I was really looking forward to the Tempest since it was announced. But all I heard from these demos, from all of the approximately 15 vids that were linked at gearslutz, honestly I heard nothing good or outstanding... On the contrary every clip I've seen is telling me the sound synthesis in this thing sounds like
plastic coated wood. I hear that
dry fart sound in each of the clips. I have no other words to desribe it, sorry
The blips & blaps and weird sounds are cool for what they are, the kicks mostly sound like 909 BDs, the hats are ok I guess, but all the percussive, mid-to-high-frequency sounds (snaredrums and claps, etc.)
IMHO sound bad. Nothing I would ever use in any record.
IMO the free plugins Drumatic and ErsDrums and even standalone freeware like DrumSynth and Stomper could do much better synthetic drums years ago, let alone payware like MicroTonic, Drumazon/Nepheton/Nithonat.
The Tempest's design and user interface and ways to haptically manipulate sound plus the compression and saturation stages on the output are great! But the underlying sound synthesis IMO seems to be really weak and inappropriate for drum creation. I think this thing doesn't compare to any of the legends like 808, DMX, Linndrumm, etc...
But I will have to lay my hands on one in a music store (if they ever start shipping) to finally judge it (for me personally).
