Review: UVS-3200 Virtual Instrument by UVI

After their epic recreation of an iconic synth of yesteryear the PX Apollo, UVI has come out with another vintage synth that many a synth fanatic would love to have in their lair but can’t because of price and being a collector’s item they are not really easy to get a hold of even if you have the money lying around in a shoebox somewhere.

However, UVI has managed to get their hands on one again and decided to give us this tribute to the Korg PS-3200, a semi-modular synth from the 70’s that had 48 polyphonic voices where each voice was powered by 2 VCO’s each with its own LFO and VCF and that made for a synth that had quite a few possibilities for sound design in its day.

Bringing it back to today UVI have extensively sampled this rare synth and married it together with the modern day functionality we are so accustomed to from the UVI Workstation and Falcon and brought us the UVS-3200.

The Interface

UVI has really done a nice job on the design of the UVS-3200 giving us a synth that looks like its been in your collection for years and is being used on a daily basis just the slight discoloration around all of the controls makes it seem like your smudgy fingers have been playing with it for a long time this attention to detail not just sonically but also visually is what I really like about UVI’s Software.

The Layout of the UVS-3200 is somewhat different to the original Korg device which is nice seeing as the Korg is a bit wide to put it all into one page so UVI has split the device up into five pages Main, Edit, Modulation, Effects and Arpeggiators this keeps everything neatly organized and makes it an easy synth to program.

The main page of the UVS-3200 greets us with two oscillators where OSC A and OSC B, each of these oscillators comes with their own Volume, Panning ADSR envelope and filter and their own sound sources.

• OSC A has 24 sound sources to choose from.
• OSC B has 73 sound sources to choose from.

The filter has 4 modes to choose from All pass, Low pass, Notch and High pass and has controls for the Cutt off, Resonance, Velocity, Depth and ADSR.

The Edit page is where you can tune each of the oscillators and add some Portamento, Stereo, and modwheel effects. The stereo effects can either be turned off or set to alternate between left and right speaker or set to unison with Spread, Detune, and Color controls.

To the modwheel you can set three parameters Vibrato, Tremolo, and filter depth which can add some nice movement to your sound so it doesn’t seem static and stale. The Portamento controls are there so you can get some nice upward and downward slides going.

The Modulation page is a fun place to change up your sound as this is where you can add a step modulator to automate the volume and filter depth of both oscillators or ad an LFO which can modulate the Volume, Filter Depth and the Pitch of your oscillators.

The step modulator has up to sixteen steps for you to program with Delay, Rise, Smooth, and speed controls. The LFO has four waveforms to choose from Sine, Saw, Square, and S/H and can be set to free or sync with the host tempo. The LFO can modulate the Volume, Filter Depth and pitch of both of the oscillators and has retrigged and legato modes.

The UVS-3200 has five effects to choose from Drive, Chorus, Phaser, Delay, and Reverb which is more than enough to bring the already awesome sound that comes out of this synth to higher and wider levels.

The effects that UVI has in their repertoire are top-notch across all of their synths another reason I like UVI’s software is they put so much care and effort into their programming which in turn makes your sounds sound wonderful whether you are searching for in your face loud or lush and wide you can do it with their effects.

UVS-3200 Comes with two sixteen-step Arpeggiators one for each oscillator each has its own Speed, Octave, and gate controls and can be set to Up, Down, and Up/down.

Having two Arpeggiators is great for creating some awesome polyrhythms or just to get some normal arpeggiation going when you need it.

In Conclusion

The UVS-3200 is another wonderful ode to an iconic synth from ye olden times and like with the PX Apollo UVI has really outdone themselves again melding the wonderful sounds that came out of the Korg with the technology of today and creating something absolutely stunning to work with.

Pros:

• Great sound (super wide in some presets).
• Looks awesome and is super easy to program.
• The price.

Cons:

• For this price and the quality of sound UVI company always provides any con I name is just a moot point.

UVI UVS-3200 virtual instrument plugin is available for both Windows and MAC users in Audio Units, AAX, VST, Standalone formats. For more details please check the link below.

DOWNLOAD: UVS-3200