Let’s get right into it.

In the world of synth plugins, it usually takes a lot to stand out from the crowd.

In my opinion, Firebird+ offers much more than a “me too” synth instrument.

What is Firebird?

It’s a nice little synth with big sound and an innovative engine

It uses Harmonic Content Morphing (HCM) as it’s synthesis type, and it’s pretty cool.

What this does is allow the sound oscillators to evolve over time, like real sounds do.

They analyzed and took “snapshots” of various synth sounds and natural sounds to create the “morph tables”.

These tables are what you load in the oscillator positions. The thing about it is, each morph table has 256 “snapshots” in it, so 256 locations for the sound to be altered.

It may sound complex but it’s not, thanks to the easy interface they put on there.  Everything is a drop down or knob turn away, and it allows for quick tweaking and experimentation.

They also let you set the sound quality, from low to ultra, as well as the number of voices, to match the power of your cpu.

In the demo, I used it on a medium setting with 12 voice, since I was using the screen recording software at the same time. It sounded great and I didn’t get any glitches at all.

Quick Specs

• Content: 437 high quality presets
• Format: windows vst
• Price: $79

How does it sound?

I love the sound. I was quite blown away by the tone of this instrument.

It really puts me in the mind of a waldorf crossed with an access virus, that has a fetish for the nord lead!

To my ears, it’s really a virtual analog sound in line with those types of synths as opposed to a straight up analog like a Moog.

When I came across this synth, I was fresh off my trip to NAMM where I had been playing with the nord, the blofeld, and the virus, as well as the moogs and dave smith instruments.

So when I heard it, I had a lot of references still clear in my head to compare with, this synth stood up very well and curbed my gear lust quite a bit.

The sounds, mixed with the fx and the tweakable parameters make this one great sounding synth monster.

You can get deep, lush, harsh, or even natural…thanks to the HCM synthesis.

What’s the final verdict?

Get it, the price is right and the sound is very nice.

It’s a very flexible synth, and can become a true workhorse with little effort.

The ease with which you can tweak and create your sounds is genius, I love how they took something so complex as HCM and made it simple.

It’s not an analog recreation in my eyes, but it stands side by side with some of the best virtual analog instruments around.

It even reminds me a little bit of the novation supernova rack I used to have…the sounds is right.

I definitely give this a 5 out of 5 subs, the value and features are just too good.

Download the demo and listen to it, play it, you’ll see what I mean.

There’s also tons of 3rd party preset libraries available for this monster, making it even more expandable and inspiring.

Go on over to Tone2.com and check it out.

let me know what you think