounds close enough for my purposes. I am not a big fan of using the pultech as intended as a program equalizer, I tend to use it when I need broad correction in a few bands. For instance this gets a lot of play on kicks that have been comrepssed in parallel with a 160. its my bottom recovery and midrange taming device. I use a couple other pultech plugins in that capacity too but I will generally shoot them all out as they all have varying degrees of 'tubiness' and the curves respond a hair different on each of them. One will generally be head and shoulders above the others in context.

put the smack down

you can get lost in how cool smack's dynamics processing sounds, however its a pretty extreme effect and easy to overuse and for that reason I recommend it only to old-heads with mad compression skills. I actually leave this one alone a lot of the time because its just so potentially destructive on a bus. I almost always audition it on a mix bus or on a parallel bus though. I mean, you cans et it up to be mellow but it gets more generic if you do sow hat's the point? Oh yeah, it has pretty tweakable saturation, its nice to be able to vary the harmonic content but again, tis pretty extreme.... like if you are dicking with smack on a mix one night when you listen the next morning you are going to want to take it off or dial it back substantially.... its easy to overdo this one.

go download this

even if this wasn't one of the only freeware VST pitch-shift/harmony plugins it would likely still be the best.... medium CPU hit, intuitive GUI, fully featured and pretty ncie soundquality even when shifting chords and stuff.... I sue this all the time in weird and creative ways. Hats off to Aegean!

a once great suite

when these came out they were some of my favorite freeware dynamics plugins but man shit has come a long way.... also, the gate, floorfish, is a bit dodgey at some decay settings on some material although the 'listen' feature on the detection circuit is really well implemented. Anyway, worth having around as the compressor sounds pretty good, very much in the waves R comp camp but a lower CPU hit in native. Its a shame they aren't 64 bitand they're just VST2, but whatever. Sicne theya re free I don't see why anyone wouldn't download them and check them out.I still sue spitfish, the de-esser sometimes, although the wave BVV ahs really got me into all-in-one vocal processing.

Oh, dominion is still a cool little gadget. Like SPL transient designer but not. I sue it a lot to rechape transients and decay times before compression.... particularly useful on synths with loose envelopes like a mini moog where you might want a little pop in the beginning of the attack but you still want a long decay. Good luck getting that with anything but a transient shaper. This one gets the job done for free with a tiny CPU hit and it even has some passable saturation built in.

this one's a winner

Presswerk is a great dynamics solution for your DAW. It just sounds nice and musical and it can do basically anything. but like most U-He plugins its a monster CPU hit so beware. This is right in there with the new Arouser plugin for great dynamics software. This guy is not for the unitiated, you can really fuck your sounds up with this if you don't know how compression works. its also quite expensive, I got it at a cheap introductory rate but I think I would pony up for it. I think you can try a demo version so you should check it out. If you're new to compression try sticking with the simplified modes that do LA2A, 1176 and Fairchild style compression respectively. They sound different than say the Waves emulations but are nice.

I think where Presswerk stands out for me is in M/S mode.... I tend to go for this guy when I wanna fuck with the stereo image but not with an m/s EQ or a generic width plugins like waves S1 or A1 stereo control or whatever. You can do some really interesting stuff with this carrying the dynamics between the middle and sides of a group or even your stereo mix bus. This also ahs a superb sidechain, even just using the fitlers its nice and the listen feature really puts it over.

This is an EXCELLENT analog-ish compressor plugin. If you can only have 2 compressors its this and Arouser.

YES!

I got his guy during the introductory discount phase after reading a glowing review in tapeop. If you want details then read the tapeop review for yourself, its pretty spot on. I like that its not a 1:1 distressor with additional features but a great virtual compressor with its own sound that still manages to be 100% Dave Derr. As a native plugin its a huge CPU hit and for those of you whoa re anti iLok, well? you need t break down and go iLok just so you can get this plugin. I will toelrate the CPU drag and iLok. Whatever! This is arguably the best compressor plugin ever and DEFINTIELY the best one that isn't simulating a famous piece of hardware.... because, again, its not a distressor though with a lot of effort people say they can get the to sound the same on the same source the controls respond differently and the digital detection circuit has ears all its own thata re fan fucking tastic.

TAL always makes solid stuff

I liked Dub II better, but this has its charm and I use it sometimes.... I get on these kicks where I am avoiding echo boy and that's when I reach in for one of the 3 TAL dub delays. A great stereo delay, for real.... fun to automate ;-)

everyone was raving about this so....

I followed the crowd and bought it and unlike a lot of the hot plugins that everyone uses Ia ctually really love this reverb and use it a lot.

awesome

this simulates input transformer style saturation and it does a good job. For once all the resets sound amazing. If you just want to get some phoney transformer lows and grime on a virtual instrument but you don't need all the features of like a waves hardware emulation just use this guy! Super low CPU hit and a great sound that's very analog. If I don't need EQ or compression this is my jam for thickening up something like Sytrus.

everyone needs this

this is the classic plugin EQ, it does it all.... weall know how great it can be. As a native plugin its rpetty intense CPU hit , co its not something to bust out when you wanna be subtle. So often something basic that came with the DAW will suffice, but when it must be standout delay and you don't want to through another 360 degrees of conversion to use a rack unit or guitar pedal? Right here, echo boy is what you need. I don't think this plugin is ever going to be replaced.

what a freebie

first off, all of this guy's plugins are pretty decent sounding, all of them! But the boot EQ really surprised me. I've ahd it for ages but I didn't try it until alst week and it blew my mind how music it sounded in tube mode with some gain boost and a few frequencies exaggerated tog et some saturation on the EQ....very dynamic and musical in a way free plugins trying to sound analog usually just aren't. It works well as a channel type EQ too, but it fucking shines as an effect. This isn't a super powerful EQ and the saturation and effectiness is subtle, but its worth trying on any bland source that needs some gentle EQing and some more color. Relatively low CPU hit too!

my msot sued freeware VST

Even against pay sub-bass generators I feel like thump is one of the best. The volume and pitch envelopes are so useful and the inclusion of 2 independent bands? genious! its just a great plugin for managing your ultra low end in musical way. If you have this and the waves maxxbass plugin the only thing keeping you from having perfect bottom end in every genre is your ears, man.

not bad

for a free plugin this does a pretty passable marshall in a pinch.... its worth downloading all their plugins, they're nice! Try getting the free distorque fuzzface (which sounds rpetty good) and running her into plexi mode or do the JCM800 mode on this thing at low gain with some TAL chorus out front for a cheesy 80s hard rock ballad sound. Worth the download to be sure. No better or worse than a lot of pay plugins.... not as nice as the UAD amps, but still, it holds its own against guitar rig to my ear and I have owned MANY old marshalls.

not a fan

while the high and low enhancement on some of the presets sounds really good to me the way it slams my dry signal gets on my nerves. I always wind up taking this out of the mix at some point where I disable it and prefer the dry track because it has more dynamics and feeling. There are better enhancers out there. I wish it worked right as a send effect I might try it in parallel, but I always hear subtle phase issues when I try that. I believe its algorithms are in part pulled from maximus which I find to be too heavy handed most of the time. Its one of those oversimplified newb gadgets. I'm sure its useful to SOMEONE.

a classic in cleanup

I've been using soundsoap since it came out.... I remember the original version wasn't real time so it was soemthign I ahd to use in soundforge LOL and I found myself resorting to the inferior Steinberg denoiser a lot so I could tell if any artifacts were audible in my mix without having to bounce a million versions with slightly different settings! But the new versions are great although I've been preferring the brainworx stuff lately just a bit. I definitely get noise issues sampling and recording single coils or vintage synths that hiss. So a couple good real time denoisers are a must.

a great SSL style gate

when I need a software gate that's a little laggy and analog this is it... in hardware I am a Dawmer man, but the G series channel gates are almost as good and this is in the SSL ballpark.... MSG is really great at giving you SSL like tools with a low CPU hit. They aren't perfect like fancier plugins from waves and such but for a lot of purposes they are more than fine. There's also increased functionality compared to the hardware on most of these MSG plugs. The really cool thing ehre is that I wish you luck finding a standalone native SSL gate from Waves or one of the other big names. Serious tools for the serious mixer here. Worth getting.

a geat utility plugin

this does exactly what its supposed to do, its a very music and transparent HPF for when you don't want to waste CPU on a dedicated Eq only to roll off some lows. I use this anywhere I would use the HPF on an SLL or 1073 and its replaced the mcdsp and fruity free fitler in that role for me where now I use those plugins when I want some overt resonance bump and extreme filtering. For just making space in the low end for bass and kick by eliminating sub frequencies from midrange and treble sources? Why look anywhere else?