curiosity got the better of me, and I'm trying BigSky out. bearing in mind my recent thread about Shimmer verbs, I totally expect thats where this will shine. Its not my favourite effect, but I'm willing to set my own tastes aside here and just judge it for what it is.
First thing I noticed was that the parameter values are largely 1-127. Odd to default to that in a plugin, but I get it for HW compatibility. But all I can see is an option to show the MIDI values, or nothing at all. Seems odd to set a pre-delay in 1 - 127 rather than ms or musical subdivisions. Felt weird too for dialing a mix knob that it wasn't immediately a %.
Also noticed that it needed the signal level dropping a bit otherwise the reverbs distorted. Easy enough to adjust but kind of uncommon for plugin reverbs to behave like that without REALLY driving them hard.
Magneto and Bloom are my favourites here, Magneto is a cool effect in its own right. The shorter reverbs were pretty nice too, could imagine the rooms, reflections and non-lin being cool for funk type guitars.
The halls and plates feel a bit exaggerated and cheesy to me, but given what the pedal is all about I think thats the point. The spring sounds a bit like a hall to me in the decay, not my favourite. I think for those sounds I'd generally always be reaching for something else. A bit disappointed with those, expected them to be much better.
Compared to what I have available for similar dreamy and effect laden/creative sounds, BigSky definitely has something musical about it - the drones maintain enough of the note without becoming a wash of noise.
The UI and feel of the plugin feels like they've done it all in house when they really should have hired someone else to do it. It feels like a stock PT plugin from 2006. Its workable but sometimes knobs and switches change when the mouse moves past, missing specific values that makes sense needs addressing, and it just feels a bit simple. I can't see myself buying the pedal, half feel like having the plugin available will scratch that itch, and offer something to clients who need it. Tough to decide if I'll buy it or not....
www.strymon.net
