Native Instruments Spektral Delay VST PC

Studio based musician for the past few decades. Using Spektral with Sonar 4 and Live 4. Primarily PC based, have used Spektral with Mac/Digital Performer as well. FW-1884 now for Soundcard, have use MOTO interfaces in the past.

Yes, fairly easy to use out of the box. Use the owner manual for deeper tweaking (which is absolutely something you can do with Spektral). I've used it with keyboards, guitar (love it!), and drums, all with generally excellent results.

The presets are a very good place to start, you will need to spend a little time with the manual if you want to go into the deep end of the pool. Like anything else software these days anyhow. :-)

I think the sound quality is the claim to fame of this product. You need to match up the presets/parameters for what you are expecting this tool to do. Some folks have mentioned less than stellar sound quality, and I believe they are just not using this correctly.

If you overdrive a mixer channel because you set the gain way too high, does that mean the mixer sucks? Don't think so.

Same with this tool. Not all presets are ideal for a given sound scenario. If you spend the small amount of time, you'll gain new soundfields that you never thought possible.

Nope, I don't work for NI. I'm just a very satisfied customer with this tool. I've got a lot of plug-ins, this is a very high usage one.

Bought this as part of NI Komplete. Shop around, you'll find some competitive prices on this package, or just Spektral itself.

Comparable to nothing else for what it does, and what I like to use it for. I look at this as an active audio spectrum enhancer (and defiler) first, also as an idea generator. For a straight delay, it works fine, but there are other plugs that will do a delay fine. (I use a PCM42 for most straight delays).

I'll use this tool with everything from straight rock, jazz, to space ambient.

Hope you find peace and prosperity with your music!

People miss the point with this fx plugin / software-It has a distinct - cold and digital sound alot - but for electronica its a must have piece of software along with these .

http://www.studiosound.btinternet.co.uk/spek.htm

which i found were very handy.

The software has a great interface and is very deep but dont expect
it to be analgue sounding and warm...its very clinical - but thats why many people love it.

Its an essential piece of software . . . .even when you have 2000# hardware fx....

I thought this might be cool new intresting effect to use with Cool Edit Pro.

Interface was quite simple and effective. Good.

This was the only thing that was not good at all,
and with sound it all goes down.

AUGH! My ears were destroyed! Please check this product before you buy it. No matter what went troght it, it allways hat this sqeeeky sound in it. Specially natural instruments and vocals were useless after beeing done with this plug-in. So sad, bacause the effect in really cool. Specially on hi-fi equipment or studio monitors really show how bad this plug-in sound. TEST IT BEFORE YOU BUY! ...or in my opinion, do not detsroy your sounds with it.

With price paid, i would have thought it would not have sounded so horrible.

Playing music for 30+ years, now just as a hobby. Primarily keyboards. Using latest version (1.5?) Using it to mangle samples w/Cool Edit. Music is electronic non-commercial. Using it on a 1 gig Athlon w/ Alesis monitors.

Pretty easy to use- load a preset and tweak before trying anything from scratch. Have had to refer to the manual a couple of times, not extensively. It's easy to get some interesting sounds out of it. Another tool in the toolbox.

It sounds good- very clean. I'm using it as a DX plug-in w/Cool Edit to warp samples.

I think it's worth the price. I'm not sure how that other reviewer paid $500 for it- I bought it direct. It does use the CPU quite heavily at times, but for my application that's not an issue. I've had it crash a couple of times- could be my system though.

I'm a full time professional composer w. 11+ years experience and 25+ years of gigging experience. Guitarist and Synth programmer. Used on a MAC G4, 400mhz, 640 Mb ram (OS 9.1) with Logic Audio Platinum 4.8.1. Used for sound design and getting more mileage out of samples etc. Mostly ultra-modern synth/guitar oriented music though it's hard to really pinpoint my stuff - it literally ranges from hip hop to heavy rock to classical and all points between. I'm the head writer for Brown Bag productions. We're heard by over 2 billion tv and radio listeners on 5 continents every day - literally. I use a korg oasys and Digi 001 for audio on both my home rig and at work. Tannoy monitors.

After some looking at the user presets I was using all the features without too much trouble. It does have a learning curve but it's not as difficult if you tweak user presets to your liking. If you're not a tekno-head it may be daunting to learn and appreciate it's unique offerings. It only works on digital audio tracks, you can't plug this unit in after a vst synth - this is supposed to be fixed in the 1.5 update. This is a temporary bummer. I have no problems running it stand alone or in logic w. vst, but it puts a huge hit on my cpu's processing power. I usually process samples or audio to disk with it then, use the processed audio rather than leave it plugged in - my G4 can run out of processing power quick if I don't use it this way. It's easy to install, just a one time cd key for copy protection. It has full midi automation but since I'm pre-processing audio I don't really do so much of that. It has an assignable lfo to stir things up and there are many cool sounds I've been able to get out of it. The manual is pretty good. I prefer to study the numerous banks of presets to understand the deeper sonic potential of devices this complex. It IS a monster plugin.

Awesome sounds. It does generic delay stuff but it can do resynthesis type things as well. It is a type of grain synth that operates in the frequency domain as opposed to the amplitude domain. (WHAT?) It is so unique you have to hear it to understand what I'm talking about. It is truly killer and there is NOTHING like it on the market to my knowledge.

I read another reviewers' comment that he paid $500.00 for his - IT RETAILS FOR $199 to $299!! He got screwed! I only paid $139 plus tax - I'd give it a bad review too if I paid that much for mine! For my money, it kicks ass at the price I paid. I highly recommend it. We have 2 Eventide orville units at work as well as a Lexicon 300 and the new 960 unit too. NIs' Spektral Delay can't do what these devices do, but SD does things that none of these units can do - so it is a worthwile addition no matter how much you may have invested in other high-end reverb/delay units. I do wish it didn't put such a hit on the computer though. I've had no crash issues with it at all.

This plug works for VST and DX. It can sound very good. It does three tricks: High/low pass filter sounds, conventional short delay sounds and strange resonances. Yea, that's all good but this plug costs well over $500! Also, I personally find it hard to use. You should exspect to make a few trips to the help file when learning.

I just re-read Electronic Musician's glowing review. Boy, did they over-rate this thing! I have to say, it's not that great. Like I said, It makes three basic sounds which can be done with much cheaper plugs.

Also, This plug has a stand alone mode which does not function on my Win 98 computer. I own a bunch of NI software and this seems the be a problem. The stand alone versions either don't work or are very buggy. WTF NI, don't you guys give a sh*t?

DO NOT BUY THIS PLUG--IT COSTS TOO MUCH AND DOES TOO LITTLE. AND, DON'T EXSPECT TO USE THIS THING IN STAND ALONE MODE, IT DOES NOT WORK!