Steinberg Virtual Instruments

No incompatibilities with xp and cubase SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE It doesn't use much memory, we can add tracks and instances without problems OVERALL OPINION I've used it for several years now. Its main strength is that we can always find an easily editable sound, pad, choir or synth when we lack inspiration. Its weakest point are acoustic and real sounds, so forget about guitars, pianos, strings, they don't sound very authentic. In a few words: a complementary vsti with unlimited sounds to incorporate into a mix, to find ideas.

Groove Agent 3 has two new pieces called the Special Agent and the Percussion Agent. The Special Agent has a very real studio drummer to your song or set up and some really good acoustic drum kits. The Percussion Agent is more for the grooves, beats, and patterns. But the ability to create all of my drum needs in Groove Agent 3 has been awesome! SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE Installing Groove Agent 3 worked well with my Mac that has 2 GB of RAM and 4 GB of HD space. I am running a G5 2 GHZ system that has dual core processing. It has never crashed or caused any problems on my Mac and on my PC running Windows 7 it runs good, but not as fast as it does on my Mac probably due to the 1 GB of RAM on my Windows 7. OVERALL OPINION I have reached out to Steinberg many times for support issues and they have always helped me without any charge. This program is very easy to use and operate and the interface is easy to work with and it is no confusing. All of the sounds are of great quality and has that “real” drummer feel to it with the patterns and kits. I have many drum programs, and the reason that Groove Agent 3 is different is because it has a smoother more user friendly interface and great kits to go along with it. Also it comes with enough kits (without having to purchase expansions) to cover all of my styles of music that I create. The fills and effects are very good and I recommend purchasing Groove Agent 3 for that alone. The humanized effects are a joy to work with and the price of this plug in makes it a must have in my book. It works perfectly and does not crash at all.

The program works on any platform either Windows XP, Windows Seven or MAC OS , so compatibility issues isn't present The manual included with the program is great , Steinberg as usual made a great book explaining the main functions and how this certain vst works. The general configuration and setup is simple , no problems occurred , no error found , everything went great. The typical functions are easy to spot trough a certain guitar interface which has a lot of options to choose from. SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE The software works good in this configuration , everything is well settled without any type of misunderstandings. The gear and software are very stable and works very good. I'm getting very good performances in emulating a real electric or acoustic guitar that sounds as similar as a real one. I've been using Virtual Guitarist from Steinberg for about one year. OVERALL OPINION What I like most about Steinberg Virtual Guitarist is that you can practically emulate a real guitar, this is one of the vest vst out there that can replicate the sound , the strum , the resonance of a real guitar , and besides that you can also get a very powerful sense of humanization , you can build certain rhythms effects , different textures , smacks , legato and stoccatto notes , also some great trills with different amount of velocity and duration. What I also like about this certain product is that it is build around real samples of real guitar, so that way you avoid some automatic robotic sounds which you would get from a lot of guitar vst. Precision and quality of the sound is very good , but I still think there's more to improve , that way I will rate it 9/10. I've tried several models of guitar vst , this is one the most powerful alongside real guitar from Music Lab

Steinberg Halion Sonic is affordable and runs at a high level. It installs quickly and does not take up much disk space. You can also run other programs on your computer at the same time because it does not take up much CPU. It comes with a tone of sounds and patterns and you can even integrate it with Cubase 5 very easily. That was one of the key decisions for me because I use Cubase a lot. SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE The layout of Sonic is easy to work with, it makes everything faster because it seems like all the options are right in front of you on the main screen. You will have infinite possibilities to edit and shape your sounds in this program because it gives you all of the parameters, and you can even tweak those using a MIDI controller or keyboard. OVERALL OPINION You will get over a thousand different instrument sounds with this program and a ton of effects to use with those sounds. Now not all of the effects are that great, but they are useable and better than a lot of effects that come standard with most DAW’s. You can use this software on a Mac or a PC, you will need to have at least 2 GB of RAM, if you have that much you will be fine and it will run great. Another thing to take note is that the activation process can get daunting because you need to have internet connections to do proper activation. For me that was an issue because my studio computer has no internet connectivity (on purpose) to keep all viruses and malware away from it. I thought I would be able to activate right out of the box but boy was I wrong. It was a headache trying to get it activated online but we figured it out. It does also require an eLicenser key and that is not included

I have been using Steinberg Plex for a little over a year, it is 100 percent free and best of all it comes with over 300 presets! Plex gets very good reviews from users all over the World which is why I gave it a shot and I have been using it every since. There is no manual for this VST, you wont need one. But the Steinberg Plex is set up a bit different than almost any other VST that I have used. It was very strange at first with the layout of it, but after a hour or so you will get the swing of it and be good to go. After you understand how it works and where everything is, you will see how easily you can access your parameters. SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE Plex is very stable and has not crashed on my and probably every wont. I have used several VST’s over the years from Steinberg and all of them are very stable and will work on almost any sort of computer you run it on. I ran Plex on desktop PC with 8GB RAM and 2TB Hard Drive and it worked great, I don’t think I have it on any of my other computers though. OVERALL OPINION Plex comes with 300 plus presets, to me that was better than the fact that it was free. I have not heard of my VST’s coming with that many presets and can still keep the “free” tag on it. I am very happy that I downloaded it, and thankful that I read all of the great reviews on it. I would like to see them come out with a new version of it though with some more interesting and different effects. Plex seems to be lacking with the on board effects. But the sound quality of this VST is amazing for it to be free.

One of the things that made me fall in love with Hypersonic was how many sounds and presets it has. Not just that either, the quality of those sounds and presets and that it has them all broke down into proper categories so you don’t have to do too much searching for the sounds you are looking for. SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE It runs great with FL Studio and doesn’t crash or cause any problems to my desktop computer. I have been using Hypersonic for years and it continues to get used, even though I have upgraded to the newest version now. Everything with Hypersonic works great and no manual is needed because its that easy to understand. But since its that easy to understand means that there wasn’t enough options for me as far as editing the sounds and adding effects to them. With each sound that you load up only gives you a few options to change , you cant edit all the parameters like you can in a lot of other vst’s that are used. OVERALL OPINION I think Hypersonic is a great software plug in with high quality sounds and im glad that I purchased it. I also happy the sounds are as good as they are right from the presets because if they weren’t you wouldn’t be able to change to much about them because there arent any options to really dig deep into editing the sounds. This was the first version of Hypersonic that came out and I think they made a great impression with this one and it even made me get the upgrade (hypersonic 2) not too long ago. Good thing is you will have a ton of sounds to go through and it will take you a while to use most of them! I am not sure If you can actually still get this version of hypersonic though since version 2 is being sold.

Steinberg's Embracer is a virtual synthesizer designed for use in their DAWs like Cubase. I've only used the software in Cubase SX 2.0 for the most part, and a bit with SX 3. It has been a while since I used this software, so I honestly can't remember the process of installation, but most likely it wasn't a problem since I can't remember it at all. The interface of Embracer is generally quite easy to follow, as even though there are a good amount of setting controls to work with, nothing is too complicated. There are two oscillators to work with, each with parameters for tone, width, and type of waveform, and the second oscillator has also includes parameters for coarse and fine for some serious fine tuning of your sound. Each then has parameters for attack and velocity and level and velocity. There is also a nifty graph in the center of the software that measures tone and width. Lastly, there are sections for master and master output, which control your overall sounds. I've never needed to look at the manual for this, so I don't know anything about it's configuration. SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE I'm no longer running the Steinberg Embracer virtual instrument since I no longer run Cubase, but when I did I ran it in Cubase SX 2.0 on a Hewlett Packard dv8000 lap top computer with a MOTU 896 HD audio interface. The computer had a 3.0 Ghz processor and 2 GB of RAM. I can't say that I remember ever having a problem running Embracer within this configuration, although I definitely never had a need to run more than one instance at a time. It's hard to determine how well a certain piece of software will run within a certain configuration without actually trying it, but I don't believe that Steinberg's Embracer is the type of software that will take up too much of your processing power. OVERALL OPINION Overall, Steinberg Embracer is a decent virtual instrument at best. The sounds are mostly strange and and atmospheric, but there is indeed a lot of room to play around. While versatile, I just wasn't impressed with the overall tone quality of this virtual instrument. It is definitely worth noting that this is a rather old piece of software and could be considered outdated at this point. I no longer use this in any capacity since it isn't compatible with Pro Tools, and even if it was I probably still wouldn't use it. If you're running Cubase or another Steinberg manufactured sequencer, I'd recommend checking it out as there are a few cool things that you can do with it, but overall this is definitley at the bottom of the list when it comes to virtual instruments in my opinion.

Installing the Steinberg Halion virtual symphony orchestra software wasn't a problem at all and only took a short while. I didn't have any compatibility problems as I ran this within Steinberg Cubase, so everything was compatible. The interface of the software is quite user friendly as it isn't hard to choose between the different instruments and even to change specifics about the sounds and to change the effects. After playing around with the software for a little while I was able to understand pretty much everything going on with it and I have little doubt that most of you out there will be able to do the same and for this reason I don't think that a manual is necessary. SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE I am no longer running Steinberg Halion as I no longer use Cubase SX, but when I did I ran it on a Hewlett Packard lap top with a 3.0 Ghz processor and 2 GB of RAM. The only reason I no longer use it is because I have switched to Pro Tools and this isn't a compatible piece of software with Pro Tools. While I was running this in Cubase I was able to run it quite well without any processing power problems. As long as you have a decent system I think you'll be okay with running this software. OVERALL OPINION I first used Steinberg Halion about four or five years ago as it was one of the first virtual orchestras that I used and used it a lot as I was always impressed with the sounds. While they aren't the most realistic looking back, they do get the job done if you want to get some orchestra sound in your songs at a cheap price. It is versatile software which definitely adds to the reasons that this is a good piece of software. The price is reasonable, but I would probably recommend looking into the newer versions of this software as it probably sounds better and is more up to date...

The Steinberg VB-1 Virtual Bassist plug-in came installed with Cubase SX when I was running that software, so the installation process was as easy as installing the sequencer software. Since both were made by the same company, I had no compatibly problems and since installing the software have never had any issues with it at all. The interface of the plug-in is pretty easy to follow as it only has a few different parameters - one for shape, one for damper, and one for overall volume. It also has a wide variety of presets that really come in handy when you are trying to pick the perfect sound. I've never seen the manual for this plug-in, so I can't speak to how helpful it is or not when trying to learn this software. SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE While I have since upgraded my system to Pro Tools LE and no longer run this plug-in or Cubase SX, when I did I ran it on a Hewlett Packard lap top that had a 3.0 Ghz processor and 2 GB of RAM. While I didn't use this plug-in everyday, when I did I never had any problems at all running it. I would really only run one at a time and I believe that most will be doing the same, but I can't say how well it would run if you wanted to run a lot of them at once, but I'm not sure why anyone would want to do that anyway. OVERALL OPINION I've been using the Steinberg VB-1 Virtual Bassist plug-in for about four or five years and while I no longer have the proper software to run it with, it definitely served me well when I was using it. Since it came with Cubase SX for me, the price was virtually free and I know it is pretty cheap even if you buy it on the side. The sounds on the Steinberg VB-1 Virtual Bassist plug-in are pretty good and work great when you want to put down a MIDI based bass track. If you are looking for a nice and easy to use plug-in that will give you a wide array of different bass guitar sounds, the Steinberg VB-1 is worth a try.

Installing the Steingberg A1 was a quick process as it came installed when I installed my Steinberg Cubase SX software. I had no compatibility problems at all as the same manufacturer made both the soft synth and my sequencer. After installing the Cubase SX software the A1 had already installed itself and was ready for use within a total of minutes. The interface of the Steingberg A1 may take a little while to figure out but this is only because there is so much to dive into. It has sections for two different oscillators, as well as a mixer section, a filter secion, a chorus/flanger section, an LFO, a filter envelope, and an amplifier envelope. This allows for a ton of control over your tone and if this isn’t enough, there are a ton of different presets that always come in handy. SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE When I was running Cubase SX, as I now use Pro Tools LE I ran it and the Steingberg A1 on a Hewlett Packard lap top that has a 3.0 Ghz processor and 2 GB of RAM. With this set up I never had any problems running this software and while I would only run one at once, I’m assuming that is that amount that most people are using this, as it doesn’t make that much sense to have a bunch of these running at once. However, I don’t think that you would have too much trouble running a bunch of these soft synths at once as they run smoothly and stably. OVERALL OPINION I've been using the Steinberg A1 for about five years and I've found it to be an overall great sounding software synth. I love the presets that this has and I've used them a lot in addition to all of the different sections that this software offers. While there are some better and cleaner sounding software synths, the cheap price makes the Steinberg A1 a formidable option. Overall, highly recommended to those running a Steinberg sequencer who want a good sounding and cheap soft synth.

I used this program for a few months a while back. I don't really have great things to say about it. Firstly, you need to have a dongle with this software. The registration process is very overly complicated, and I had to spend hours figuring out how to get this thing to even run on my computer. After conversations with tech support, I finally got it going even though I had to use an annoying dongle. The installation also took a while - the samples are very big in this program. Usually that's a good thing if you have the space for it, you would think that the piano sounds of a higher quality. I have used a bunch of other piano softwares, and this one doesn't really stack up to the others. Maybe you can get it to sound natural if you are a MIDI wizard, but if you're just an average person with a home studio this program will probably scream Fake Piano. It seems to respond in a weird way to velocity changes coming from your midi keyboard where other programs don't. You are also fairly limited in the piano sound you get. A bunch of other competitors offer you options to change the sound of the piano a lot, but not so much here. I also wish you could change the distance of the "microphones", because that is very important to be able to control in a recording. This also adds to the piano sticking out like a sore thumb. I feel this is overpriced and disappointing. I would probably try a different one like Native Instruments Akoustik Piano, I had good results with that one. I would not buy it again, I sold it to a friend after using it for a while.