Audio Simulation's Dreamstation
Reviewed by Tony Thomas
All-in-one virtual synths like Propellerhead's Reason seem to be the rage these days and for good reason. They offer the ability to make music without the previously requisite (and often cumbersome) hardware and cord spaghetti. Unfortunately, a lot of the virtual synths are almost as expensive and as their non-virtual brethren.
That certainly is not the case with Audio Simulation's Dreamstation. At $59 for the downloaded version and $69 for CD & manual, it may very well be one of best virtual synth bargains in existence.
Its feature list is certainly impressive enough:
Subtractive synthesis combined with FM synthesis
96 Oscillators organized into 32 separate voices
Up to 3 oscillators (even PCM oscillators), Multimode self oscillating IIR filter, VCA, LFO, User EG for each voice
Linear frequency modulation
Hard synchronization
Ring modulation
Distortion
Built-in 32 tracks step time sequencer
100 Patterns with 32 tracks and a maximum of 128 steps each
Two commands/controllers for each note and every step per track
Automation of the synthesizer's knobs, recordable tweaking
Dream Station virtual MIDI ports
Full MIDI support and control
MIDI synchronization
Built-in 8 channel stereo mixer
Volume, Pan, FX sends and mute parameters
MIDI control
Dual stereo programmable effects processor
Chorus, Flanger, Phaser, Delay and Reverberation
Is It A Just A Dream?
I fired up Dreamstation to put it through its paces. At first glance, it reminded me of the PPG with its pretty blue panel. My first stop was the "Parametrics" demo file. It is a trance/house synth workout that provides a very impressive analog simulation--one that is comparable to many hardware virtual synths I've tried.
By default, Dreamstation installs itself as a MIDI device on your system complete with MIDI in and out (for recoding knob tweaks). Dreamstation uses Direct X or MME for soundcard interfacing and latency is dependent upon CPU speed and load. Up to three effects can be employed simultaneously and they run the gamut of delays, flangers, choruses, phasers and reverbs. The quality of these effects is very high, but they are also host based and therefore CPU dependent.
A simple pattern editor/sequencer is available for composition purposes and it can be synced to an external MIDI clock. This makes Dreamstation an integrated synth workstation. Also, if that isn't enough, samples can be loaded and assigned to keyboard split ranges and used within compositions. In addition, Dreamstation's knobs can be mapped to MIDI controllers and up to ten of the Dreamstation's knobs can be recorded using the automation panel.
If you know your way around the control panel of an analog synth, you'll have no problem editing Dreamstation's synth. There are three oscillators per voice (with up to 32 voices total) with an array of waveforms, one with PWM, one with FM, amp EG, filter EG, user assignable EG, single LFO, vibrato, portamento and an eight channel mixer.
In addition, you can record the output of the Dreamstation directly to a WAV file or export a song to a WAV file as well. Very slick!
Conclusion
If you are looking seriously at virtual synth workstations, Dreamstation is a no brainer. It has the features that any analog afficianado can appreciate, great sound quality, digital effects, a sequencer and an attractive price tag. Plus, it is a well-written and very stable application that can run well on even on older hardware. What more could you ask for?
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