I appreciate the chance to test out such a fully featured demo of a great VSTi . It sounds like a crystal clear 808 with extended parameters. I would say that it is near perfect, but I have studied the machine for decades and I've got some nits to pick. I am speaking of the demo version because I have not yet made the decision to purchase because of certain issues:
The snare drum can sound a bit weak as the body component of the sound is much lower than the noise component. Also, the decay of the skin is extensible but not, the body. No big. It can be worked around.
Most instrument decays on Nepheton can be extended well past their original defaults (thank you) but why were the clap and cowbell forgotten in this respect? Open an 808 and you will find that the cowbell circuit actually has two tuning parameters controlled by vr pots, so why only one control here. Inside the original the clap had separate crack density (number of individual claps) and reverb level and decay pots. Adding these controls would have been simple. I guess I just have to remember that this is a Nepheton and not an 808 and just tweak the overly crunchy clap sound into something more familiar if that's what I'm going for. Drumazon's clap sounds more as expected but both suffer from overly varied successive hits. Sure, each clap hit sounded different, but that different? The overpowering snare noise and too solid claps my be a symptom of noise source bandwidth that is too wide.
The tone of the hi hats is a bit thick but this can be remedied through tweaking. The cymbal's tone would be helped by a bit more range clockwise. On my 808 the strike (tone clockwise) of the cymbal is much more prominent.
I love how the instrument looks, feels and sounds and none of these issues alone would break the deal but there is something functionally fundamental that needs to be addressed right now: The 'mirror image' in the subject header refers to something disturbing that I found when rendering the drum hits in Cubase SX 3 for comparison to 808 samples. The instrument waveforms seem to be flipped 180 degrees when compared to any samples I have heard, seen or recorded. Is this intentional? I sure hope this wasn't done to appease 'you know who'. If I would have to sample and invert these sounds it would defeat the whole purpose of a virtual analog 808. How about a phase control...
Nepheton is a towering achievement. It may sound exactly like a particular 808, just not mine. Excellent, but it sounds like someone else's 808. Still far above the competition.
