All In the tests

194 Connected   /   Login   /   Register !

According to the editor, the FX section “was almost half of the analysis/coding effort”. This was in order to offer the most accurate emulation of effects and amps usually used with these pianos. For trademark reasons, they aren’t named, but some are easily identifiable, as A.I.R has done a great job in modeling the real hardware.

From left to right, you’ll find a Compressor, with attack and sustain, a Tube Drive with soft saturation and moderate sustain, then a 3-band EQ with parametric medium, a bypass and a handy volume to compensate for extreme settings.

Then there’s the FX section per se, divided into 5 sub-sections that can be used simultaneously, and a global Bypass. You’ll first find Dist, which offers Fuzz, a typical transistor sound with long sustain (Drive, Tone, Mix parameters), Crush, a bitcrusher (Freq, Depth, Mix) and a Ring Modulator with envelope-controlled frequency, perfect for feeling like you’re Corea with Miles (“Willie Nelson”) or Jan Hammer with Mahavishnu (“Vital Transformation”). It sounds quite good, if you avoid playing chords with extreme settings.

Then there’s the Wah effect, featuring three different types, Autowah (LFO), envelope-modulated wah and envelope-modulated lowpass filter (pre- or post-fuzz), with two filter types: British or US (I guess you’ve figured out which pedals are emulated...). The three knobs are Pedal (pedal position), Rate and Depth. Since Pedal uses MIDI CC11 (expression pedal), you can quickly play as you would with a real one, using the pedal in static position to enhance mid-range content in the style of Zawinul (“Freezing Fire” in Live & Unreleased), or in a rhythmic way, in the style of Patrick Muller with Erik Truffaz (“King B.”, “Bending New Corners” in Face à Face).

In terms of modulation, there’s a Chorus (the one from a well-known amp and pedal), a Flanger and two Phasers (two reference models). These effects are indispensable for ballads and mid-tempos, from “You Are The Sunshine” (Stevie Wonder) to “Glamour Profession” (Steely Dan), from Tori Amos to Radiohead (“Subterranean Homesick Alien”), and they even have bonus parameters, like mono/stereo switch, Rate, Depth or Feedback. The emulations sound good (even including some specific effects like the zero Chorus setting) and if they can’t rival some high-end dedicated plug-ins, they do their job perfectly.