Applied Acoustics Systems Tassman 3.0

The presets are quite good but nowhere near the number you get with Reaktor, nor is there anything like that kind of user base. The company is rather stingy with material.

Editing, creating patches is not difficult once you know the program.

n/a not hardware

Excellent sounds, as far as they go.

It is SOFTWARE

Tassman is a good program. The real problem is that the company Applied Acoustics prices it too high, charges too much for upgrades, and provides little in the way of freebies.

Compare this to NI and Reaktor; you got Reaktor 4 FREE as an upgrade. These guys would have charged big time for it.

Worse, when they make new models, i.e. Electric Piano, Synth, etc. rather than passing them on to users like NI or Nord, they issue them as separate products and charge for them.

This is a good program but lousy value. Again company is stingy.

Others are providing physical modeling in software now, reducing the main selling point of this program. What it does it does well, but it is overpriced and the company tries to milk as much as it can out of things that ought to go free to users or at a nominal cost.

Given their upgrade and addition policy you have to figure the real cost over time will be a lot more than the (high) initial price.

I'm using the latest version.

The presets sound good to great. Because it is a total physical modeling program,it really plays with the sonic landscape. I found editing the existing patches painless, but had a bit of a learning curve getting there. I especially love its flutes and percussive sounds. Its analog emulations are not as much realistic as they are effective.

Its effects sound good and really add to its sonic capabilities. Like all synths, there is a certain complexity to its architecture. But that gives the synth far more possibilities then ....say, the Minimoog would have.

Realistic? Depending on your performance, layering and motive, this synth could could be very realistic. However, I think that samplers and certain sample libraries may be a better choice for orchestral and acoustic emulations.

I find that it works well in many familiar genres and some genres not yet discovered.

As far as playing the instrument, it begs for you to perform its patches. It almost asks you on certain sounds, to rethink or learn different techniques to performance you may not be used to. This was a turnoff to many keyboard players back when Yamaha introduced its first physical modeling hardware synth...but, there were those that embrased it and came out way ahead on the other side.

So far..so good.

Lost or stolen..I'd definately replace it. Its a monster of its own.

I've been playing for quite awhile and own alot of gear..you name it, I probably have both in softsynth or hardware.

What I love about Tassman is its uniqueness / versitility / architecture and sound possibilities. Its not for the squeamish...or ,maybe it is. I don't hate anything about it, however, its interface look is not one of my favorites.

It not only adds to the music creation, it can inspire.

Last thoughts.... in my opinion, no ONE synthesizer ( be it software or hardware ) can cover all the bases without sounding like itself. Therefore, its always a better production call to use a variety of sound modules, synths and samplers to create your pallet. And Tassman ( although, not cheap) is a powerful player you can add to your set up. And in the game of sound manipulation, Tassman is a serious addition.

I purchased the update to Tasmsan 3 as a sonar xl user. Although there is a free upgrade for sonar 1.0 users, the upgrade you buy let's you use the prgram on both Mac and PC as well as all the other plugins as well as DXi. The differences in this latest version are like night and day. The program is much easier to use, entirely more stable, and I think perhaps the sound quality has also been improved. There are around 60 instruments included of many different kinds, and more presets than I have had time to test in the 3 weeks since I got it. What I have heard so far is excellent. The acoustic instruments have lots of potential and encourage tweaking, the FM synths are also very strong in this release. The analog mind you, is I think quite easily the best sounding, and most realistic of any softsynths. True beautiful and thick like a real analog instrument. A sinlge oscillator and filter mono synths sounds far better than my Virus or Nord Lead.

Patch editing has been made simpler with a color code in the builder, and a browser view qwhich let's you drag and drop all the parts of a synth, and stores your patches. This makes things very organized and easy to work with.

I think 32 voices is as much poly as you can get, but so far this has not been limiting. The program is quite CPU intensive so more voices would probably not make much sense anyway. The included effects are of high quality and you can basically do anything except for clean ambient reverbs, although the modeled tube based reverb produces some excellent spring like sounds. Everything in the program can be controlled with MIDI and the new learn abilities make it very easy to set this up. The new sequencers also make the program a lot of fun to play in standalone mode, particularly the CV which allows you to draw in shapes for the pitch of your sequence or to modulate other objects.

I think if any instrument has the power to appeal to most musicians it would perhaps be this one, and Reaktor. I have both and I can't really see needing anythnig else for synth sounds. All of Tassman 's instruments are well designed and capable for producing excellent results. Some of the presets seem a little liek they are a joke, but with a sense of humour even these can be realized in a mix some how.

So far the program has been very stable, I have had no crashes unlike the older version. Much better!!!

The AA guys have been very good about getting things for the update working, and have even released a patch only a few short weeks after the prgram first arrived. I reccommend them highly, and would say that all sonar users should buy this upgrade to support AA's futures.

Very good program with lots of possibility and fun, and very easy to