Plugin Boutique - Carbon Electra Free

[Despondo]

Plugin Boutique Carbon Electra free with any purchase. Anyone have any review of this VST?

https://www.pluginboutique.com/articles ... 20Giveaway

[Loque]

How good is this thing?

[fretshot7]

How good is this thing?

ok im cynical but does it matter how good it is?
If its free then that probably meant its at end of life from further development and is just a push by plugin boutique to get you to spend money, offering you an unsuccessful vst as a carrot?

[MrFigg]

How good is this thing?

ok im cynical but does it matter how good it is?
If its free then that probably meant its at end of life from further development and is just a push by plugin boutique to get you to spend money, offering you an unsuccessful vst as a carrot?

That said, I’ve had some pretty good plugins for free from PB.

[Loque]

How good is this thing?

ok im cynical but does it matter how good it is?
If its free then that probably meant its at end of life from further development and is just a push by plugin boutique to get you to spend money, offering you an unsuccessful vst as a carrot?

Well, it is not exactly free, so yes, it matters. If you would say "it has that great freaking amazing sound and that super duper uber feature you must have" or something like "man, that patches are so awesome!", i would consider to buy some crappy sh!t VST for 3 bucks and get it for free. Otherwise i already have some good subtractive synths.

I agree, that this thing is probably old, maybe doesnt run inside Reason and the patches are boring and replaceable by every other synth in this world. Just a guess...

[danc]

Without sounding like I'm stating the obvious... but... how about reading some reviews..

MUSIC RADAR
https://www.musicradar.com/reviews/tech ... tra-631556

MUSIC TECH
https://www.musictech.net/reviews/plugi ... -5-review/

SOUND ON SOUND
https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/pl ... on-electra

etc.... etc...

For me personally - I have heard above average reviews... and yet for some reason I don't have it and never been tempted to try it.

[DaveyG]

I trialled it a good while ago and it was... forgettable! Just another synth.

But make your own mind up. the PB page has a trial button.

[hurricane]

Was not impressed the first time I went through the presets. Most of them were too edgy, rough, and brutish, but if that's your thing you'll like it. Almost gave up on it until I decided to make a patch from scratch. That's when I discovered that Carbon Electra has the most pleasing, artifact-free unison mode! The unison on this synth is solid and tight and doesn't sound phasey and weird, like on...say, Papen synths for example. It's almost JP-8080/Access Virus in character, and even the resonance behaves and sounds like those synths - more like the Virus if I had to pick. In fact, as I'm putting more time into it, it's totally reminding me of my Virus - it even has the darker Virus sound. The Supersaw-type patches I am getting out of this stands up well to the current king of software supersaw makers for me - Hive. What a freaking suprise. Carbon gets bonus points from me because everything is on one page. It's very simply laid out, and after a few sessions I'm as comfortable with this as I am with Subtractor. I hope they don't change it by adding a mod-matrix. I'd like it to stay simple and clean like how it is now.

The presets didn't do it for me though. Most of them are very harsh and unusable for me. They've included way too many presets in the 'Sequences' category, and it always makes me wonder who the hell actually uses these one-fingered auto-premade sequences in their productions. Most of the Artist patches sound like they were made with a patch randomizer. The presets do not do this synth justice.

The interface is good, but I don't like the default colors, and while there is no support for skinning, luckily you can modify the bitmaps. I tried doing it quickly, and got it to look much more like how I believe it sounds - and that's more like an Access Virus. This was my first try, so anything that looks odd will get fixed/tweaked:

ce virus.png

I think I spent something like $5 in the 'get carbon free' deal and it was well worth it, and mostly really a nice surprise. The presets let me down here, but the simplicity and sound of Carbon are going to make me keep this synth around.

[hurricane]

Here's a very short demo of 4 different custom patches, one instance of CE per patch. I used a reverb preset from Logic's Chromaverb over everything, but any delays you hear are from Carbon. Wish I had this in my trance days...

[hurricane]

Here's my Virus C skin:

ce vc.png

[hurricane]

And this is the more accurate Virus B skin (I prefer the orange):

cs vb.png

[qn5]

This plugin crashes in Reason every time I remove an instance of it from the rack.
Super weird.