Great Expectations It is an avoidable fact of life that most people are never fully satisfied with what they have. No matter how good something is, we always long for more...

When I first wrote about Albino's previous incarnation, you may recall that I was very impressed by the quality of its sounds, the depth of its synthesis engine, its friendly interface, and of course, the sheer number of first-class presets designed by Rob Papen himself.

What particularly impressed me at the time was the breadth of its sounds and the smooth character of its "silk 'n cream" filters. One sentence summed it perfectly for me: "an inspirational synth!"

However (as you've no doubt noticed), we are a hard bunch to please at TraXmusic.org and there were a few areas I felt could be improved on. One of the suggestions made to the designer was the inclusion of an arpeggiator facility. Another one was that when Albino mark II came out, it ought to be patch-compatible with the previous version.

There is nothing worst than creating patches on an earlier version of a plugin and editing them to fit song, then finding out that your sequencer insists on using the old version. The other main area for a much vaunted improvement was the patch selector, and the integration of the controls and patch lists into the host sequencer. A load of extra patches would be nice too!

I am very pleased to say that Rob Papen and Pete Linsener have come-up trumps on all areas. As you'll see they've also added a number of extra refinements of their own. Instead of going over the facilities ported over from the original Albino, I'll concentrate on the new stuff. For a detailed discussion of the original, including installation, you can refer to the previous review.

New AND Improved It's always very pleasing when a much-loved product is made even better. It looks like all the suggestions from the previous versions have been taken on board. We'll take a quick look at the new facilities... A Whiter Shade of GUI Albino 2 has been given a fresh coat of paint and has re-emerged in a nice livery of off-white and red. I liked the original design, but I like the new one even more. The contrast seems higher, and after the muted browns of its previous incarnation, the re-worked design feels both fresh and modern.

If this were a hardware synth, it would take place of pride in my home-studio. To my eyes it's a good looking interface and looks even more "hardware" based than its predecessor. I am very pleased to report that the basics of the GUI have not been tinkered with. There was no need to anyway, as the original design was spot-on in the first place. The on-screen controls are still very, very smooth and are a tweaker's delight. The knobs for instance, have just the right amount of virtual "friction" and smoothness and are a joy to use.

An added bonus is the presence of "mini-LEDs" that confirm the position of the knobs - the usual pointers on the knobs are still there but this adds a nice visual touch. Not only is it very pleasant to look at, but it's also very reminiscent of some top-of-the range hardware Euro-synths. Well done!

I won't bore you by going through the rest of the interface again as it was covered in the original review. Let's just say that the whole thing is a joy to use and enhances the whole experience of using Albino. I Arpeggiate, You Arpeggiate, We Arpeggiate. The most eagerly awaited addition to the new Albino is of course that "must-have" for any self-respecting modern synth: the arpeggiator. Before I go into details about the new addition, I want to say how nice it is to see a company that responds to the needs and desires of its customers.

Too often we seem to concentrate on the inititial price of a plugin and seem to forget that for most of us it also represents an investment both in time and effort. It often signals the start of a long relationship with a particular product or manufacturer. With the Albinos (Albini?) you're not just buying sounds and presets but ongoing support as well. This is something that might be intangible but it counts for a lot. So how have the developers managed to integrate the arpeggiator into Albino? Simple: through the addition of a cunning button marked "AP" right next to the modulation section - which makes perfect sense if you think about it...

Clicking the said button reveals an extra page in the modulation area complete with 32 programmable steps. Thirty two is a nice number, easily divisible into the most used musical sub-beats, 2, 3, 4, 8, 12 and 16. This gives you a huge amount of flexibility. Of course if you don't want to, you don't have to use all the steps - simply pick however few or many you need. Another nice touch is the fact you can make it into a gate simply by selecting a min and max value with nothing in-between. Perfect for creating trance-gate type sounds as we'll see later. You have complete control over each step value from 0 (off) to 126 (full).

There is also a "tie" settings to link adjacent steps together. Once you've designed your pattern, simply assign it to one or more destination in the excellent modulation matrix. As you would expect, it can be assigned to Pitch for those "classic" step-sequences, or any other destinations such as filter cut-off for more contemporary "trance-gate" effects for instance. You can choose from any of the following modes:

• Chord
• Modulation
• Up
• Down
• Up/Down
• Down/Up
• Up/Down"+"
• Down/Up"+"
• As played
• Random mode

These work as expected, the only unusual options being "Chord" which triggers all the notes as a chord instead of arpeggiating through them and "Modulation" which is perfect for gate and other rhythmic effects as mentioned earlier.

• The "+" indicates that the bottom-most and top-most notes in the chord are placed twice
• An interesting option lets you choose the velocity from either the keyboard of the pattern itself, or any settings in between. This is particularly useful to avoid robotic patterns where the velocity of the notes becomes predictable after a while. With this facility you can add light and shade back into your playing. There's no need to worry about the absolute settings, simply play as loudly or softly as you want to, and the arpeggiator will follow.
• You can also control the relative length of each step with a knob and sync them to the host using a variety of settings.
• On the other hand should you want more of an "old-skool" sound, you can also achieve it by moving the knob all the way to the "a" position. It is nice to have such choice and it is quite a unique feature.
• Another useful feature is the "swing". This is controlled by a simple knob, placed right next to the arpeggiator area that lets you go from a staid straight mode all the way to a full-swing one. This used to be a feature of the early Linn Drum machines, but it seems to have fallen by the wayside with many modern manufacturers. It is nice to see it make a re-appearance here.
• A "latching" mode can be activated by selecting the correct re-trigger mode.

Thankfully, you can also save, load, copy, paste, and initialise the patterns, which is useful to save or re-load those cool-chilled patterns you'll no doubt come-up with. Simply click on the Arpeggiator label and a drop-down menu will appear presenting all the various options.

Browsin' Time The preset browser has been improved and as a result is much more usable - I was particularly pleased to see that the current folder is displayed at the same time as the actual patches and can be selected directly as pictured below:

Presets The complement of presets by Rob Papen has been increased to over 1,100 patches, including some new arpeggiator patches. The only downside is that it'll you take you even longer to wade through all high-quality presets!!!     Miscellaneous Facilities A chord memory mode had been added to let you store chord "shapes" as part of a preset. I found this useful to recreate those "minor diminished chords" effects you get when using a sample from an existing piece. Perfect for playing fast chord patterns on your keyboard.

 

I was also glad to see the addition of a SYNC option for analog oscillators 2 and 4 - this proved very useful when creating "harder" sounds. It added a nice bite to the normally smooth trademark Albino sound.

Some new digital spectrum waveforms have been added to increase the number of possible sounds. There are listed in the manual albeit a large number of them are simply described as "Spectr5" to "Spectr50" and don't really give you much of a clue as what type of sound they might appropriate for... One new function I really enjoyed playing with was the "Spread" function for conjuring some ultra-fat detuned sounds. It brought back fond memories of those warm, drifting analogue oscillators from long ago, but in a fully controllable way, giving you the best of both worlds.

On the FX front, an additional two effects have been brought into service, a Flanger and a second Chorus. The new Chorus sounded warmer and less fizzy to my ears, with a kind of vintage feel to it.

In a small but useful change, the Phaser FX has now gained a Stereo control which can be used to achieve interesting spatial widenings. The oscillator controls now have four small on/off buttons to let you switch them in and out. Particularly useful when auditioning individual oscillators or simply to turn them off to save CPU. The back panel has gained a keyboard velocity curve to let you tailor the plugin to your own playing style and a facility for micro-tuning and alternate scales for those of you who are adventurous or into ethnic, experimental or early music. The tuning files can be created from Scala settings (a standardised way to describe scales and tunings) which is a nice touch.

My initial impression is that all these new facilities (including the arpeggiator) fall under the "extremely useful" category. I get the feeling that none of them were added simply to "bump-up" the feature count. Alongside the other improvements mentioned earlier, Linplug and Rob Papen have also taken the opportunity to increase the integration into the host.

I am pleased to report that the presets in the current directory now appear in Cubase SX, giving you the opportunity to select them directly and also use the host's "filter" option to only list preset names containing certain characters such as "snare" for instance. It also responds to "pan" and automation controls and if you want to use an external controller box the rather slick ECS automation facility is still available. Any Niggles As I remarked earlier, we are a hard bunch to please at TraXmusic.org... There are one or two areas where I feel Albino 2 could be improved even further (for the next version maybe?):

• the arpeggiator is all I could have hoped for and works wonderfully, but I found myself longing for a slightly different layout... instead of a matrix with four vertical columns of numbers in the modulation pane, it would be really nice if it was laid-out in a straight line occupying the area where the twin FX panels are currently located. A simple set of two switches on the right could be used to toggle between "FX" and "AP". That way you could design your step in a more drum-machine-like or trance-gate like fashion and besides I reckon it would look really impressive to see the "lights" flicker across the screen as opposed to the existing position. I've included a "mockup" of how I think the arpeggiator could be to become more ergonomic below:
  
  
  
• Although the integration into the host has been greatly improved, it is still not possible to automate every parameter. The benefit of host integration are that you have complete and graphic control of each parameter. If you mess-up a filter sweep for instance it's good to be able to edit in the appropriate control lane.

Except for these two minor niggles, it is really hard to find any fault with this synth. It does everything it sets out to do with poise and provides excellent sound. In use the programme always felt totally reliable and dependable. The new GUI is even better for use during long sessions - you'll probably find yourself spending plenty of time with it as it's so easy to use. ConclusionAs you can probably tell, you can probably tell that I am very impressed with Albino mk II.

All the original facilities that made it one of the great plugins of recent years have been retained and plenty more has been added. Besides the sound quality, which is as good as ever, and the monumental collection of presets, the thing which sticks out more than anything else is that Albino 2 is even more inspirational than its parent - here are three short demos done purely with Albino:

	Demo1 - trance-gate in action
	Demo 2 - sweep
	Demo 3 - drive + drums

One important "intangible" is the feeling you get that the team behind Albino are thoroughly professional and totally committed to improving it. You get the sense that they eschew gimmicks and concentrate on the things that really matter. In a strange sort of way, Albino (1 and 2) remind me of a hardware unit.

The lay-out is clear and functional, the various controls are spaced "just-so", and the whole thing has plenty if character and is very user-friendly. As mentioned earlier it exudes a sense of solidity which is very appealing. If only Peter Linsener could find a way to make Rob Papen's signature and the Albino 2 logo glow gently in the dark when you first switch on the plugin it would make my world perfect. In view of all the nice things I've said about Albino 2 I've got no choice but to give it a Traxmusic Gold Award.

You can't ask for a better endorsement than that.
Contacts: UK Distributor: www.timespace.com  
Price: £132.95 inc VAT

Rating (4 / 4): A thoroughly thought-out and executed plugin!

Requirements

• VST2.0 or AU capable host software
• Mac OSX 10.2 or higher, 500 MHz or higher CPU PC,
• Windows 95 or higher, 500 MHz or higher CPU

Review PC The computer used for this review had the following specification:

• AMD Athlon 2.2 XP
• 19" monitor 1280 x 1024 resolution
• 512 MB RAM
• Roland UA-100G Sound Card
• Windows XP
• Cubase SX 2

All soundclips (c) Rudi Cazeaux 2004