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Peavey MuseBox

instrument with a huge, high-quality library, optimized for the MuseBox and providing the lion’s share of its ready-to-use sounds. Other plug-ins could be loaded for specialized applications for which sampling might not be the best approach— Triple Cheese does string synth emulations, for example, and Alpha Free is an excellent subtractive analog synth emulation— but the vast majority of players want a really good sample set that’s just tweakable enough to let them fine-tune their sounds. With this in mind, Univers-Sons—the software designers behind the Plugsound family of virtual instruments and the wellliked samplers and sample players sold by MOTU—has created a special version of its UVI Workstation called MusePlayer for the MuseBox, and loaded it with over

Synthesizers The selection of other synthesizers in the MuseBox is a fantastic one, with some very cool specialized tools for particular types of sounds that range beyond what MusePlayer can easily do. The AAS Player offers selections from the many great AAS content libraries, with presets from modeled synthesizers like VA-1 Virtual Analog and VS-1 Virtual Strings. Similarly, Alchemy Player is a simplified-interface version of the powerful Alchemy synthesizer/resynthesis engine that runs on Mac, PC, and now iOS devices (look for a review very soon). Both of these synths sound fantastic and are great for more complex, evolving timbres; my only complaint is that even with dozens of presets I found myself wanting even more! AAS Player is not programmable, and only very basic tweaks to the Alchemy Player sounds can be saved. LinPlug is a well-known name in plug-ins, and the free version of Alpha is a great analog emulation with lots of tweakability

Karlette is a more complex tape-like echo with a great sound, and GLoop offers up to six layers of overdubs, loop synch and trigger options, and much more. Mu-Voice on the MuseBox is a simplified version that has no MIDI control and only offers presets that can’t be edited or saved, but its harmonization and formant shifting are exceptionally musical and its presets are by and large practical for standard applications. Peavey isn’t left out of the fun here, offering a simple but great-sounding version of its ReValver virtual guitar effects chain plugin. You can string together stompboxes, rack effects, your choice of modeled amps and guitar cabs, in endlessly configurable order, with inspiringly gutsy tones. Finally, I must give special mention to the two Wave Arts plug-ins. While both MasterVerb and TrackPlug are sold in much more powerful version 5 forms now, Wave Arts recognized that version 4 hit a very special sweet spot in terms of sound, price, and efficiency—so much so that they remained on the market even after version 5 came out! Those version 4 plug-ins are included in the MuseBox, and offer fantastic control over tone shaping, dynamics, and reverberant space. (How fantastic? I consider MasterVerb 4 to be the one effect plug-in I absolutely cannot live without, period.)

4 GB of sound samples culled from a wide variety of libraries (by the way, the MuseBox has about 8 GB of storage in all, in flash memory). A look at the screenshot in Figure 1 provides a glimpse into how this sample player works. You can load one or two complete sample Layers, which can be soloed, split, or combined; some parameters are common to both Layers while others can be set per Layer. There’s a simple but useful five-column modulation setup, a multimode filter plus easy-to-use Timbre and Master Filter controls, envelopes for pitch, filter, and amplitude control, four LFOs, built-in effects, and more. Between the large variety of tweakable parameters and the huge and greatsounding library of samples, MusePlayer could carry the asking price of the MuseBox practically on its own. The fact that it’s also got five other virtual instruments, to say nothing of its audio effects, is almost a free bonus!
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and fairly light CPU load. Triple Cheese is U-He’s freebie string simulator that’s great for pads and textures. And Amber Lite is a fantastic multisampled piano with nearly 1 GB of sample memory; while it’s not Ivory, it has a great, usable sound and really fills the bill for the many players who want a great-sounding piano first and foremost. Effects The three Camel Audio effects on offer here are worth a review in and of themselves, and a standalone audio processor that did everything these three plug-ins does would probably cost a good chunk of the price tag of the MuseBox just on its own (are you starting to see a pattern here?). CamelCrusher offers a relatively simple combination of distortion, filtering, and compression—simple, that is, compared to the eight switchable modules of CamelPhat (all of the above plus multimode filtering, a separate bandpass filter, and “magic EQ”) or the nine modules in CamelSpace (everything from autopan and trance gate to echo and reverb). If you want something more simple and familiar, the four Kjaerhus modules offer easy-to-tweak controls and great sound.

Put it all together I haven’t left a lot of space to discuss my working experience with the MuseBox, because there isn’t a lot to say. As Peavey promises, it plugs in, turns on, and works as advertised, with great sound, simple programmability, and flexible options. The onboard mic preamps are clear with plenty of gain, guitars sound great through the Hi-Z inputs, and the overall sound quality is impeccable. This is one very usable, very slick box. Would I like more? Of course—who wouldn’t? I am eager to see what new libraries Peavey will add via the CompactFlash card; my fondest hope is that U-He’s Urs Heckmann will follow up the inclusion of Triple Cheese on the MuseBox with one of his higher-end synths like Zebra or FilterscapeVA, but I’d also love to see more Alchemy Player or AAS Player content. The only operating glitches I ran into were very obscure ones. For instance, there’s an option in the original ReValver HP code for Mac and PC that lets you patch in an external VST plug-in as an insert in the signal

Recording - August 2012

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