|
 | | | | Aug31Written by:Bruce Richardson
Tuesday, August 31, 1999 6:00 PM 
VAZ definitely wins the award for the least-inspiring company name. Lucky for us, they're packing some powerful juice to offset that little liability.
VAZ is rather legendary in old-school softsynth circles. From freeware to shareware to retail product, they've come of age along the timeline of softsynthesis itself. You can download the earlier VAZ products for cheap or even free via their website. These are nowhere near as full-featured as VAZ Modular 2, but are certainly capable of making great sound.
VAZ Modular 2, the retail flagship of the VAZ line, is modeled after the grand modular synths of the late sixties and seventies. The first time I opened VAZ, I immediately was transported back to late nights at the old Electronic Music Lab, patching cords from module to module on the old Buchla, twisting knobs and trying to make that perfect new sound no one had yet coaxed from the the machine.
Saved by the UI
Thankfully, VAZ chooses not to carry the paradigm to the graphic simulation of patching cords. For you lovely youngsters out there, that's why we call presets "patches," by the way. Back in the good old days, you connected one module to the other with cords like a huge patch bay, literally rewiring the synthesizer for each different set of sounds you wanted it to make.
VAZ spares us the drudgery (and UI nightmare) of a rackfull of patch points, but otherwise you are in modular-synth heaven. Incoming MIDI gets converted into virtual control voltages, which are then assigned in straighforward drop boxes to oscillators, modulators, filters, multipliers, you name it. Sound like greek to you? No problem. If I can actually remember how to do it, surely you can learn. There's been a lot of water under the bridge since my Buchla days. And to teach you the finer points of modular synthesis, there are many presets that demonstrate just how one can set up the truly amazing sounds that gave synthesis its original voice.
If it were to stop there, VAZ would be an amazing product. It doesn't.
VAZ also includes a deceptively simple-looking sampling engine. I say that, because in some cases VAZ gave me sounds I was unable to get in any of the other products in this roundup. It has a very interesting way of dealing with the sonic results of realtime MIDI controllers. I can't really put my finger on it, other than to say that VAZ definitely has its own "feel" in realtime performance situations.
Weaknesses
As is true with every product music technology offers today, VAZ's strengths can be safely considered its weaknesses. Specifically with VAZ, its incredible flexibility is hampered by its lackluster polyphony / latency. You can dial up a lot more synth than you can actually play in realtime. You don't want to be doing ANYTHING on the screen while you're playing VAZ at performance - appropriate latency. It will come to pieces sonically, even on the fastest machines. In the currently available field of softsynths, VAZ places very high on quality and creative potential, and somewhat low in realtime performance. Its sampling features, however, are much less prone to breakup.
And these limitations are eased if you use VAZ's onboard step-sequencer, patterned again after the earliest generation of room-sized modular synthesizers. Take VAZ out of the realtime MIDI domain, and put its own devices to use, and suddenly VAZ begins to make sense. Just as Propellerheads breathed life into Roland's early portables with ReBirth, VAZ has very literally resurrected modular synthesis and its native methods of operation. What could easily have ended up cheese does not go there. Instead, by virtue of a narrowly confined performance technique, VAZ allows a user to virtually perform on a virtual modular synthesizer, and to record those results efficiently for use in DAW apps.
Will VAZ survive to become an industry heavyweight? It seems possible. First, they've been around, so obviously these guys are keeping the ball rolling somehow. Second, it's based on a very strong design that has significant appeal. The sound is first class.
I think there's room at the top for VAZ. If the obviously gifted developers at Software Technology can push VAZ's stability, polyphony, and latency performance into the upper tier, then VAZ will have a very good opportunity to survive and flourish. Even as it exists right now, it's a beautiful and unique synthesis tool capable of making sounds that bring modular synthesis into the new millenium. Add to that the ability to make sounds that no other synthesizer, hardware or software, can make right now. Suddenly, an investment in VAZ Modular and Software Technology becomes a no-brainer. It's money well spent.
For more information go to http://www.software-technology.comTags: | | | | | | | |
|
|
| | | |
| | | | | | | |
|
| | | | | | | | | | | |
|