VPS Avenger 2.5 Announced: The Open Beta Brings a MIDI Sequencer, Piano Roll, Three New Effects, and More!
Open Beta for All VPS Avenger 2 Owners Starts Now
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VPS Avenger 2.5 Announced: The Open Beta Brings a MIDI Sequencer, Piano Roll, Three New Effects, and More! · Source: Vengeance-Sound
Vengeance Sound released the first public beta of VPS Avenger 2.5.0 today, the upcoming version 2.5 of its software synthesizer. At the center is a brand-new MIDI sequencer with an arrangement view, piano roll, MIDI recording, and MPE editing. On top of that come three new effects, round robin for drum kits, and fresh modulation options. Wow! All owners of VPS Avenger 2 can test the beta. My download has already started.
VPS Avenger 2.5 Beta: MIDI Sequencer, Effects, and Everything New at a Glance
VPS Avenger 2.5: My Take on an Update for Sound Designers
I count myself among the heavy users of Vengeance Sound tools and its flagship synth. Version 2 of Avenger was already a big step forward, and for sound designers, this synthesizer is definitely more than a playground, it’s a real source of creative ideas.
At first glance, the MIDI sequencer isn’t the main reason for me to update. Anyone who digs into it, though, may end up with a pretty exciting playground for wild arpeggios complete with pitch and other modulations. MIDI import and the audio-to-MIDI function in particular could score points here, and the new effects sound promising too. So let’s go through the new features one by one.
New MIDI Sequencer With a Dedicated Track per Oscillator
The biggest new feature in Avenger 2.5 is the built-in MIDI sequencer, which gives each oscillator its own track. Within a MIDI part, you can also edit up to ten modulation controllers.
A new arrangement view lets you move, copy, duplicate, cut, merge, compress, stretch, and reverse parts. Loop regions and multi-selection are part of the workflow too.
For detail work in Avenger 2.5, there’s a part editor with a piano roll. You draw notes in draw, brush, or line mode, and there’s also a velocity lane plus several CC lanes with curve editing. Zoom functions and automatic following of the playback position round out the editor.
Avenger 2.5 also supports MIDI recording and step recording, and an integrated metronome with pre-count helps while you play things in. The official video shows the new workflow:
MPE, Track Functions, and New Modulation Sources in VPS Avenger 2.5
The sequencer was expanded for expressive performances too. With MPE, you can draw pitch curves for individual notes and connect them to the notes that follow, and per-note modulation and humanize come along as well. You can surely create some seriously exciting movements this way.
At the track level, you get shuffle, transposition, key ranges, input velocity, and MIDI key follow with note offset and octave, among other things. New as modulation sources are track velocity and MIDI controller tracks, which you drag and drop onto any modulation target inside Avenger. This is exactly where sound designers will likely experiment a lot.
MIDI Import and Export, Plus Experimental Audio-to-MIDI
A new import browser supports ARP presets and MIDI files, which you drag straight onto a sequencer track or into the part editor. In the other direction, you export individual parts or entire tracks as MIDI files, so musical material moves easily back and forth between Avenger and your DAW. That’s superbly done.
Audio-to-MIDI is explicitly experimental: you drag WAV samples onto a sequencer track, and Avenger tries to turn the audio material into MIDI data. Very interesting! Parts can also get their own colors through a color picker, all sequencer edits support undo and redo, and hotkeys can be assigned freely.
Sparkle Delay, Scorch Flanger, and Dynamic EQ
The internal effects section grows by three effects: the Sparkle Delay, the Scorch Flanger, and DYN EQ, a dynamic equalizer. The existing bitcrusher was reworked and now offers additional options plus a new randomizer.
Round Robin for Drum Kits and More Modulation Features
Up to seven additional round robin samples can now be loaded per drum slot. Different round robin modes and individual gain settings per sample are meant to deliver more natural variations, and you drag new samples straight onto the respective slots.
The noise section of the oscillators gets a new cross-modulation mode (XMOD). In the EventTrigger, all macro buttons of the additional modules can serve as trigger sources, and the slots’ context menu now includes the new “Clear Sample” function. Modulating parameters such as LFOs or filter cutoff are now displayed in the interface including their min/max peaks, and the default number of undo steps rises from 20 to 50.
Lower CPU Load and Plenty of Bug Fixes
According to the changelog, Vengeance Sound optimized the CPU performance of several modules, with the filters benefiting in particular. The first beta also fixes numerous bugs from earlier versions, including problems with ARP Legato and Connect, filter envelope modulations, mod envelope triggers, double triggers in the drum sequencer, clicking artifacts in the phaser and AA reverb, and errors when loading and managing presets and expansions.
Further fixes affect the FM assignments of OSC 8, wavetable files, expansion images, routing, and the modulation matrix. On macOS, a right-click issue in the ARP pattern control was fixed as well.
Price and Availability
VPS Avenger 2.5.0-beta.1 is available now as an open beta for all VPS Avenger 2 owners through your account. If you don’t own the synthesizer yet, you can currently pick up Avenger 2 here at Thomann* for 219 Euro.
Beta Status and Access: My Take
That the beta is open only to Avenger 2 owners at first is a perfectly normal way to do it and no point of criticism. What you should keep in mind, though, is the beta status itself: errors and bugs can still crop up, and Vengeance Sound explicitly labels audio-to-MIDI in particular as experimental. For sessions with a deadline, I’d try the beta out separately first.
It’ll be interesting to see whether the sequencer proves itself in everyday use as a source for unusual arpeggios and modulations. I’m very curious.
More Information
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