Soar - Powerful Tape Delay Plugin

Very analog sounding. Incredible price.

This adds just the right amount of tape to your recording. I have used it on everything and like the price. You defiantly win out on this purchase.

**** This is an addendum to the review below based on subsequent contact with JST Plugins. As it turns out, it wasn't JST that abandoned the plugin but a 3rd-party developer who refuses to update the plugin and was too classy to publicly trash them. Well, I have no such loyalty to the developer and think this is very unprofessional to refuse to update the plugin, though to be 100% fair, I don't know the other side - even so, it's not cool to refuse to update the plugin.

JST's subsequent responses have been very communicative I have to say and they've said that they're committed to updating Gain Reduction 2 to fix the issues that one currently has.

Impressed so far, so have amended the review accordingly. ****

Purchased this without realising that it was Intel only. Contacted support and apparently there's no plans to update this to Apple Silicon so basically useless. No refund policy, no ability to demo meant I had to purchase to find out it wasn't available for Apple Silicon. Shame - sonically looks great but gotta give it 2-star for the terrible way this was handled. Almost all other companies have demo versions of their plugins. Saving grace was that it was on deep sale so didn't lost a lot of money, hence why I gave it 2 stars instead of 1. Don't understand why there's no way to demo products - it's a standard feature everywhere.

This is the second time I've been burned by JST Plugins (and I have some plugins that I love like the original Gain Reduction - fantastic plugin, so it's not all hate!). But their Gain Reduction 2 plugin has shockingly bad GUI performance and again, no updates so that's another $99 down the toilet. Again, had no way to demo it.

JST have the ability to make some great products, but there are certain aspects of their business model that are shockingly consumer unfriendly and they can delete this review, but I think this can only hurt their company in the long run as it just engenders lack of trust.

The unpredictable performance of the plugins combined with what seems to be a poor update roadmap and lack of demo leads me to just play it safe and steer clear of the company - like I say, it's sad because the plugins themselves are GOOD.

In 2024 there are many alternatives out there that simulate tape behaviour equally well, and Soar lacks the now common option to place the filters inside the feedback loop. I also think shorter delay times wouldn't have been difficult to implement. But it sounds great as it is, and it seems to be on sale frequently, so still a recommendation. (I paid USD 29.40 a week ago using the website's Christmas slot machine coupon, now it's at 14.99)

I’ve used SOAR on a couple tracks now and it’s so easy and fun to use it’s easy to get lost in it!