# VPS Avenger or Phaseplant?



## mjsalam (May 26, 2022)

I've had my eye on both Avenger and Phaseplant for some time and now they are both on sale at PB. If you could only get one which would you recommend? For my purposes I'm looking for flexibility, richness of sound, ease of use, and inspiringabilityness (?). I'm less interesting in dancy, bleep bloop electronica but more sound design/textural interesting stuff.

Anyhow would love to hear opinions, experience, guidance. Thanks!


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## j_kranz (May 26, 2022)

I don’t have much experience with Avenger, it’s always seemed more aimed at pure electronic music more than scoring, but I absolutely love Phase Plant. I was a huge fan of Multipass for a while, so jumped on Phase Plant with the 2.0 update, and it has not disappointed. With the sample layer it also can verge into Omnisphere territory imo, but apart from that it can do the more subtle scoring/textural stuff really well, which is where I’m not sure Avenger can really excell. For the $99 sale price right now I don’t think you can go wrong with Phase Plant. Just my 2 cents.


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## zvenx (May 26, 2022)

Hmmmm, though I have a license for both I would never have compared them as an either or....they sound very different to me.

I am by no means a power user, but for me.

I prefer the sound of Avenger by much and indeed it is exceedingly flexible in terms of all the stuff it can do and the choices of 'oscillators', oscillator manipulations, filters etc.....
It really does a lot.

For ease of use though AND a company who I think will just keep adding stuff without additional cost, that is you feel safe that this product will evolve by leaps and bounds over time, for me it would be phase plant..


I do think Avenger has issues with low buffer sizes in ways that not many other synths have.

my two cents..

rsp


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## c0nsilience (May 26, 2022)

IMO, Avenger is more closely related to Icarus 2 by Tone2 than to Phaseplant. Having both, the workflows are quite a bit different. Phaseplant is stellar for sound design, ambient, downtempo, and, really, everything. Avenger is great as well, but the expansions are geared a bit more toward EDM, Trap, etc. That being said, you can also sound design just about anything you can dream up in Avenger.
If I had to choose between the two...I couldn't! Both are very good and it really depends on the workflow that suites you the best!


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## Pier (May 26, 2022)

I've never used VPS Avenger but there's not much in the market as flexible as PhasePlant. Zebra and Falcon are comparable, but all three have their own different limitations.

In terms of using effects, PhasePlant is really the holy grail, given you get Snap Heap, Multipass, and the convolver. The free effects are ok, not stellar, but if you're very much into complex effects chains I'd get the subscription as it includes everything KH does.

In my experience, the only thing that PhasePlant doesn't do well are convincing analog sounds. The sampling aspect is also quite limited (at least for now). Also, it doesn't have a sequencer or arp which probably will turn off some people.

I wouldn't recommend it for bread and butter EDM sounds, as it might be a bit tedious and for certain things it lacks the analog mojo of the U-He stuff, but for complex textural stuff it's a beast.


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## GregSilver (May 26, 2022)

For me (mainly doing electronic music stuff) the glorious days of Avenger are over. There was a hype around it I never understood. For strictly WT synthesis I would always go for Serum/Vital and if you want full control and endless possibilities Phaseplant. Imho for me this offer seems like a bait to pull people into their ecosphere and sell their over and over recycled preset packs later. Avenger also has a large CPU footprint and you should definitively check the demo before!


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## scoplunk (May 26, 2022)

I don't have Phaseplant, so can't directly compare, but I've always wondered why Avenger gets so little attention in this forum. I suspect it's because it's so closely associated with EDM and I was a little unsure about it when I bought it for the same reason. But, I absolutely love it. There's almost nothing that it can't do. One of my favorite things about it is that you can frequency modulate almost anything. It isn't like other products where there's an FM section and a VA section and a granular section all separated from one another. All of this stuff is integrated. You can frequency modulate your samples with wavetables and then run the entire thing through a tracking comb filter. There'a an FFT to add and remove harmonics, there are arpeggiators, step sequencers, multi stage envelopes and everything can be modulated by everything else, as far as I can tell. Yes, it can be a drag on the CPU, but honestly, when you've got this much going on at once, that isn't surprising. 

I don't want to oversell this. It isn't for everyone. I've been programming synths since the 70s, so I feel comfortable with this complexity. To be fair, I don't find it any more complex than Zebra and easier to navigate than Alchemy. But, for all of the power it has, I really like the interface and think it's well thought out and easy to get around. I don't work for these guys and I don't even always agree with Manual, the main designer and sound developer, about some of the decisions he makes, but I really do think this is a fabulous sound design tool. It's only an EDM synth if those are the kinds of sounds you want to program. You can pretty much make any kind of sound you can think of. I'm a big fan!


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## cedricm (May 26, 2022)

mjsalam said:


> I've had my eye on both Avenger and Phaseplant for some time and now they are both on sale at PB. If you could only get one which would you recommend? For my purposes I'm looking for flexibility, richness of sound, ease of use, and inspiringabilityness (?). I'm less interesting in dancy, bleep bloop electronica but more sound design/textural interesting stuff.
> 
> Anyhow would love to hear opinions, experience, guidance. Thanks!


VPS = instant results but already used by a lot of artists.
PhasePlant = a powerful modular synth, mostly useful if you're into creating your own patches.
PhasePlant, if you want the whole enchilada, is also much more expensive.


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## Kuusniemi (May 26, 2022)

Having used both my choice is Phase Plant. The sheer joy of doing things with PP is something the Avenger can't get close to.


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## antret (May 26, 2022)

Tough choice!

Never tried out Phase Plant so I cant really comment on it. I will second the thoughts expressed for VPS Avenger. 

A little while back I was auditioning some of the 'super synths' that were out there (spoiler alert... I didn't buy any of them... only because I was short on cash at the time. ) I was very, very surprised at how flexible and powerful Avenger was. I think @scoplunk above is right on the money. At the time I recall thinking that it could do things that none of the other 'super synth's could do (maybe Rapid has some of the same depth?). Really, really deep, and considering that, relatively easy to get around (interface does seem a bit cluttered though). 

There's a demo for it, so I would absolutely give it a go. As mentioned, the marketing focus definitely seems to be straight up EDM and the sound packs do seem to get pretty repetitive (how many tropical house plucks can one use?), but don't hold that against the synth engine.


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## mjsalam (May 27, 2022)

Thanks everyone for taking the time. Tough choice indeed! I think I'm learning Phaseplant if only based on the impression I get that it is fun/inspiring to use.


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## c0nsilience (May 27, 2022)

@mjsalam You can't go wrong either way and with Avenger's demo and Kilohearts subscription, there are two relatively painless ways to check them both out!


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## NarGarzhvog (May 30, 2022)

Please note that Avenger demo version is only 1.4.2, full product is at 1.8.2.
Both are using updater software which is fine. Avenger has lately switched its licensing from Codemeter to serial authorization (internet connection is required), which was a dealbraker for many up to that point.
Now it's a good moment to get both synths really, you have Avenger 50% off at pluginboutique which is not that frequent. There is also Phaseplant sale going on, you can get it even lower by resellers.


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## Braveheart (May 30, 2022)

I have both. Avenger has been my favorite synth for years, and I own a lot of synths. You can try the demo to see if it’s for you.


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## stixman (May 30, 2022)

+1 Avenger


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## ReleaseCandidate (May 30, 2022)

mjsalam said:


> I've had my eye on both Avenger and Phaseplant for some time and now they are both on sale at PB. If you could only get one which would you recommend? For my purposes I'm looking for flexibility, richness of sound, ease of use, and inspiringabilityness (?). I'm less interesting in dancy, bleep bloop electronica but more sound design/textural interesting stuff.


Nobody can tell what 'ease of use' and 'inspiringabilityness' mean for you. Demo both.

Btw. sound design/textural interesting stuff if the bleep blops.


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## Nimrod7 (May 30, 2022)

Just a note that Avenger 2.0 is under works, probably it will be out end of year, beginning 2023 based on Manuel posts.






Buying Avenger now 50% + Upgrade, might end up being the same final price as getting 2.0 when is out.

Might worth considering going for Phase Plant, and leaving Avenger when 2.0 is out.


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## mjsalam (May 31, 2022)

Thanks all. I still haven't made a decision lol. Is Phase Plant with just the free effects still the awesomeness that people say or do you really need those paid effects to get there? In which case...is $99 really that compelling?


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## mjsalam (May 31, 2022)

Nimrod7 said:


> Just a note that Avenger 2.0 is under works, probably it will be out end of year, beginning 2023 based on Manuel posts.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Interesting - thanks for mentioning this!


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## Faruh Al-Baghdadi (May 31, 2022)




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## Kuusniemi (May 31, 2022)

mjsalam said:


> Thanks all. I still haven't made a decision lol. Is Phase Plant with just the free effects still the awesomeness that people say or do you really need those paid effects to get there? In which case...is $99 really that compelling?


As most of the effects are now free the current deal is very good. And Kilohearts have provided good discounts for upgrades within their ecosystem.


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## Pier (May 31, 2022)

You can do a ton of stuff with the included effects and snap heap. I think what I'd miss the most would be the convolution since the default reverb is meh. But you can get it later on.


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## davidson (May 31, 2022)

Avenger, it's not even a competition IMO. Phaseplant has this plasticky sound that I just can't get over and I don't like the interface. You can make absolutely any sound you can imagine with avenger and the UI is incredible, but I'm sure the next man will say exactly the same about phaseplant


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## Technostica (May 31, 2022)

mjsalam said:


> Is Phase Plant with just the free effects still the awesomeness that people say or do you really need those paid effects to get there? In which case...is $99 really that compelling?


The paid for effects can generally be considered premium and not the sort of thing you would tend to get in a $99 synth.
I don't see them as integral to the sound of a synth, so they are optional extras that expand it.
On offer, they aren't that expensive and when you look at what people pay to expand other instruments, plus the fact that they work outside PP, I don't take issue with the new pricing model.

At the current offer price, I can't fault it in general in terms of features.
Sure, almost every synth at any price has a feature or two that people will think is missing though.


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## Pier (May 31, 2022)

davidson said:


> Phaseplant has this plasticky sound that I just can't get over and I don't like the interface.


Regarding the plasticky sound, some time ago I compared its oscs and filters to some other very highly regarded synths.

Do you hear the plasticky sound here? I really don't.






My biggest complaint with PhasePlant regarding the DSP sound is actually the reverb. Maybe that's where you're getting the plasticky sound from.


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## ManicMiner (May 31, 2022)

50% off Avenger is a deal you might not see in a while.
But they are working on v 2.0 which will be released next year and *will *carry an upgrade price (and not insignificant).
I think the factory sounds in Avenger are excellent... there are cinematic expansions but it is focused on Electronic dance music. 
Avenger is fun and interesting (and easy) to program.
But do get the demo because its been buggy on some systems and spikes some CPUs. Although I've had no issues with either.
(I don't own PP)


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## mjsalam (May 31, 2022)

Well...after much deliberation...and in true VIC fashion...

I bought both. 🤷‍♂️

And I blame you all!

🤣 thanks everyone for taking the time.


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## davidson (May 31, 2022)

Pier said:


> Do you hear the plasticky sound here? I really don't.


In the first example, 1 and 4 (dune and phaseplant?) definitely sounded a bit _worse_ than 2 and 3, so maybe. I dunno, maybe it was the presets I tried, but I've downloaded it twice now and A/B'd it against several of my other synths and it sounded....erm...plasticky


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## Pier (May 31, 2022)

davidson said:


> In the first example, 1 and 4 (dune and phaseplant?) definitely sounded a bit _worse_ than 2 and 3, so maybe. I dunno, maybe it was the presets I tried, but I've downloaded it twice now and A/B'd it against several of my other synths and it sounded....erm...plasticky


Yeah I think the synths of the tests are in the order of the title IIRC. I'm not actually sure 🤔

The factory presets are kinda crap to be honest and are drenched in dozens of effects. I really wouldn't use that to judge the sound of the synth.


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