So.. How are you liking Retrologue 2 so far ?

Hi,

So, how are you liking Retrologue 2 so far ? and what are you doing with it lately ? Are you using it frequently in your tracks ? Having more fun with version 2 ? :slight_smile:

Are you making better Pads, Leads, Basses, …, … , etc. compared to version 1 ?

Share your Retrologue 2 experiences, discoveries, likes, … tracks … etc.

Cheers,
Muziksculp

I pretty much like it, read my review of Retrologue 2 here:
The Good Gets Excellent: Steinberg Retrologue 2 Review

I was able to get some useful synth bass sounds by using the arpeggiator. But beyond that, most of the rest of the sounds and features don’t really stand out from the myriad comparable virtual analog synths now available.

Probably you may dig a bit deeper to discover its unique features that makes R2 more inspiring than most of the competition.

Hi Bacizone, I played with it a bit but it seems kind of ‘vanilla’ compared to most of the other synths I use (which have considerably more ‘character’). Cheers…

Read the first part of the Retrologue reviews as well, the Retrologue 1:

Especially the “modwheel modulation” part… just a very few synths do that properly.

Try to achieve the unexpected character by this type of modulation, not by the sound source… you may be :astonished:

Joining the Retrologue 2 Fan Club. It’s easy to get useful and interesting sounds without a lot of work thanks to the drag and drop matrix routing features. The arpeggio handling is lots of fun and interesting sounds start developing quickly. It seems to have a good sound engine and it comes with a lot of good patch, arpeggio and chordal features.

I still have to learn to get the most out of this instrument, for example, advanced routing using the internal busing and some the Key Select features I still questions on, but it’s getting clearer as I work with things. The documentation is a bit thin on usage examples.

I’d like a Retrologue 2 T-shirt.

I think I hate it?

The browser import and save system is below what can be expected of today. It takes forever for Retrologue to scan the database upon opening it for the first time in a project (I am on SSD). The preset browser is of corurse very Steinberg and has a structure from last century. It is very difficult to see the same structure as the different folders on the computer has. Sometimes presets are displayed double, sometimes not. 3. party preset structure is impossible to import. This is far, far away from things like Zebra, Omnisphere, Massive and Serum, just to mention some soft synths from other developers. Even Dune (even Dune 1) and the very complex Razor is better in this respect. It does not help if it is good sounding. There are soooooo many good sounding synths out there. What they then compete in is price and GUI. Retrologue is free with Cubase. Unbeatable price, but the GUI sucks and I rather then invest a couple of hundred dollars to get an annoying free interface.

I have the same “relationship” to HALion 4, 5 and 6 and Padshop. It seems to me that Steinberg does not want 3. party developers to enter that realm. There are very few that developes soundsets for Steinberg and it is a very compex affair to have a practical relationship to the few soundsets available. Seems like Steinberg has the policy of controlling this market. Also seems like the developers that has tried has given up due to the GUI complexity and the number of frustrated customers. Omnisphere rules in this respect. Fully open for 3. party and has a great GUI and browser. Toontrack too, but that is of course drum software, but it shows how to build a decent GUI.

Logics equivalent to Retrologue is Alchemy (in resepct of “Synths that come free with DAW”). Look what they do in respect of saving own sounds and importing sounds from friends/customers and 3. party developers and how the GUI displays them.

1 Like

Retrologue 2 is feature rich yet easy to use, and still manageable to create 3rd party sounds for it quite easily. Not the best GUI I admit, but in case of Retrologue the purpose was usability, simplicity and acceptable gui size on current displays.

I think there is a problem with the marketing of their products, not much efforts were put to give them a wider exposure. This is getting better these days with the new, re-organized Youtube channels, they have more presence in online ads, more in-depth video tutorials, etc. HALion 6 has already a great tutorial series e.g. how to use its sampling feature.

Maybe Retrologue 3 will be handled with the same attention when its time will arrive and will be more popular not just among the Cubendo users.

I don’t think so. If you go to the “easy install” synths for 3. party patches (like Omnisphere, Dune2, Serum, Massive, Absynth) there are thousands of patches available. For any, and mean ANY, Steinberg instrument there are only handfulls. The philosophy of the GUI and the browser is of course a very important issue here. Steinberg seem like an old DOS (Microsoft) world compared to those mentioned. I am still puzzled about the Retrolog browser and even the Halion 6 and Groove Agent browsers. They are simply not good enough when writing 2018.

I see.

Installing 3rd party sounds for Retrologue 2 is easy.

If you are using macOS you have to copy your presets here, preferably inside a folder:
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Audio/Presets/Steinberg Media Technologies/Retrologue folder
If you are on Windows, this is the path:
\Documents\VST3 Presets\Steinberg Media Technologies\Retrologue

The functionality of the Mediabay-based browser is good, you can load and try sounds quickly, search by tags - all based on database which is fast, but yes, there are problems with this MediaBay-based thing:

  1. Sometimes the presets don’t show up immediately. To resolve this you have to re-scan your presets folder in Mediabay and restart your DAW.
  2. I admit, this Mediabay for Retrologue is not as snappy as it should be! Synth preset loading should be nearly instantaneous, but it requires a 1-2 seconds or sometime more to load these sounds.

+1

I absolutely hate selecting presets from this thing using the mediabay format. Luckily I got it free with Cubase. Am currently looking to replace it with Tone2’s Saurus2.5. I’m already satisfied just from a preset select standpoint (snappy, clear, editable). Sound wise it does sound different but need more time with it.