Posts Tagged ‘Applied Acoustic’

Applied Acoustic Strum Acoustic Review

Applied Acoustic Strum Acoustic Review

Applied Acoustics strum acoustic is a virtual instrument plugin that imitates an acoustic guitar.  However, this virtual instrument is not sample based meaning that its file size is very small for such a powerful VST (as it uses voicing etc).  This is convenient if you don’t have the most powerful computer as it doesn’t require allot of storage, and the guitar sounds load almost instantly (because there are no samples needing loading).

Strum Acoustic comes with a lot of preset guitar sounds, which are arranged in different folders such as nylon guitars, steel guitars as well as guitar’s that have different effects.  Like I said before, these sounds load in an instant since no samples need loading, and are easily selected with its browser.

The sound quality with Applied Acoustics’ Strum Acoustic is amazing considering the programs size, and is a considerably a better sound quality than some sample based plugins.  Obviously one of the main reasons you use a guitar virtual instrument is because you can’t actually play the guitar, or don’t have the facilities to record one live, so this guitar plugin is a perfect replacement.  The sound quality is so good that, with the help of some effect plugins, could fool people into thinking its the real thing.

Using your midi-keyboard to play a guitar virtual instrument seems quite hard to do, but Applied Acoustics makes it easier than ever to do down strokes, up strokes, slides and bends, palm muting, muffled strings and hammer-ons and pull-offs.  These are all available to do using you midi-keyboard and is explained how to do in the software’s manual.

The Strum Acoustics VST also comes with a bunch of on-board effects to fine tune the sound of the guitar to your liking.  You can add basic effects such as reverb, amp and decay which adds to the flexibility of this guitar VST.  You can also change and add effects to all the different strings.  For example, you can have a different velocity on string 6 than on string 3.  It also comes with a built in equalizer.

The actual virtual instrument itself looks very good and is well presented (as you can see in the picture).  It also tells you which guitar chord you are playing which is useful if you want to learn different chords.

Overall, Applied Acoustics’ Strum Acoustic VST is defiantly a must have VST for your virtual instrument library.  You can get almost any acoustic guitar sound from a plugin that is really small in size.  The sound quality is probably the best you will hear from a non-sampled VST.

Overall Score: 9/10