V-Station by Novation - Reviews (2024)

Simple but very effective. This plugin was on my wishlist back in the day, and I'm happy it became free. Has a unique amazing sound. I highly recommend for psytrance music.

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Simple, but yet powerful synth.

Suitable for EDM genres, especially classic trance.

Underestimated imho, could be used among modern synths and to add cool vibe.

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This is a classic synth I bought a few years ago for a good price and have never regretted it.

The sound is good for the price and overall the synth represents really good value for money.

It is easy on the CPU and fairly versatile - featuring limited FM, Hard Sync and some other pretty cool features.

I like this synth and it sounds good for some lead sounds etc.

The only thing I would say is that it would benefit from oversampling and better preset management as it is pretty old skool in that respect (as it was probably intended to be - like the K-station).

I would recommend it for people who make trance etc and want something for leads etc on a limited budget or with limited CPU resources.

In summary, it is a simple synth that is easy to program, has useable presets and offers good flexibility for it's price.

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I bought this because it was going for $69 + postage, which made it hard to go past. It sounds exactly like the hardware K-Station I used to own but is much, much easier to use. The GUI is very well thought-out and looks slick, too.
What I really like about this synth is that, like Korg's software, it has excellent sound quality but is not over-burdened with a million features that get in the way of getting the most from it. it is very easy to get really good sounds from its three fat oscillators and silky smooth filter. The effects are handy and offer more than you might expect, given the lack of fine control.
There are a lot of presets but not much imagination has gone into naming them. I'm not a preset person so I haven't really listened to many of them But this synth is so easy to use your time is much better spent doing your own thing.
Overall it is a well-balanced package with high quality components [oscillators and filter] with enough features to let you do a lot with them. At full-price it was a little expensive but for $69, you'd be crazy not to take the plunge.

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GUI
This is one of the greatest strengths of this synth. The GUI is sweet to look at, but also very clean, functional and easy to use. The Main page contains most of the things you'd need to tweak, and keeping other features on separate pages reduces clutter. The knobs and buttons don't have tooltips, but the name and value of the parameter is displayed in the virtual "LCD" display and idicated by a virtual "LED Ring".

Sound
I bought this after selling my Novation Nova hardware synth, because I missed the smooth analogue Novation sound. Well, now I once again have that sound! It's really very similar, including the filter overdrive and DoubleSaw waveform. The effects also sound similar though they lack some features from the classic Novation synths.

Features
This is a bread and butter virtual analog synth, and it does that job very well. There are some limitations, though. While the Nova had highpass and bandpass filters in 12db, 18db and 24db flavours, as well as a number of extra parallell and serial combinations of filters, the V-Station only comes with one LP filter, switchable between 12db and 24db. Also, the modulation routing capabilities are a bit limited. You can't freely assign LFO's (LFO2 can't modulate osc pitch, LFO1 can't modulate filter frequency or res for example), and there's only one Mod Env. Also, the limitation of 8 voices seems a bit restrictive when today's CPUs can handle much more. If you choose to use 4 voices in unison mode, the synth becomes duophonic, for example. This is a shame as some very powerful string arrangments would have been possible if more voices were available. The arpeggiator also loses the hundreds of preset and user patterns available on the Nova, which seems a bit backwards as PC's have much more RAM than the old Nova synth.

Docs
I've almost nevver looked at the docs because the synth is so self explanatory, but they seem very well written. Combined with the clear and user friendly layout, this makes it a great learning tool for those who are new to analog synthesizers.

Presets
Basses: Check, Synced Leads: Check, "Phat" Danze Soundz: Check, Arpeggios: Check, Pads and Strings: Check. You get most of the basic bread and butter analogue sounds you might need, but with few surprises. They aren't categorized at all, but the list of factory presets is mercifully short. You really need to program your own sounds to take full advantage of this synth.

Support
Never had to use it but I've only heard got things from others who have

Stability
The plugin is very stable and has never crashed under XP SP2 and Cubase SX3. The plugin consumes about 10% CPU with effects and 8 voices active on my Athlon64 3500+. This is higher than some of the most efficent synths, but still very good. The sound quality is excellent and very close to its hardware counterpart, which justifies this CPU usage. In these days, when some plugins consume 60% CPU for one voice, this is very refreshing.

Value
There are tons of freeware, shareware and commercial virtual analog synths available. There's no reason in particular why you should by this synth, but then again, there's nothing in particular against it. If you do buy it, you'll get a solid instrument, that despite lacking a few advanced features, will probably become one of the first synths, hard or soft, you reach for when you need an analogue-style sound in your song. If you've owned (or still do) a Novation synth and you're familiar with the sound, you'll be happy to know that this little plugin has the same sound. Finally, this is a great synth for those who are just getting into synths, with room to grow as your skills and techniques improve.

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I sat up all night until the very late early (!) hours of the morning just drooling over the sound that was coming out of this thing.

It sounds as good as *any* hardware I've ever heard. The filters really are liquidy-smooth.
It is capable of perfect vangellis sounds,arps,strings so another words it is perfect for all types of dance music!

Lush. Exotic. Quality. Throw any great superlative at it!

If I were to ever buy a hardware VA hardware synth I'd definately pick up one of these (the K-Station).
This softsynth is really well laid out. Each specific area has it's own flip-screen so you don't have everything just crammed into the one page.

The effects are of really good quality, and it seems really quick and easy to get the kind of sound out of it that you want, unlike many other softsynths that seem to be lacking a certain logic flow. I really like the way the most important FX settings can be quickly changed.

Overall, you can't go wrong with this if you're into dance music, or ambient electronica.

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GUI:
Looks amazing and has been very intuitive for me. 10/10 for sheer simplicity and friendliness. This is probably the interface/VSTi that has helped me the most when it comes to wrapping my head around some the more complicated synths/effects. Everything is well dimensioned, all the labels and data is very readable, and the dials, faders and toggle switches are easy to work with.

Sound:
It's warm. Though you can get some hard, crunching sounds out of V-Station, it's the pristine, luscious pads and clear arpeggiated harp-like sounds that keeps me turning to it when I need that type of sound. The effects section is probably beat for most stuff by a few higher end VST plugins, but I use them quite happily, hearing a superb flair to some of the presets that comes from using the effects to their full potential.

Features:
While it doesn't advance any new features compared to it's hardware predecessors, what it does have works exceptionally well. Even if there is a limit to what sounds you can get with it, if you're looking for something within the spectre of pads, leads, etc, and with huge tweak effectiveness, V-Station is it.
Even with all the new VSTi's that are embarking on finding new forms of synthesis, processing and whatnot, V-Station will never grow stale.

Documentation:
Haven't looked too much at it, but it is fairly detailed in explaining what every function is used for, with illustrations for most, and it's well layed out. There's also a very neat Getting Started guide.

Presets:
There aren't that many I agree, and they have generic names, but among these, you'll find a few gems that sound plain fantastic, and are very versatile. With the ease of tweaking sounds in V-Station, that I feels surpasses most, if not every VSTi I've tried to date, I'm not finding it at all hard to get the sounds I want to achieve.

Customer Support:
Never needed any. That's a 10 in my book. Well, not really, but not knowing them, I'd feel bad giving anything less than a 10.

Value for Money:
Best value ever.

Stability:
Never had a crash.

Recommending this to any person who wants to learn more about synthesis.

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A very nice VSTi, you can create a wide variety of very nice basses, leads, arps, pads, strings, brasses and organs with the V-Station. The V-Station has a lot of buttons and knobs, but tweaking it is quite easy, even for a VSTi-n00b like me. Within minutes you'll be creating some funky sounds. The Value For Money factor is quite good (the price stated on KvR is wrong, the actual price is a lot lower, I belive ). The only thing I really don't like about this VSTi is that it's not very stable. Often when I use it in FLstudio it gives me stranges errors and crashes. Even though the customer support has been very, very helpfull I haven't been abel to fix it yet.

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I gonna give this PLug the same applause as the Basstation! ...it is definitley a hardware replacement (I dont know what hardware piece it would replave thou!) but I know that i use it. The preset are nice ...the leads are very usable in a mix. Like most of novation products, it shines notably (IMHO) in recording!

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This will be the first proper VSTi that I've actually walked in to a shop and bought: and this was purely on the quality of the presets that came with the Demo!

Well, there's no denying that it's a Novation. To be fair, I'm into my Trance/Dance/Big-Beat style music and had been using Reason as my sole source for synths until I got this and Cubase. The presets just blew me away, the filters are warm and sound just incredible: I couldn't believe that this sound was coming out of my speakers... usual superlatives and so on - you get the picture...

So what do you get? 3 Oscillators, 2 LFOs, FM modulation, dedicated effects and that big fat Novation badge stuck across the GUI. It's easy to use, with intuitive menus. If you already own a K-Station, the interface is almost identical and you can send patches between the two. This also means that V-Station owners can import K-Station patches from the Novation website :) Patches are orginised in intervals of 10, so 100 is Bass1, 110 is Bass2 and so on. This makes it easy to browse similar sounding patches without having to guess the patch number.

I'll say it again, it sounds great. I thought this was going to be a dance machine but it really is so much more. I can get Vangelis style leads, Kraftwerk-y triads and a load of other bleeps, whilstles and sweeps out of this thing. And to think, I was going to get the Model-E instead...

Downsides: It can be a CPU hog, especially with some of the arpeggios and long decay notes. SL sort of slows slightly in some instances but catches up with itself once the first few notes are played. Bear in mind that this is me running 4 V-Stations, Effects and Reason at the same time... Note also that you're Restricted to 8 Note polyphony per instance (though you can run it in Monophonic mode and fatten things up with 8 detunable voices). Freeze helps though (SL/SX2 and Logic?).

So many things to explore with it, but I still find myself tweaking presets instead of creating patches from scratch. I'll get round to it one day though...

great.

benw

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There are certain VSTi that just make me melt and the Novation V-Station went WAY beyond melting. We're talking straight-up gooification! The sounds are so fat and beefy that it seems almost unbelievable that this is a soft-synth and not some clunky piece of analog gear.

True most of the presets are geared more towards dance and electronica but with just a few knob tweaks, you can make some surreal ambient leads as well as wicked-punchy 2-step basslines.

My only complaint is that the preset names are very general and vague in nature but it's not really a big deal.

One last thing that sold me on the V-Station was the GUI. If I'm gunna blur my vision looking at a computer screen for hours (and occasionally days) on end, at least give me something sexy to look at. Good job Novation!

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Ive been using KVR for a couple of years now and this is my very first review. So what does that tell you?

If your thinking about buying it then your already making a mistake. It's absolutely amazing, so get it now! and send me some bloody presets (cause theres just not enough!)

Yeah, it sounds great and looks great, but its only downfalls are that it doesnt come with enough presets, although a plus is that it can load presets from the a station or k station, but again another fault is that it cant load their banks directly, just one patch at a time, unless your using sysex.

Novation have just made it a straight port of their k station, however they could have easily made it a port of their ks4 synth (even could have included a keyboard) since pretty much all of the technology from the ks4 is already there (excluding the multi timbrality - which you get past by simply loading another v station, and the fact that the v station only has 8 voices, whereas the ks4/5 synths have 16) but there are ways around these limits if you know what your doing.

Basically what we have here is one of novations finest synths in software form.

If your looking for 'real' synth sounds, then youve got it here. you can actually hear the quality.

I wouldnt be surprised if you could build a complete dance track from using v-station alone, since its great for basses and leads.

The only thing i say to you is, if you have the money buy it, because synths of this quality are rare and if we want to see more of them then people have to pay. so don't download it, buy it and maybe we will soon see a virtual nova!

heres hoping ;)

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well i had the chance to spend a few hours with this
the other day..

the vsti crusher

it is at the very top of the vsti food chain.
no other can even come close to the thick sound of this.the ease of editing.the ergonomic interface.
never have i heard such lows from a vsti.
i am in awe.

if your into dance or progressive this is the unit.

absolutely amazing.novation has raised the bar for
ALL vsti developers.get out your notebook kids and
start taking notes.
i knew some company would eventually do it.
and novation has left every developer in the dust.
guess its time to play catch up.

go out and buy this its well worth it.

im not going into detail because it is
superior in every sense.

hey developers dont get mad..... get even

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As an A-Station owner, I knew what I wanted from a Novation synth. The V-Station does not disappoint. Novation have based their hardware range on fat sounding virtual analogue systems. The V-Station has this sound down to a tee. If anything it sounds a little crisper than the A-Station. The 200 presets are mainly directed towards 'dance' style sounds; fat mono-basses, trance leads etc etc, but theres some very nice pads and 'traditional' patches in there too. Under Cubase SX and Nuendo, the plugin has been very stable. CPU wise, I'd class it middle ground. I can run 4 V-Stations and a Stylus on 1Ghz PIII. The UI is clear and easy to use. I feel its good value for money too.

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