Cre8audio East Beast and West Pest Synth voices - Sonic LAB Review

We're looking at a pair of desktop synths (also mountable in Eurorack) from Cre8Audio - as in previous releases, these are made in collaboration with Richard Nicol from Pittsburgh Modular - he knows how to make great sounding Oscillators, Filters and Wave folders, in fact the core technology of the East Beast (subtractive single VCO synth voice) comes from the VCO, VCF and VCA of the SV-1 Blackbox - which we think sounds pretty fine. The West Pest however has the VCO, Wavefolder and Dynamics from the highly prized Voltage Research Laboratory System - with a rich Wavefolder and resonant Low Pass Gate for a more West Coast sound.
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00:00:00 intro
00:02:21 CPU Ad
00:02:43 West Pest Audio
00:03:53 East Beast
00:05:34 East Beast Filter
00:06:57 Can the West Best Not pluck?
00:08:45 Riff example
00:09:23 MIDI and CV
00:12:30 Multi function
00:15:19 West Pest Features
00:18:05 Patch Idea
00:21:02 Sequencer/Arp
00:23:45 More Questions Answered
00:24:51 Which one should I buy?
00:26:35 Outro

[@NostalgicRuckus]

The West Pest has some of the best accidental wubs for the money. Takes you to some special places. Secret weapon for beats.

[@valdir7426]

a few comments about the midi and cv range issues: -the midi octave can be switch using white shift oct-/oct+ ; a secret combo -the cv pitch input is added to the cv from the internal keyboard (which serves as a transpose) -some people (including me) have had various bugs regarding midi; stuck notes; no notes off... there is a firmware update on the website ( 0.9); which apparently solves some of these issues. the update is done via USB through an internal connector (you have to remove to module part from the case)

[@MichaelRohaly]

I know you often say loopop's done this or that in depth so go see that - which is a fine recommendation! - but I very much enjoy seeing you work with things. Good video.

[@NOLNV1]

West Pest is brassy as all get out! It sounds like some kind of analog physical modeling type situation, super nice!

[@drakefan9171]

These sound great and I would love to pick them up but the way they are painted/designed makes it hard to read the front panels. The image and text colors don't have enough contrast for me to read the words well and the outlined font on the west pest jumbles up. I hope they look into accessibility for their typography and color contrast choices in the future. It would help people like me with visual impairment and dyslexia.

[@Zinfidel1]

I'm glad they have a controller/seq/arp. Most, people do not have a 1 octave keyboard in their cases and these PM/cre8 synths are an affordable way to get a quality analog voice and/or controller. Eurorack controller modules tend to be highly specific, gimmicky, or overtly expensive. Not to mention, all-in-one voices are underrated. You get a compact buffet of sounds from a single company or creator for a better price than separate VCO, VCF, VCA modules.

[@thomasweiler5319]

Just got one of these, but more importantly I've noticed that we use the same mixer, absolutely love that thing.

[@MilesAwayOfficial]

So happy to finally have more affordable West Coast style hardware synths in the market! Both are very cool. Great video as always Nick.

[@DrMuse-on2dx]

BTW I have been watching your demos all the way back to the Dave Smith MOPHO.

[@FluxFreeman]

I love these units, the plucky envelope sounds pretty rad to me. I also like the design

[@DrMuse-on2dx]

Thanks Nick, very informative as always. Cool sounding opening and great ending sounds.

[@LuisTorres-qz5kr]

I have the West Pest and have really been enjoying it.

[@Somewhere_sometime_somehow]

You did it, the best west pest/ east beast review out there. Have to get this now...

[@CommunityGuidelines]

Fantastic sounding instruments, great review.

[@waldemar.golebski]

Great review as usual. Meantime waiting for north snore and south cough :)

[@macks2025]

Bearing in mind how stupidly expensive Buchlas are, and considering sparse numbers of wavefolding synths in general, it is really great to see an instrument which specificly isn't subtractive and is within a reach of a synthesis enthusiast. Small and managable, and unlike Volca Modular, it will not drive you mad with them needle sized controlls. Not a fan of the naming monikers, but whatever. More interested in West Pest, but both sound good, so will probably end up getting both as a set once they are actually available outside the continents.

[@mikapollack]

Thank You Nick for a great in depth look at these lovely machines! Also big thanks for answering our questions in depth, and hopefully influence a nice firmware update from cr8audio. Now I can sort understand why the pitch doesn´t go a low as I'd expected when using external midi keyoard. Will try midi trough (again) to daisychain :)

[@lcpumpkin]

Thanks for answering my question Nick! Much appreciated and very useful. Sorry you had to namecheck my ludicrous band name. All the best, Keith

[@petezadoe4677]

Boy do I like that outro

[@EannaButler]

Very cool units and a perfectly-reasonable price. Good to understand the lowest-note issue over midi - but it feels like it should be a firmware update to the Keystep Pro more than the Cre8audio units. Altho of course, an update to the Cre8audio units would also work..

[@Gear4musicSynthsTech]

These really do sound fantastic.

[@georgeray3492]

Great sounding. And great feedback from the company regarding the Midi note value. Arturia could make it right, but we'll try and do it for our customers... That is an excellent response! I see a Christmas gift in the making....

[@dillipphunbar7924]

Slipping some Razzamatazz in there for some cheeky wavefolding..very nice. Both sound gr8 and would be useful as is, or in a eurorack system (although I think they require a lot of power), giving your system lots of extra patch points. Nickwidth Pulse Modulation always a welcome feature.

[@jahhah6719]

I like the sound quality

[@SjonSjine]

Thank you Nick, great and clear review! How can I check my firmware version of the West Pest?

[@elvisplissken3442]

Thank you for this vid! The KSP MIDI/CV thing has been a real bummer and there is zero information online outside of other users that are facing the same problem with no real answer. I switched from MIDI to CV > transposed and the notes are in the correct octave and it all works the way it should. They just need to roll out that new firmware update for MIDI.

[@chrs1968]

Hi Nick, any news on the Behringer daw?. Your Information videos talked me into the bass station 2 and the Roland system 1 and the volka series, I have just built the system 100 because I love early human league, take care and keep videoing 🙂

[@jammystraub488]

Nice!

[@DoctorRevers]

Really good stuff especially for that price. Much more appealing to me than the volcas for example.

[@andrewchalsma]

In the earlier videos Richard Nicol was very proud of the generative (shift register) function on the sequencer, It is useful. It's similar to his experimental Gibbon module Pittsburgh released. The only gripe I have with is how clicky-clacky the buttons are (and why the green button isn't green and yellow isn't yellow. Is it a joke or sourcing/cost cutting?).

[@DoctorJezz]

Please Nick - can I ask what was happening with that groove that you had going there at 9 min 29 with that Goldfrapp-sounding groove - that’s a unique and funky thing that I’m not sure how to replicate. This is the kind of thing that I should sign up for, but if you tell me, I will anyway! Apologies if that sounds cheeky, but man … that sounds as funky as hell!

[@sub-jec-tiv]

I love Pittsburgh’s synths so much, they sound so lovely. Microvolt 3900 is an absolute classic semi-modular if you ask me. They need to hire a better graphic designer though. I appreciate how unpretentious these are, but i can barely stand to look at them for a whole video much less look at them on a daily basis making music with them. 😬For the price though, for people who don’t own a bunch of synths or for gigging, great value in a small instrument

[@huli8557]

I see, in the West Pest's patchbay, a Sync in jack. Is it hard Sync ?

[@eddy_sonik]

I LOVE ! 💚

[@TooSlowTube]

I had to update the firmware on my West Pest, the day I got it, to get it to respond to Note Off from my Yamaha Reface CS. The Reface CS sends note 24 as a minimum too, so currently, if I want to play any lower, I have to use the buttons on the synth. If I was fluent in emoji, this is where I'd insert a face palm. It's not like Yamaha is some obscure manufacturer who need to have a special work around provided to be supported properly. It's a fun little synth, but how the ^%^$ do things make it into production with these glaring problems? FWIW, I had a brief go with putting passive attenuators in the audio path. You can put one between osc and fold, and another between the folder and dynamics (limited envelope). One just affects the level (the one before dynamics, IIRC), but the other one affects timbre, and sounds similar to moving the Sustain knob, which can't be voltage controlled as it comes. So, a VCA in the right place would add quite a lot to it. With two, and slews or envelope generators, you could add an attack as both part of a vca envelope and the equivalent of a filter envelope.

[@Essjay88]

How did you update the firmware? Good news if this is fairly straightforward.

[@TooSlowTube]

@@Essjay88 You download an update tool from their website that does it. You have to undo four screws, and gently pull the panel out of the case - pull the knobs, then when the bottom is clear, get your fingers under it. The panel has a Eurorack style 16 pin box header that pushes into a connector on the power supply, which is fixed to the case. There's a micro USB socket on one edge, behind the front panel. You use that to connect it to the computer to update it, and run the update tool on the computer. It gets enough power from the USB lead while you're updating it.

[@TooSlowTube]

@@Essjay88 It's on cre8audio (usual ending), under Support, at top right.

[@Essjay88]

@@TooSlowTube Thanks for that... I wondered if there maybe a usb port on the inside but half expected that it would be some kind of update via midi. This is good news for the beast and pest. thank you again for the information.

[@TooSlowTube]

@@Essjay88 You're welcome. Yes, i was expecting it to be via MIDI too.

[@xTheOxx]

Behringer, take notes! Original designs, collaborations with innovators, quality sounds, and still very affordable.

[@DeepDoseMusic]

Behringer does have some originals, despite all the clones. I was just thinking how well one of these might play with my Neutron

[@LosingTeeth]

literally the neutron is the same price and twice as powerful

[@michaelkonomos]

So what is blowing my mind is the trick at 8min in to send the envelope of one synth into another via gate. Does this always work?! I thought that gate was just an on/off CV pulse that says “something happens” and not an actual CV shape with an envelope and everything. Does everything gate out send the amp envelope of the synth it is coming from? Does every gate in accept that envelope?!

[@hoagy_ytfc]

10:11 "Elsie Pumpkin" - great name if real. Also great name if made-up. (I suppose technically all names are made-up fundamentally, but you know what I mean). Edit: Now wondering if it was L.C. Pumpkin - still cool but not quite as much.

[@MetatronsCube23]

The multi function out on the West Pest can be changed to a envelope, it's the fourth function.

[@sonicstate]

Yes but it's not got a slow attack shape sadly

[@LosingTeeth]

what you came for → 5:48

[@dinogoldie9716]

They both sound great. Sadly I couldn't get the West Pest to work with any of my hardware controllers/sequencers (no note-off). Shame really as I was hoping for them to be my gateway into eurorack.

[@TooSlowTube]

I had the same problem using my Yamaha Reface CS with it. You have to update the firmware, to get it to recognize the sort of Note Off that probably the majority of keyboards send - which is a Note On, with velocity zero. It's not really hard to do but... At some point, I'll need to do it again to get to the bottom two octaves. It's nice to know they're fixing that too but again... I guess they need to get more than one keyboard to test things with. It's amazing to me that something gets to go into production with such glaring problems.

[@dinogoldie9716]

Even after updating from version 0.06 through 7 8 and 9, it still didn't work for me. So I had no choice but to return my West Pest.

[@TooSlowTube]

@@dinogoldie9716 That's odd. There was only V0.9 available when I did it, a few days ago, and that worked for me. I read someone else saying it didn't work, but I wasn't clear which version they were using. I'm now wondering if the update sometimes fails, but doesn't say it has. I'm not aware of any way to check which one is installed, other than looking for the symptoms.

[@smalltown4855]

the tangents of mythrath will soak the holy sponge of Leicester in a brine of dog juice

[@dinogoldie9716]

Did Cre8audio ever fix the MIDI problem?

[@NicholasSeamans]

yes

[@KiR_3d]

No Attack in the Envelope of West Pest... oh, it's so weird and "no-no" to me! I've wasn't so upset of being unable to used Saw wave... but Attack!

[@paultorbert6929]

With the Erebus eg, the West Pest is sounding Lorn-ish….

[@0b11000100]

everything sounds better with reverb.

[@argumentchannel]

west coast/east coast both came from the same place in Italy. The US loves to own other counties stuff

[@Zinfidel1]

Californian Don Buchla and New York native Bob Moog are my favorite Italians.

[@paultorbert6929]

@@Zinfidel1 Tonto’s Expanding Headband would agree with you 😊 Funny how the USA owns Italy….. (As I sip my Barolo🍷)

[@Somewhere_sometime_somehow]

Im still angry about the theft of the famous italian hamburger

[@argumentchannel]

@@Somewhere_sometime_somehow Hamberger made with ham not beef. I thought they took it from Germany lol

[@NutritionalZero]

I mean "west pest" and "east beast" are marketing fails... In a vacuum both of those names sound pretty sketchy when you think about it.

[@AcidTechnoMan5000]

East Beast has some GIRTH eh?