Review: Heat Up 2 Virtual Instrument by Ignite VST

This time I am glad to test and review the Heat Up 2 virtual instrument by Ignite VST, a fantastic Rompler with useful ideas inside. Heat Up 2 is an easy-to-use virtual instrument loaded with powerful effects and tons of sound presets perfectly suitable for Hip Hop beatmakers.

Launched back in 2015, this tool has become popular among beat producers, being a good alternative to other more expensive tools like Nexus, Massive, or even Sylenth.

How It Sounds

The makers have an impressive catalog of expansions for this PC/Mac plugin, and we’ll see a few of these expansions too. HEAT UP2 is including RnB Essentials Expansion Pack, with 500 Factory Instruments, 580 Unique Presets, for a total of 16 GB. There are a lot of expansions available on Ignite VST site, and I installed these banks: KUSH LAB, EDM MONSTERS, 808 MASSACRE 1&2.

After installation, the plugin finds the new presets added in Heatup2/Instruments folder. If you select the Heatup 2 folder this did not work, then selecting Heatup2/Instruments was the right folder for the presets scan. The banks are available in separate menus in the Browse menu, or altogether (All). What is really great is the fast save part where the user can create categories and new presets in a few seconds.

The first good thing while using Heatup2 is high quality in presets, and the great possibilities on tweaking with Fx part in 2 pages on the middle “LCD screen”, and secondly for other features we have a sequencer, an Eq, a Gate part, and settings with themed GUIs which are interesting so that the user can find visually each plugin inside the DAW.

In my opinion, the interface is akin to that of Nexus at first sight, with a central display and effects below. Yet Heat Up 2  is a different approach featuring 28 Skins and lets you customize the GUI Colour seamlessly. As DAW I used FL Studio, without a problem it could find the 64 bits version of Heatup2 right away. It’s loading quickly from a preset, with having most presets taking 100 MB or less in size.

The Gate Part

This is a useful tool for arpeggiators, using the Sequencer part. All possible effects inside Heatup2 by Ignite VST are Overdrive, Distort, Wobble, Stereo Enhance, Phaser, Tremolo, Atmosphere, Ring Mod, Panner, Compressor, Filter Highpass or Lowpass, Reverb, Delay, Flanger/Chorus, Master-Out, Poly / Portamento / Mono / Glide, Gate.

So it’s very simple to tweak quickly any preset, for example, a bass can go distorted, with the filter part modified… About the exact order applied on the effects, it’s about the user to try the parameters and after one hour you can go fast tweaking presets. This is not a complicated GUI and the best part is the fast save to create a new preset after you have done the correct variations. Like this, I did 3 basses in 2 minutes from another preset.

Conclusion

The presets you will find in HEAT UP2 by Ignite VST are both in high quality and high quantity. It’s probably the best Rompler I’ve seen for Hip Hop genre. There is an incredible stock of basses, drums, effects, leads, very inspiring, and very easy to tweak with all effects ready in a well-designed middle-sized plugin.

Heat Up 2 comes as 32Bit & 64Bit Windows VST Plugin, MAC Audio Unit, and MAC VST.