Sonic Projects OP-X

I had been looking for an Oberheim VSTi for some time, given up, and then stumbled across Sonic Projects' wonderful OP-X rendering of the OB-X synthesizer. I was knocked out by their online sounds demos. Being a sucker for anything that sounds like Pink Floyd, I was impressed by the "Wish You Were Here" sounds it could do. The Van Halen "Jump" and Rush "Tom Sawyer" were just too much for me to resist. The OP-X was inexpensive compared to some of its close relatives from other companies, so I decided to give the demo a try.

The "Pro" version gives fine tuning ability for all the individual synth parameters, and when I say "individual synth" I mean every note you play on the OP-X has a separate signal path through an individual 2-oscillator synthesizer. It has 6 of these, and that is where the incredibly rich, "ballsy" sound comes from. I think the regular OP-X model is enough to get most folks going who are just trying to find a good classic analog sounding VSTi to play with, but the "Pro" model is really a fantasy come true. This is a VSTi with meat on the bones.

I have Minimonsta and ImpOSCar to compare it to. I think they compliment each other nicely. Each one has something the others don't. Throw in Oddity and you've got a sound arsenal as good as any 70's or 80's band out there.

OP-X comes with hundreds of preset banks, and one of my favorites is of course the "famous" bank. It has all the aforementioned sounds plus "99 Luft Balloons," and some Jarre stuff, Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode, you name it. OP-X makes an excellent Jupiter emulator and even has that characteristic Roland filter sound available. There are a lot of Roland patches that make me very happy here. It does some decent MiniMoog patches too, but not to surpass Minimonsta in my opinion. I still like Minimonsta for that Moog sound, but OP-X is extremely versatile, especially in Unison mode where it is monophonic but phat as phuck.

My only complaint about OP-X is that sometimes, if you slip and accidentally bump an adjacent key, the sound stops and you have a very noticeable silence. This only happens in unison mode, and may be something that I am doing wrong (besides bad playing.) Other than that, it is very solid, amazingly not too CPU heavy, and just sounds like a dream. The side-by-side comparisons on the website between OP-X and a real OB-X are really amazing.

Here's yet another VSTi for the arsenal, complementing well with other analog simulators for a niche that was once reserved only for that of musical royalty.