"if the KO and the OPZ had a baby...", you don't know what you are talking about

Suite indeed. And I dig UVI’s recent visual style, ever since the Augmented series. Would like a dark setting, though, if it’s not yet in there.

Excellent work.

Thank you so much for compiling those extensive comparison tables, that's priceless!

I have the opportunity to buy an Roland MC101 or Seqtrack, what you think it's worth more as a beginner who wants to chill and learn to make some beats? The Roland mc101 looks more robust, but the Seqtrack built in mic, price and instruments sound Worth it too.

Some of my earliest "multitrack" recordings in the early 80s were done by playing recorded tracks on a boom box through a Radio Shack mixer while recording new material on another boom box. After 3 or 4 overdubs, rhe resulting SNR was terrible. By the mid 80s, I benefited from using a roommate's Fostex X15 4-track machine. My favorite cassettes were the TEAC ones with the metal reels inside the case, allowing for less friction. In the late 80s, I was fortunate to have a pro 16- track recording experience, using 2-inch mag tape at 30 ips. It's funny to me that in these days when 192kHz 32-bit recording is a household reality, folks are creating digital FX to replicate the characteristics of mag tape that were considered liabilities of the medium. 🙂

Bro the keyboard is not a normal keyboard. I have a matrixbrute and the keys are also smaller than a normal keyboard, I still love it tho. When arturia decides to go with a regular fatar Key bed like everyone else, they won’t be able to can them on the shelves. I don’t understand why people won’t talk about this. I feel It’s a deal breaker for a real keyboard player… maybe…I can handle it. This may also be the reason guitar center doesn’t stock many keyboards currently on the market today. Its almost like they thoughtfully decided to keep everything online so folks can’t get a feel for the actual product do a inspection, a test drive if you will. and moreover, make money off of return shipping, restocking and general customer dissatisfaction.😅

Great overview with some very cool patch ideas. I am a UVI fan but I skipped this one because I have so many plugins that cover everything it does already, including pretty much every one of the sound design-oriented plugins that you showed in quick succession at the beginning. Also my ears are no good for final mixing and mastering, so I don't buy tape character saturation plugins intended for those purposes. When I watch videos of a demo of something from IKM or Softube and can't hear the differences before and after comparisons. Honestly I was a little surprised UVI bothered with this because the market is so... saturated (LOL). Maybe they are trying to round out their library on offer for their subscription service.

Your modulation of the delay effect was killer! That capability really makes me want to get this plugin. $100 is pretty pricey though. Are there any other delay plugins that you know of that could be modulated similarly to get the same effect that you achieved with this UVI tape suite? Thanks

nice review and examples

How does this compare to U-he's Satin?

Ah thank you for the dive and educational tidbits! Always a great evening to consider something AFS looks at. Gotta beef up my tape game!

your presentation style with your voice REALLY reminds me of joe pera talks with you take it as a compliment, it's really calming, thorough and easy to listen to

Great vid Thanks

you can not really compare this 3 devices. The KO is designed as a sampler, not as a fully groovebox . It has no built in synthies, but it has the features a sampler should have (except resampling :-( ). It has beat slicing/chopping and time stretching. The sampling functionality of the seqtrek is very limited. Well, the KO should have some more memory.

120€ for tapes 01? Hard pass for me, this is insane. There are at least 30 other plugins I would buy before i drop 120€ on a kontakt tape plugin. (infiltrator is great though)

I lost count of the amount of plug ins featured here, would have been better of you just used Sloom and kept things simple.

Would love to see what it can do with drum rhythms too.

Great comparison! 🙂

I own 3 groove boxes, i 1st started with the Novation Circuit Tracks. later i purchased the Roland MC 101 & last year i purchased the Akai MPC One + . Out of the 3 i prefer the MPC One + as it's more of work station /groove box with enough than i need.

Sounds pretty cool \m/

I use it just for fun. Whenever I'm struggling with whatever mix I'm in - I take a break, fire up avenger and go nuts for a while. Sometimes it even gives you ideas for the exact thing you are working on. BTW, the cinematics expansions are also fantastic. Definitely not EDM so it's capable of many genres I think.

this video is incredible thank you!! i really want the poly brute 12 lol wish i had the funds for that

where`s OG polyend tracker? currently you can get new one in value of 350eu and it got proper song mode

If you don‘t click with a hardware box you can sell it, it is not a bad thing.. software is loosing cash because of the age and you can‘t sell these as easy as hardware.. 🤷🏻‍♂️

I demoed sloom and love it. Will also get the others soon. Really like what anemond is doing

Hmmm interesting, as well as Sampleson just released a similar plugin called SCAPER, it would be cool to make a comparison video about all 3 (PaulXstretch being the third) and any other worthy ones.

I wonder how much of the sound that Sloom generates at extreme time stretches comes from the algorithm and how much comes from the input audio?

Thanks! Great Sloom intro. I would love to see a mini tutorial on Factorsynth

Thanks for looking at Sloom! I've been getting a few stretchers lately to go with PaulXStretch for sound design. I'm amazed how bonkers this one can go! Definitely gonna try! BTW, been appreciating your video editing for quite sometime. Besides the great choice visuals, you're one of the reviewers who understand contrast, text legibility and font choice for those sitting in front and viewers in the back row. It makes your videos easy to understand/digest.

You might enjoy SonicLab's Polynode and CodeFN42's Transition

Could you review Rhythimizer Ultra? It's been the sequencer (well, not exactly a sequencer) that got me the most musical results. I'd be great to learn how it compares to Harmony Bloom (which I don't own).

Interesting. From the presented examples, I liked Solaris the most in each case.

I have Hyperion and your sound pack on my wish list! Really good stuff. Thank you.-

Ummm…do you have control over the length & volume of each note & can that be randomized? If you covered this story if I missed it.

awesome!

You can sequence the key of this, but can you sequence the mode or scale? So, as an off the cuff example, 2 bars of A Lydian, 2 bars C Diminished followed by 4 bars Eb Augmented. If it had that sort of functionality it would be great. Sort of unclear whether it does. I'll probably buy it anyway.

I think that if yamaha makes some kind of seqtrak pro with chromatic sample playing, better build quality, better keys and maybe some screen, they are up to make the best groovebox on the market

Update in the plugin! 🙌🔥 Fr, when I click the update button and the tab opens🤦‍♂️ I know i will not be running the latest version for a while lol

I agree these are basically procrastination devices and none compare to any decent DAW with a decent small controller. If you actually are trying to make commercially viable music. But if you are procrastinating, then fighting through the workflow, arcane vulcan neck pinches and quirks will add to the challenge satisfactorily.

Mario has definitely done his research and then with skill of mind and a lot inspiration produced a superb music creation tool . It’s hard on earth to find a “thing” which raises no critical thoughts ….Harmony Bloom is an exception…so if you buy nothing else this year get it.👍🙏🙏🏿🎶

The Puritans were on to something. They just took it too far. . . . . . . . .

Great Review! I personally would use something like this for inspiration and also a core element in some music other than ambient. I’m sure that during the fun-time using this, there would be times when you stumble across some musical phrasing that would form the basis of whole pieces of music, or become part of an arpeggiated sequencer style of notes for an instrument that embellishes a track you could write around it. If there was a way to drag and drop the last X notes played, or a number of beats from the start with an offset, then that would be cool for taking ideas out quickly for developing later. Either way, directing the midi that comes out into a midi track and recording is the fallback method. I was so pleased to hear that the interface is the sort you don’t need to worry about forgetting. I enjoyed your review style. Excellent.

There's a reverse button at the bottom left

Like you, I have a tendency to program the notes myself. I actually bought Stepic (which I think is amazing) but still haven't used it, which is a shame. I guess I just have a "composer" mentality. BUT... I also bought HB, and the main reason is that I was looking for a way to get inspired about ambient. For me, HB looks like the perfect answer to that, and I think it will help me.

I have Harmony Bloom and I love playing with it for hours... but I wish there was a way to make something more structured melodically while still maintaining that touch of chaos that makes the plugin so interesting to listen to. Most of the time I just get a mess... it can be a beautiful mess, but I still wish I could get more control while still maintaining some randomness. Or maybe there's something I'm missing

- I like your style…👌🏾

Don't let the shotgun style intro, overburdened with irrelevant clips and references and the AI-sounding narration turn you off. There's some very good, useful content here about Harmony Bloom. Comprehensive coverage of important features.

Great video. I agree HB is a very creative tool for multiple uses. I use it also as an inspiration for composition ideas in my proyects. I always asociated music with numbers and geometry so i fill at home with HB. I sent an email to Mario talking about the possibility to modify the circle subdivisions not only to 10 but 7, 8 12, 16 for even more possibilities in pattern and rhythm creation but Mario didn’t answer me in this respect 😊

Video production - 10/10, Software - 10/10, Ideas in video for more exploration - 10/10, Joyful music creation & Happiness scale, Infinity ♾