Going out on a limb here and being a little transparent but, I installed this and turned up my studio monitors (Adam Audio T5V L/R + T10S) and hit one note... Just. One. Note. It was a G. The sound that came at me was so overwhelming, so 3-dimensional, it was like being wrapped in a warm blanket. A CHORUS of SEM synths flooded my small studio room. Something deep inside connected and honestly folks - it made me well up with tears and I just let go. I'd been dealing with a parent passing and it was like an angel gave me a hug. I've had some strong reactions to certin synths before but this is a whole different level. Remember, this was Oberheim's flagship that cost more than in the mid-1970s - only superstar musicians and studios could afford them. That's like $ in today money. And I can see why. Please just buy this and then stop buying synths - you have come home.

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Dear Tom Oberheim, Gforce, Sweetwater pro's, regarding the OB-E:
Hot damn this thing is the Kodachrome patch jam!
It sounds that good.
- Ernest Sjo

I have every VSTi under the sun, from UVI Falcon to Serum and this is the plugin I load up when I just need a warm, analog-sounding synth with unique expression without all the bullsh&*. Hands down a beast but a gentle one nonetheless.
DJd00m...

I wrote Gforce off as a relic to the xp Era. Boy was I wrong. This is one of, if not THE, best sounding plugins ever. Phenomenal.

I bought an Oberheim OBXa when it first came out and have had it ever since, it still works even though it requires adjustments and fixes now and then. These were pre-MIDI days, so I also had a DSX sequencer and a DMS drum machine, which are now both long gone. I have watched a whole bunch of video reviews of the various Oberheim-inspired virtual synths out there, but I was never "wowed" by any of them enough to open my pocketbook. That is until the GForce OB-E Windows version appeared in 2022. After watching a couple of reviews of the Mac version, and despite it being the most expensive Oberheim-inspired virtual synth out there, I ordered it up from Sweetwater and I'm very glad I did.

Nominally, the OB-E is a software recreation of the extremely rare Oberheim EVS (Eight-Voice Synthesizer), circa 1977. But that synth did not have the digital programming and storage capability like Oberheim's later products like OB-X, OBXa, OB-8, and Matrix 12 had. A patch had to be dialed in manually in real time. The OB-E is therefore the realization of a product that Tom Oberheim probably dreamed of but was never able to build and sell commercially. It would have cost a fortune back then. It is pretty easy to understand why he has endorsed this product.

Download and installation was easy, and I had it playing via mouse in stand-alone mode in just a few minutes. Another couple of clicks and I had it connected to my Native Instruments Komplete keyboard. And a few minutes after that I had the VST3 version running in a track on my Studio One 5.5 DAW. Everything functioning exactly as it should. The user interface is easily scalable, and it looks absolutely great on a 4K monitor (an awful lot of plugins out there cannot make that claim).

The first note I played of the default patch that comes up in the stand-alone version absolutely blew me away. I felt like a 17-year-old in a music store playing the first OBXa I had ever seen. It's that good.

The selection of "factory" patches kept me busy for a couple of hours. GForce did not just put a bunch of simple string, brass, bass, and "funny" patches in this thing -- they created a whole bunch of truly inspirational patches that demonstrate what is possible. In fact, if I have one complaint, it would be that they did not provide a selection of simpler patches that would match up with the vintage sounds that Oberheim was famous for. All of the elements are there, but not organized into an "80's" folder.

The OB-E is essentially every classic Oberheim analog synth design concept rolled into one, plus a bunch of extra features and effects that sweeten the pot. It has "only" 8 voices, but that's plenty. It even allows the parameters on each of the 8 voices to vary slightly from voice to voice, just like the original hardware did (whether you wanted it to or not).

Back in the day I became reasonably proficient with programming my OBXa. The same basic programming architecture exists in the OB-E. You can set each of the 8 voices to the same patch, or arrange them into two separate 4-voice patches (split or double), or, unlike the original hardware versions like OBXa you can design an entirely different group of settings on each one of the 8 voices. This capability really shines in Unison mode, when all 8 voices are triggered from a single key, each one doing something slightly or massively different. Some of the factory patches in the OB-E actually have 8 different things happening at the same time. Lots of movement, majestic and beautiful.

In the OBXa, you had to open the synth up with a screwdriver to change voice pan settings for the stereo output. In the OB-E, per-voice panning is right there for you to access whenever you wish. Very nice touch, glad they thought of that because the only thing better than an Oberheim sound is an Oberheim sound in stereo!

This synth will not disappoint.

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Wonderful sounds, great set of presets to get started and explore what this plugin has to offer. The more I use it, the more I discover how much you can do with it. I didn't know much about the original, but it can do a whole lot more than I expected for being a model of such a vintage machine. This was an instant buy for me when it came out and Sweetwater's price was the best I could find. Buying and registering downloadable software here has always been a simple and fast process.