valyri

I love this thing, immediately!! I was trying to buy one for months for a decent price, and by the time one finally showed up, I was hesitant since I saw people preferred the MKII. BUT that hasn't mattered since I've been able to do stuff thats just as complex, and since it's a UW it still has the extra big Sampling engine. It's got a smooth workflow that I figured out super easily after only half-watching a decade old video by Elektron and reading a couple lines of the manual, which is always a plus because I prefer to Learn gear by Using it. It's extremely good at doing weird sounds; don't be fooled by its marketing as a "Drum Machine", as it's more than just that. It's a complex synthesizer. Technically, several, since it has multiple different synthesis engines, and can independently have 16 different instances of those, each with their own complex modulation sequences using "Parameter Locks", making it a thrill to use for stuff like IDM or Industrial. I'd absolutely consider it the most versatile drum machine for sound designers, and highly recommend any of the models to anyone looking for such a device.

First off, this library has crashed my entire computer leading to have to force-shutdown several times, even when I used the "Low-CPU version". Even after a RAM upgrade, it still crashes if I use more than one instance of it at a time. It can also, at times, be a bit of a pain to compose and play with due to more than half of the synth samples being chords/obscure dyads, though perhaps that's just done to further emulate the BoC sound, which is understandable. Retcon has some flaws, though is overall quite pretty if composed with in the "right" manner.

This is, considering it's simplicity, a pretty complex plugin. It can act as a barberpole phaser, flanger, and, of course, a delay. It's fun to program and automate, and has the ability to transform a drum track into what sounds like a complicated percussive soundscape like something Autechre would use, or replicate the frequency shifts of a track by t e l e p a t h ????????. Definitely would (and have done so) recommend to anyone who produces in a DAW.