Well, in light of this product now being publicly available, I figure it's alright to put this review back up.
To build background, Aly James Lab made a VST called VLinn. It's basically a retro drum machine that claims to accurately emulate the programming of the vintage LM-1 drum machine of the early 80s, the first ever sample-based drum machine. Having never owned an LM-1, I cannot comment on the faithfulness to the real deal, but I do know that it certainly has that retro sound. It works with 8-bit drum sounds, and even goes as far as to recreate the old DAC converters, resulting in the decimation effect so many chiptune fans are familiar with when tuning drum samples down.
Aly James Lab has now officially released VLinn 2.0. I've personally been really eager for this release, speaking as a Mac user, and I was lucky enough to get my copy early thanks to being a customer of the prior version.
However, while it does offer Mac and 64-bit support now, that's actually the least of its improvements. One particular thing I love about this release is the ability to replace any single one of the drum sounds with your own EPROM images (in companded 8-bit bin files). While the previous version did allow this for some of the drums, it was only 7 slots out of 13, which was especially frustrating given that among these was just one of the two tom slots! Similarly, version 1 required users to specify the size of the EPROM image before loading, whereas the size management seems to be dealt with automatically, now.
Another new feature of VLinn is the ability to pan individual drum sounds without needing to resort to the multi-output feature of the VST. This was a bit subtle to find (you need to hover the mouse over the tuning label to toggle between that and panning), but it was worth it.
Finally, the other major enhancement of the VST is the ability to define a custom MIDI map layout for your drum samples. This can prove particularly beneficial if you wish to, for instance, use the conga slots for additional toms.
Personally, I've already made a few pieces with this VST showcasing its ability because I enjoy it that much. Below is one of them.
To build background, Aly James Lab made a VST called VLinn. It's basically a retro drum machine that claims to accurately emulate the programming of the vintage LM-1 drum machine of the early 80s, the first ever sample-based drum machine. Having never owned an LM-1, I cannot comment on the faithfulness to the real deal, but I do know that it certainly has that retro sound. It works with 8-bit drum sounds, and even goes as far as to recreate the old DAC converters, resulting in the decimation effect so many chiptune fans are familiar with when tuning drum samples down.
Aly James Lab has now officially released VLinn 2.0. I've personally been really eager for this release, speaking as a Mac user, and I was lucky enough to get my copy early thanks to being a customer of the prior version.
However, while it does offer Mac and 64-bit support now, that's actually the least of its improvements. One particular thing I love about this release is the ability to replace any single one of the drum sounds with your own EPROM images (in companded 8-bit bin files). While the previous version did allow this for some of the drums, it was only 7 slots out of 13, which was especially frustrating given that among these was just one of the two tom slots! Similarly, version 1 required users to specify the size of the EPROM image before loading, whereas the size management seems to be dealt with automatically, now.
Another new feature of VLinn is the ability to pan individual drum sounds without needing to resort to the multi-output feature of the VST. This was a bit subtle to find (you need to hover the mouse over the tuning label to toggle between that and panning), but it was worth it.
Finally, the other major enhancement of the VST is the ability to define a custom MIDI map layout for your drum samples. This can prove particularly beneficial if you wish to, for instance, use the conga slots for additional toms.
Personally, I've already made a few pieces with this VST showcasing its ability because I enjoy it that much. Below is one of them.
The VLinn VST is available for a minimum of 40 Euros from Aly James Lab's website. Definitely check it out when you can!
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