Leave a Review VHS Synth | 80s Synthwave
MIDI FX support
Can’t really get it Toruń with Riffer stand alone but in an iPad daw it worksjj23412
4 STARS
Great fun at a reduced price, would really think it would benefit with the inclusion of a pitch bend & Modulation wheelTitty Biscuit
Many possibilities for a great price
Once I figured out how to record using this as an AU instrument I have really liked it.
I find it hard to scroll between the different settings without moving the sliders but that's my only complaintxajcx
unique, amazing retro synth!
Powerful retro synth, amazing range of sounds, beautiful 80’s retro sound. Essential to your synth library.feathers632
Ok, it’s great, but the ‘forget what patch’ thing kills me!
So I am going to be positive and say that it is HIGHLY likely, the glaring glitch of this synth forgetting what patch you set it to, once you close up the DAW and go back in (GarageBand on iPad Pro M1 for me, iOS etc is latest everything), will be fixed soon. The sounds are pretty much as advertised, and the Orchestra Hit is a hoot as it slows down, as the pitch/note is lowered! Weird, but weird can be good.
This has a ways to go, but is really nice and must have taken a boatload of sampling work, I don’t feel like criticising, so this is merely feedback, and I am giving it five stars on the basis I list the main issue as above (it’s such a ball-buster, I hate ‘patch amnesia’), and these are more bits and pieces as WIP goes forward: the C3 key I think it is, has noticeably more hiss or resonance mixed-in than when you hit the D3 key next to it (I had a real Roland Jupiter that did this, so I dunno if it’s super-accurate or the same annoying feature!), it happens for several patches; the ‘modulation wheel’ I kind of would like it actually DID something?!
There’s no way I can see to obviously make the Mod Wheel do the job it often does, of acting as a kind of vibrato/tremolo, or whatever, and this is by no means the only synth in AUV3 to do this, it’s just nice if either there’s a default use for the mod wheel or there’s an easy way to make it take on some variance feature, yourself!
But I really don’t want to whine, it’s possible to bash out some tunes on this, and as I say, some of the ‘faults’ actually replicate the aspects of real synths I experienced from the late 1970’s and 1980’s. This will improve, and for the intro price if I moaned I’d feel unnecessarily mean. It’s cool, there’s a different approach to tweaking the sounds to some extent with hiss and a sort of built-in tape wobble situation it seems to facilitate.
Definitely interesting to dabble with, and it has a niche, cannot bring myself to synth-bash, it seems decently made (ie the leading-edge does trigger the MIDI blocks after going out and back in, this has been an issue on some synths, only fixed by double-tap on the synth icon as if wanting to play some more). It’s in the peloton let’s say, of AUV3 synths and has a place there, it’s pretty likeable.Show lesssleekitwan
Please more backwards compatibility
Great synth app on my iPhone, but would love to be able if i could use this on my iPad Pro with iOS13.
Compatibility with iOS 13 or even 12 would be very welcome for lots of slightly older devices that still run very stable on a bit older systems, without the ability to upgrade to the higher systems to run this app.Show lessTheRealDutchee
I love AudioKit
So this was buy-on-sight item, just as a matter of supporting the cause(s).
Low-fidelity digital synths do little for me, as a matter of taste. I have no nostalgia for crappy recordings on bad equipment (not to say this synth is about such things - I’m talking about the recent fad for noisy, wobbly, otherwise-simple sounds with unnatural-sounding harmonics. Where do people go next from a fad for cheap, poorly made knock-offs of once innovative analogue synths? “Synthwave”, it appears), so it isn’t as though another taped-sound digital ROMpler. I mean, I get the way some bit-crushed and/or noisy, glitchy sounds can find evocative, beautiful and pleasingly ugly textures, but as a category it’s a lot more miss than hit.
VHS Synth follows the lineage of the Digital D1, so users will find familiar features and quirks. As usual from AudioKit, the sound, grungy as it can be in this case, is vivid and well-realized. There is no unintended brittleness or artificiality. If you like the sound of purposely distorted tape recordings, especially of synthesized sounds, this product gives you what you’re after in a juicy, easily manipulated form.
In fact, the simplicity of the dual-sample/source engine and interface is a great strength of VHS Synth. The source samples come with plenty of atmosphere and overtones built in (thanks to Brian Funk and the original equipment), which allows the developers to minimize the sound-design toolkit without wrecking the range of the instrument. Users can get interesting, usable results in a hurry.
As for quirks, AudioKit synths retain a few after many releases and revisions. Some are more obvious than others, and none are major issues. In saying this, I admit my vulnerability to nits, but it does infuriate me to see MIDI values translated to “intuitive” percentage figures, which are then presented as a percentage-balance knob for this or that where the total of the balance DOES NOT ADD UP TO 100%.
In modern computing, both systems and app developers operate on some sort of numerology according to which some numbers are frowned upon as user-setting values and others are promoted as desirable. There are several reasons this happens - none of them good.
Whatever the reason, I do not want to see balance knobs showing percentage values for dividing a signal where left+right does not add up to 100%. Call me old-fashioned, but percentages are percentages of, um, 100.
Left+right adding up to 200 or -200 is not attractive either. Just saying.
Anyway, little quirks aside, I love AudioKit and wish I could be healthy enough to help.
If you’re not thrilled with the sound of old synths noisily recorded, buy VHS Synth anyway, for the cause(s), and surprise yourself with your sound-exploration results.Show lessmrdogheadSHoGoAT
Fantastic Lo-Fi Goodness
Niche sounds that nail the nostalgic buttons of the 1980’s.Nitpick Pete
Dass vhs teknik…
Dass oder benetzoid ist grosse kaputznik muss. Dass Uber zuber boomber gerecht. Schnell flammėn, langseim Schön…Animouse21
Excellent Synth With One Big Issue
Love the vibe of this synth! Nice library of preset sounds that work really well for my style. Price is exceptionally good even at the full cost is still totally worth it.
Docked one star for not being able to run it on my M1 Mac Studio. Would love to have this in my list of synths in Logic but unfortunately there’s no Mac version (would buy it if there was) and the iOS version is blocked from the Mac in the app store. I’d be willing to risk running it uncertified for Mac if it was an option 😔Show lessWarpFactorJeff
