David’s Music Blog

.. to the next.Still searching for nice, valuable and handy VSTi’s. After trying Cakewalk Rapture, which could have been something for half the price and twice the features, I installed the latest demo (v1.4.0) of Z3ta+ with two heavy eyelids after a long day at the office. I must say I’m a bit curious of that the new 1.5.3 version has to offer - or is it updated just because ..?

Okay, a lot of 6’s everywhere. 6 oscillators, 6 LFO’s, 6 general purpose Env’s and 16 (sixteen) modulation matrix rows. It’s said to be a wavetable synthesis and it is. What cought my sleepy eyes, and ears, the most was the Shaper section. A section where you could alter the waveform (of which there are 60 in this soft synth) in many different ways. None can be modulated though and Cakewalk did receive an e-mail regarding that today.

I’m keen on letting companies know what I do think, and where I think they can improve. For example; is it too much to ask to be able to enter value from the keyboard instead of using the mouse or arrow keys? Wanting to go from 6 to 9600 using the wheel on the mouse is a bit boring (referring to Cakewalk Rapture now), and having two knobs with the same MIDI CC where the delay knob is the one reacting instead of the oscillator octave (referring to Gforce Minimonsta now) is just plain dumb. Not responding to inquires like those, especially when I’ve bought the product is a bit ignorant I think. Sure, I can map another CC for the Octave knob on the Minimonsta, but my G2 patch will not work for the one’s downloading my patch to use with their Minimonsta unless they map the knob to the same value. “To make this work, you need to…” - sounds like Microsoft Windows if you ask me.

Back to Z3ta+. Besides the not-being-able-to-modulate-some-parameters it’s an okay instrument. I think it’s the kind that will grow on you when you finally get around their thinking regarding the modulation matrix - which can do some pretty wierd stuff when using the “Function” as a destination which then can be a source on the next modulation row (or later if you prefer). What the modulation matrix does not offer is a drag-and-drop to re-order the rows which is a nice thing to do since the LFO can modulate itself, for example. However, the Env can not and that’s on my suggestion list to rgc:audio.

Another thing that bugs me a bit is that Korg don’t offer a demo of the Legacy Collection Analogue (or Digital) Edition so I haven’t been able to try it. My local music store don’t have it installed - which I think Korg should offer, at least. I’m not going to buy something I can’t try and listening to demo mp3’s isn’t that fun of a deal. Really ..