Cherry Audio Surrealistic MG-1 Plus v1.2.0.66-R2R

Thank you so much R2R + Funtime for this Cherry Audio Easter celebration!

Finally I have mixed feeling about this collection of synths, I found for some of them (ex.: the DC-106 emu) the dev have been lazy and the presets sound... very far from good, tbh...

On the other side, you have interesting gizmos (ex.: PS-20, an MS-20 emu) to explore... Interesting sound design possibilities...

Seen from an exclusively musical POV, I would note 5/10 for the entire collection.

so *rant alert* my 2cents on cherry's take on the mg-1 (owning a couple of these myself). i put them side to side with the vsti: this one sound pretty decent but maybe only 70% of the real experience. there's digital clicks when moving some of the switches while playing notes. yuck. imho, there should be 0 digital clicks with any analog emu. the contour(ad envelop) on this is too clicky when at lower (2ms) settings. not like a full digital type clicky sound, but still you definitely don't get any of that with the real synth - its much smoother. at least not on the mg-1s i've owned. perhaps they were created with slightly different components than the mg1 cherry used to base their emu off of. obviously this soft synth version doesn't have the inherent noise/grit in the line or the subtle differences with the envelop every time you hit a note (most obvious when the contours are set very short on the real synth). or the subtle inconsistencies when you use the filter cutoff as a resonant tuned oscillator. maybe today's cpus couldn't even handle such a pure form of emulation? or maybe the developers are more interested in making money than take the time to create a true to life behaving analog emu so they leave out such details since they assume 'the end user doesn't want that noise", or "they won't even notice or care for the nuance/difference because 95% of the time they haven't even heard or played on the real thing". still i wish this synth (and all emulations) had a setting or something to add in the subtle characteristics, drifts, noises, inconsistencies that the real ones have. if nothing else cherry, at least fix the damn digital clicks as you ruin the analog vibe quickly that way (i've left polite comments about the clicks, on their site but i don't think they really care. again they seem a bit like a cash grab company sometimes)! so i suppose in final, one can assume that all the cherry emu's, like arturias, come close but not close enough to really, when you shut your eyes and play them, transport you to as though you were sitting in front of the real deal. but still, its nice to be able to try these emus all and for free, since i don't think some of these are worth their price tag at all considering some of the shoddy oversights(digital clicks).

of course, hats of to r2r's endless, amazing efforts! not sure if any crack team to date has hit the pinnacle that they have so far.

Isn't this a free synth?