VPS Avenger Expansions Review – Preset Heat

VPS Avenger Expansions

• Sound
• Features
• Ease Of Use

4.7

Summary

EDM 1, Future Chill and Moombahton & Trap Expansions are necessary accessories for the incredible Avenger synth.

Pros:
– Beautifully designed presets
– Genre Specific sounds that you can have fun trying to reverse-engineer

Cons:
– Expensive

You can always trust Vengeance-sound to spoil you for choice when it comes to sound banks or expansion packs for their  vsti’s. The much touted Avenger synth is no exception (see our recent VPS Avenger review). We were lucky enough to get our hands on the three brand new sound expansions available for Avenger and put them through their paces in a contolled environment.

Installation

Installing an expansion pack for Avenger couldn’t be more simple. Simply drag and drop the downloaded expansion from the folder onto the Edit portion of Avenger and the burly synth will ingest it. We added all three in under five minutes. An efficient and visual process that doesn’t confuse with the manual placement of folders. Once ingested the sound banks appear alongside the OE factory bank in the top-left browser window.

So..? What do they sound like?

Starting with EDM 1, the first thing I noticed was that there are only a handful of ARP’s – 7 at my count but with 131 new presets total you will feel pretty spoiled with 26 new drum kits and drum sequences, 10 wavetables, 41 new OSC shapes and 81 multi-samples.  Starting with Basses ‘Deep and Pop’ is a perfect Deep House/Garage bass. The fatness, girth and frequency content is perfect for the genre. You’ll also find Dubstep wobbles and growls as well as Future Bass and other more genre bending low end content. Love the FX section – again only 5 presets in there but each a diamond. Risers that could be simply drawn in to your track if you so wish.  The SEQUENCES section will blow your mind. So many amazing song-starter ideas here. Garage, Nu Disco, Progressive, Garage, Future, Chill, Main Room. As expected EDM 1 Expansion is Beatport in a bag. It’s a direct and deadly blast across the bows of other synth manufacturers, and any producer hooked on this genre should pay careful attention.

 If you’re more into that Flume/Waveracer style then Future Chill is the one you want. It’s a very well defined pack with 137 total presets. Whilst there is only 1 new Wavetable there are 50 new OSC shapes and 13 Drum kits and 26 multi-samples. Personally I think the important thing to understand is the sound design and the awesome, genre specific drum kits. This Expansion really delivers in those important categories. Lush, intricate plucks, Beautifully filtered synths and pads. I think my favorite section in this Expansion is CHORDS. Just a dime stack of interesting and unique sounds. There is delicate modulation, excellent use of Avenger’s sick onboard effects and plenty of lo-fi, glitchy sounding fodder that will leave a true fan of the genre salivating.

Lastly it’s time for the Moombah & Trap crowd. There’s a lot of great stuff in this expansion. Some great, great sound design and really original thinking when it comes to the Mod Matrix and the step sequencers. For my liking a lot of the sounds in this Expansion seem overtly wet, however, that is easily rectified by lowering the SEND volume on the generators to taste. If I had to pick a couple of the most useful sounds I would go straight to the VC (or Voice) section and choose Analog Box and Urban Voicelead – two essentials for almost any kind of Urban Electronica.

Conclusion
These first three Expansions from Vengeance-sound for their new Avenger synth are basically crammed with top draw patches and are  exactly what you’d expect from a company that has essentially sound-designed the course of mainstream electronic music for the last 10 years. Each Expansion holds a great many keys to the operational elements of it’s stated genre and they make incredibly good starting points for genre specific production. This is really essential stuff for the serious electronic producer.

Price and Availability
EDM 1, Future Chill and Moombahton & Trap Expansions are available now. Each Expansion weighs in at $70/67€ and you can find more info here.