n9n9n9
639
I feel like if the world were a better world Landforms is the way that Kontakt would look and work out of the box.
8 Likes
I’ve also been having a play with landforms tonight.
It’s sensational.
The perspective mixer is just a genius way of working with different mic/source signals.
And the ability to individually tune these signals is such a simple but musically effective idea 
4 Likes
n9n9n9
641
I’ve been playing with slight detunes on each perspective, and even different articulations per perspective (or not so slight detunes) and a slow 2d LFO rolling around between them. It is like a riot of subtlety. Instrument as art, for sure.
2 Likes
Don’t know if its been mentioned but Eventides Blackhole reverb is amazing…I also agree that all the Soundtoys stuff is indispensable.
6 Likes
carl
643
I do like their H9 series a lot. I also have two H9 pedals and it’s nice to use their effects in hardware form as well.
2 Likes
I picked up Blackhole and UltraTap on sale this spring and have zero regrets. Excellent plugins.
1 Like
@tentakill I’ve gotten so many great sounds out of Blackhole…particularly on vocals. Automating parameters for movement throughout is also a lot of fun…haven’t tried UltraTap but will look into that now.
1 Like
tomm
647
Recently I felt in love with NI Raum which I got for free. Valhalla DSP also started giving away their Supermassive for free. With those two plus Reason RV7000 and Metaverb in Maschine, I feel completed with reverb effects.
5 Likes
Cherry Audio seem to be offering a collection for free discounted right now which includes their Juno and ARP 2600 emulations: Cherry Audio Synth Stack | Cherry Audio Store
Edit: Apologies. Not free. I was logged into my account when I first posted. Logging out shows it’s a discount. Sorry!
That’s peculiar: it shows as $107.36 for me (discounted from $199).
Ah. I was logged in to my account on their site. Logging out shows that it’s discounted not free. Apologies.
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Ah, that makes sense. I won’t take CA’s pricing personally then 
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Can you share some thoughts on the cherry audio products?
I’ve been in vcv rack land a long time and have kind of ignored the alternatives.
OK, I’ll try. (Apologies if this sounds like some kind of sales pitch. Not my intention.) I’ve got Voltage Modular and like it. The sound quality is great and there are some lovely modules in it. The preset management is really good, especially as you can save “variations” of a patch as part of a preset, something which I believe you (currently) have to save out as separate files in Rack. You can set up “cabinets” (sort of like templates) if you want to have a bunch of “systems”, like here’s my humungous mono synth, here’s my wall of sound mangling, and so on. The user interface and patching workflow is obviously different from Rack, but easy to learn (I’m very hesitant to say better or worse as that’s all personal preference). It’s never crashed for me (I’m on an old-ish Mac running Mojave), but I’m just an amateur audio dabbler not a professional sound person. The documentation is really good, which is always a win for me. Can use it as a plugin as well, which I don’t think Rack will have until version 2 comes out. This means I can do really fun things like have it loaded as a VST in Bitwig Studio and use Bitwig’s modulators to affect stuff in Voltage Modular. Really fun! (Edit: If you have the Rack Host module you can do a similar thing in Rack.) The SDK for making your own modules looks good, though I’ve not had time to play with it yet (I have made two very simple modules for Rack). Suppose the main differences from Rack at the moment are the UI differences (but that’s like discussing the differences between the UIs for text editors, horses for courses), one is (mostly) free and one is (mostly) paid, and the core parts of Rack are open source. But as a sound making “thing”, Voltage Modular is the same as anything. Put time and love into it and fun stuff occurs. 
Also got their Juno emulation which I really like the sound of. Absolutely no idea if it sounds like the Roland originals, but that doesn’t matter to me. I’ll shut up now.
1 Like
I use and enjoy both, and I’ve produced modules for both. I tend to gravitate towards VCV because of the massive collection of free modules (not to mention excellent commercial stuff). Since you use VCV, I’ll just only talk about VM:
Pros:
- Spectacular development kit. Drag-and-drop interface building. Very easy-to-use code editor that greys out all the boilerplate code and just lets you jump to the critical sections. It takes me less than 20 minutes to port something from VCV to VM.
- Cabinet system. You can save entire rows as template cabinets, making it a lot easier to reuse mini-systems or module combos. For instance, I have a few clocking/sequencing cabinets saved. VCV has something similar, but you have to use Stoermelder’s Strip.
- Presets and Variations. Once you save a patch, you can save multiple knob variations (but not cable variations). You can actually sequence these variations as well.
- Native plugin versions! VCV will have Rack for DAWs eventually when v2 is out, but VM has had a plugin from the start.
- Solid optimization. Not too heavy on the CPU or GPU.
- If it matters to you, there are a lot of vintage emulations. Most of the instruments that Cherry have produced are also available in module variations. Their MS-20 module pieces are a lot of fun.
- In general, I prefer the layout. It has macro knobs and buttons that are always available, MIDI and audio interfaces that are always at the top, a built-in recorder, and other things that you’ll need to set up manually as a template in VCV.
- Comes with a lot of presets. Generally, when you buy modules or bundles, they’ll add additional presets to your library. The preset browser is great and includes Collections and Tagging. I have my preset library stored on Dropbox, so my browser is identical between computers.
Cons:
- Super monetized. Most modules are not free. When I ported HetrickCV over to VM, there was a rule in place the developers could have a maximum of two free modules, which is why I made the decision to charge for it despite it being free + open-source for VCV. They’ve since repealed that decision.
- Not a lot of Eurorack emulations. VCV has all of the Mutable stuff, along with Befaco, Instruo, some Erica, a SynthTech module, etc.
- In general, much less experimental. VCV has some real cutting-edge DSP in it, while the VM modules tend to cut more traditional.
- A lot of the factory modules aren’t that great. This kind of goes with my first point that you’ll want to spend money. They’re pretty barebones.
- The Plugin Host module (the module that loads VSTs) is path dependent, so it complains when I open a patch I made with one OS on a different OS.
- Modules are written in Java. As a developer, this cuts off access to a lot of well-established DSP libraries and means that a lot of stuff has to be written from scratch. This is my own preference, as I know a few developers who love that they get to use Java.
7 Likes
This new Kush plugin looks very, very tasty. Gonna give it a go today.
https://thehouseofkush.com/products/blyss
2 Likes
What examples of cutting edge DSP in VCV would you be talking about? I like the rainmaker-ish emulation (Portland weather) and some other frozen wasteland stuff but have been somewhat out of the loop recently
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The Mutable stuff, Frozen Wasteland + Frequency Domain (especially Frequency Domain! It’s a collab between Frozen Wasteland and ChowDSP), the Instruo models, MindMeld’s Shapemaster and mixing systems, Valley, Magus Instruments, etc. on top of a massive array of unusual sequencing modules. I don’t mean that VM doesn’t have anything cutting edge or that their emulations don’t use excellent modeling, but on the whole the VM ecosystem leans vintage, while the VCV system is more experimental.
6 Likes
Thanks, I’ll have to dive back in on these. Will be a big deal once beads hits VCV imo.
Same! Unsure how the hell I forgot to mention his incredible work as they’re my most used.
1 Like
