Jeskola Jeskola BUZZ Tracker

Buzz is great for writing dance music, but it could do with a few things like a piano roll, Or the ability to be a plugin. People say it's midi is dodgy but I don't use it. Better groove facility would be good also.

Price paid

Free

Buzz is a tracker so everything is in hex. The interface is much more intuitive than clostraphobic programs like reason or fruityloops. There's a bit of learning curve which is easily overcome if your not lazy. The help is fine.

SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE

There's a multitude of synths and effects for buzz and because it's modular it easily outshine all of the competition in this department. With new machine developers poping up all the time, there's an infinite number of new gens being released which keep getting better and better. It's a bit buggy but nothing serious.

Personally I'd feel like a plonker standing behind any piece of software at a gig. But if that's your thing it can be done.

OVERALL OPINION

Anyone who doesn't have this program should download it. It's free and when people like James Holden and way out west are useing it , You know it's a winner.

Originally posted on FutureProducers.com
Posted by: Unknown ( 5-, 2002)

Buzz is a unique program, like having a live studio, buzz requires you to connect your synths and fx to the master control (like an amp for example) at first i was skeptic it seemed quite hard to pick up but after a few days it became one of my best friends, and with the ever growing amount of buzzmachines(buzz symths and fx) nobody should miss out on this considering its free, thats right i said free

Price paid

free

it only took me a few days to get the basics of buzz and thats enough to start a track, its been a few months i've been using buzz and its quite easy to work after 2 weeks of learning buzz you should have no problems

SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE

Sound quality i find depends on the machine your using , some machines give great sound while others crackle and hiss, could be a bit better quality overall but with a wave editing program you can fix that up easily

don't know anybody who would bring a computer to a live show so i don't know exactly how to rate this, but its possible to do so anyway it all depends on you

OVERALL OPINION

I love this thing because once you learn buzz you will know alot about creating a live studio in the future because of its modular interface, plus with the countless buzzmachines and fx you can download i can't believe its free

Originally posted on FutureProducers.com
Posted by: Unknown ( 8-, 2002)

Buzz is a sketchpad delight, it is very fast to setup sequence, synthesis, and effects all in one 'chain of machines'. It is indeed modular, it has extended tracking capabilities, and it now has a ton of things that previous reviewers neglected because it didn't exist it at the time. Now being october 2004, things have changed significantly in the buzz community. I will highlight a few things here - Midi In Support - Great with uMw buzzmachine midiwrapper as well as Polac VST machine which loads VST, DX, buzzmachines. The VST support is great, the possilities are endless, the buzzmachines number in the 700s. Mega-effects to choose from, a great 'peer' machine concept, has been coded (via machines/apps) by more than 200 developers, pattern manipulators, cloning machines, wonderful subtick accuracy (yea no problem, we are NOT confined to ticks - a common misconception) and is freeware ! A truely unique community

Price paid: FREE

For those of you that are familiar with trackers, its simple. I made the switch from Impulse Tracker in 2000 and still use Buzz currently

SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE

This is a very baised question. Depending on which 'generators' you use of course your sound quality will differ. It can be a tracker with samples, soundfont loader, one of several quality buzzmachine generators, or the latest, greatest VSTi.

I will say - Buzz will do well in the right hands, due to its unique structure, it simply isn't for everyone.

OVERALL OPINION

I love buzz, have used it for almost 5 years now, its amazing, its allowed me to learn so much, and its just great for people who enjoy creating music by using the computer's keyboard + midi keyboard as opposed to focusing on the mouse. - Hotkeys !

Originally posted on FutureProducers.com
Posted by: nool (January 0-, 2004)

I use it for five years. The first installation is discouraged, but now I just by changing Ordos or partition copy / paste the folder Buzz ... which is very portable.La general configuration no problem, it is very clear, and audio drivers are quite concrete. It almost never does not crash once you understand how to use it in NT4 compatibility, even with a 30 vst ordinausaure (I already turned pieces with dozens of machines that had a poor pc only 224 MB of RAM and a celeron 1.5 ghz of 2002)
The grip is different from current commercial apps, but it draws quickly benefit: we can implement his ideas in a few seconds. And just read the help, which is simple, fun to begin. Some interface improvements tested here and there by taking over the concept (Aldrin; Buzzrmx, Buzztard, Buze ..) deserve to be there but the source code was lost the software has not been updated (for the. exe) since 2002 apparently. Too bad. Attempts to resuscitate him were not yet ready ..

SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE

The performances are exceptional. Never seen a software as in-ramable, in-plantable vsti's face as meet its 150 machines .. Even on a rotten Ordos (at the base, Buzz has been designed to run on the Windows 98 ..), you can load a max projects synths and effects, particularly to the LIVE. (Besides, there is no Render-to-wave, but rather a real-time recorder for export)

OVERALL OPINION

To be brief: C IS A BEAST OF SOFTWARE.
Free software, light on the hard and resource use, in reference trackers fans for years (rather oriented towards all that is closer to the music of a free party at large), it is waiting for her .. In any in my case, it is the software to do more in minimum time without worrying about a possible processor that heats or the ram is limited .. This is the ONLY software that pushes me to keep a Windows partition on the Ordos, until successors developed on Linux.
(For the record: Buzz machines were made on fruityloops used by the creator of Buzz for several years)