Review: VPS Avenger from Vengeance Sound

At first look, I was immediately skeptical but VPS Avenger destroyed my expectations. After tackling the learning curve (thanks to comprehensive tutorials on the product page) routing was a breeze thanks to color coding and with the 32-high quality onboard effects, I think this synth could find a home in any genre and any form!

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Review: VPS Avenger from Vengeance Sound

VPS Avenger is a no-holds-barred, powerhouse of a synthesizer created by Vengeance Sound. With such an incredibly versatile, feature packed, professional synth, one would never know that this instrument was Vengeance Sound’s first official virtual synth release.

VPS Avenger sells for $220.00 from Vengeance Sound

Thoughts

When I found out I would be reviewing Avenger, I went to Vengeance Sound’s website to do some preliminary research and was immediately skeptical of their claims; I thought it was all too good to be true.

I am happy to announce that I could not have been more wrong. It seems VPS Avenger is one of those rare instruments that destroys your expectations the second you start fiddling around under the hood. This started to become evident to me when I was just going through the factory presets and hadn’t even adjusted a knob yet. This process alone took me over two hours to get through and seemed to lack the monotony I’ve experienced in the past when scrutinizing a new library.

VPS Avenger is one of those rare instruments that destroys your expectations

I believe the GUI had something to do with this lack of monotony because each wavetable featured plenty of movement and visual information to keep me engaged. This GUI is more than just a pretty face though, it is where the magic happens when you begin to put this synth through its paces. Vengeance Sound made routing a breeze by color coding the modules so you always know what is going where, e.g., green osc 1 using arp 1 and FX 1, both colored green, while blue osc 3 and red osc 4 using FX 2 with a blue/red split color coding. This feature makes it easy to keep track of 8 possible oscillators and make adjustments to them and their corresponding routing on the fly. It is particularly useful when you have a synth that offers a plethora of modulation options.

Some of these modulation options include: 8 pitch envelopes, 8 step sequencers, 8 mod envelopes, 4 amp envelopes, 4 filter envelopes, and multiple LFOs. These were easily assigned using a drag-and-drop line that places a little orange triangle on a knob that can be adjusted by clicking on the triangle and dragging the mouse up or down. With this kind of simplicity, I found it rather enjoyable experimenting with the sounds to craft what could turn into an almost infinite variety of possibilities. Almost every part of this synth features something to adjust; it became like an expedition to see what new sound treasures I could dig up.

Each oscillator display has a clickable menu above the waveform that contains a multitude of samples and shapes to further augment your sound. This gets even more beautifully complex when you click the little plus sign in the bottom right corner to stack up to 4 of these per oscillator and I lost about a day in my life just trying out different combinations.

The knobs along the sides of the display allows for the sound of each oscillator to be further shaped to your liking and it enables you to zero in on the sound you’re looking for with absolute precision. Some of these knobs include: level, transpose, fine tuning, noise, x-side/mid, formant, bit/rate, wsync, etc…these do change based upon what you have loaded into each oscillator though.

The area under the osc display is where you will find your editor, sequencers, arpeggiators, and envelopes tabs. The editor tab’s parameters are contingent upon whether a sample, a waveform or a wavetable is loaded and features some very useful editing functions. When it came to the mod and pitch envelopes,

I personally liked that the different envelopes had multi-breakpoints for making adjustments and that it allowed me to see numerical values in which to reference for crafting like sounds in the future.

This section is also where you will find the drum sequencer, which I think was a great bonus addition and a lot of fun to use in conjunction with all the other great features in this synth.

I still can’t believe how versatile this synthesizer really is and how a detailed analysis of it would border on being classified as a book. When you add in the 32-high quality onboard effects, this synth will find a home in any genre and any form of mass media.

Facts

Features (short):

VST / PC & Intel Mac VST / AU & AAX – runs in all compatible hosts
64 Bit and VST3 standard (64Bit is required!)
over 900 factory presets
620 multi-samples
218 special samples (attacks, noises)
154 re-sampler waves
168 drum kits, 168 drum sequences
596 wavetables
thousands of OSC shapes (waveforms) available
30 fx types (incl. analog chorus, Reverb, Phaser, etc. from Arts Acoustic
47 Filter types
up to 1000 playing oscs with one note possible
Resampling/wavetable generator built in freeform OSCs. Draw your own waveforms alias free OSCs, Wavetables, FM and AM modulation powerful and easy drag and drop mod matrix
resizable, vectorized GUI (4k ready) undo feature
comfortable preset search system/tag cloud
8 arps, drum sequencers, 8 step sequencers, 18 envelope generators
16 individually routable sub outs into your DAW’s mixer
macro controllers assigned in each preset, for quick sound changes
external midi controllers and pedals support
free routable fx busses and send effects
customizable lfos, 4 shaper modules (distortion units on OSC level)
many unisono features: chorder and our own invented “V-Saw” supersaw
key- and velocity zones
import your own (multi)samples, drums, wavetables or OSC waveforms
MIDI learn function (connect your external MIDI gear with Avenger)

VPS Avenger sells for $220.00 from Vengeance Sound

Demos of VPS Avenger

Videos of VPS Avenger