Review of Sidsonic Libraries Circus Circuit Bending Library: German soundmakers take circuit bending to the next level.

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Circus Circuit Library
Berlin based soundmakers Sidsonic are relatively fresh on the library scene, but have succeeded to make quite some fuzz with their two first Kontakt-based libraries Circus Circuit Bending Library and Tubes! While this review only concentrates on Circus Circuit - it's quite clear that Sidsonic is not an ordinary bunch of sound designers. Circus Circuit is (obviously) about circuit bending and Tubes! is a library created from the mad innovations by Eric Barbour/Metasonix. In other words: these boys like it odd.

While circuit bending is widely known to most people by now, it doesn't hurt putting yourself in the right state mind seeing Picachu making funny noises while being electrocuted.

 
 
Review of DCAM Synth Squad Strobe: the simplest synthesizer in the DCAM collection is by no means simple or basic. It's in fact one of the finest synthesizers ever made.

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Despite all the initial hype about Fxpansions new synth trio DCAM Synth Squad, can't say it initially caught my interest. Boring bread and butter synthesizers, I thought. No, not just boring. Pointless. One one-oscillator synthesizer, one string synthesizer (yawn) and one half interesting analogue/FM-hybrid deal. Fxpansion must really have run out of ideas.

One of the good things about being me, is that I never cease to be amazed how utterly stupid I can be. DCAM turned out to be one of the most important things that have happened in the software synth scene for a very long time.

 
Waldorf Largo 09/01/2009
 
Waldorf Largo review: German synthmaker Waldorf truly masters the art of creating impressive synthesizers, but still hasn't got rid of its shadow of the past: it's very, very German.

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Since the publication of my review of the Waldorf Largo in the Swedish magazine Studio, I've learned much more about the inner workings of Largo. I still think Largo is one damn fine instrument – in fact, it's one of the best software synthesizers on the market right now. But after working with it for a few months, I've also learned that Largo can be quite irritating and sometimes downright frustrating to use.