There’s a lot of buzz in the Mac and iOS music making scenes surrounding software company Klevgränd’s latest release.
After spending a few days with both the iOS and macOS versions of STARK, their ‘ridiculously slick and playable’ amp simulator, i’m happy to report that any and all hype surrounding this thing is entirely justified.
It sounds bloody brilliant.
STARK is a fully fledged amp simulator aimed squarely at guitarists, bass guitarists and synth/keyboard/midi controller users. Despite its clean, straightforward looks, uncomplicated set of controls and modest price tag, STARK somehow manages to sound just as good (if not better) than a lot of other high profile amp sims available today. (I’m looking at you, Amplitube)
As I mentioned previously, it’s available to Apple music makers on both macOS as an Audio Unit plugin and on iOS as an Audio Unit Version 3 app. This is important as at the time of writing I’m pretty sure STARK is one of, if not the the only AUv3 amp simulator available.
Fully Featured
You’re getting a lot of bang for your buck here. STARK is packing four distinct modules – Amplifier, Cabinet, Room and a Pedal board. The modules process all audio separately, which allows you to combine different amplifiers with different cabinets and rooms to create hundreds of unique sounds.
What Klevgränd say separates STARK from other amp simulators is that the cab, amp and ambience modules are built on their own algorithms that “doesn’t involve any convolution or FFT analysis.”
“This approach renders a more natural response to dynamics over the whole frequency spectrum, plus the ability to fine-tune each profile in ways that just isn’t possible when using convolving methods.”
Feel free to judge for yourself by checking out the before and after comparison audio samples below.
Hands-On
Out of the box STARK sounds fantastic. It’s dead easy to find a great sound to jam with in its list of presets, but things get even more interesting when you start getting to grips with the different editing options.
You can go as deep as you want here. Beginners will love diving right in and rocking out with the pre-existing sounds built into STARK, while the more adventurous user can tinker and tweak almost every aspect of their sound.
While there’s more than enough sonic content to keep the vast majority of users happy for a long time, I would love to see STARK expanded upon in future.
Adding user created content/presets (a la Audiokit’s Synth One and D1 patch updates or Positive Grid’s ToneCloud) would be great to see at some stage. Expanding the number of simultaneous Stomp box effects to more than four (without having to load another instance of the plugin on a track) would also allow users greater customization options.
In the video below I share a little more info on STARK and put it through its paces on both macOS and iOS.
STARK’s clean interface and bold, easy to use controls are something that beginners especially will appreciate, but don’t let those cool graphics and chunky control knobs fool you.
There’s some seriously powerful customization options under the hood here.
Once you get to grips with STARK’s interface, you’ll be able to produce killer tones that rival results available in other, vastly more expensive Amp sims on the market right now.
