GForce‘s Minimonsta, another clone of the much-loved Minimoog portable synth, has been reviewed by Computer Music magazine. They give it special awards for both Performance and Innovation and generally think it’s a pretty great piece of software. If you’ve ever used a real Minimoog, you’ll be right at home, since the Minimonsta is laid out pretty much the same as the original. The reviewers approve of the layout of the Minimonsta window and think some of the details are very nice. They single out the “flying faders”, which you can use to smoothly adjust knobs and faders with a simple mouse gesture: “Little touches like this make the software great fun to use.”

The Minimonsta comes with a number of presets and patches — “Most of the presets are very impressive.” There’s also a new Melohman feature; this allows you to group up to 12 patches together into one “meta-patch”. There’s a separate octave on the keyboard that you can use to trigger the twelve meta-patches. This enables you to easily switch between patches on the fly and even morph between them in various ways.

Overall, the emulation of the Minimoog is rated very highly. “The similarities are startling — and yes, the new version is always in tune.” The extra features are also very worthy additions. “Minimonsta is another triumph for the GForce team. Its sound is extraordinarily close to that of the original, and it provides programming and performance options that expand the creative possibilities of the Minimoog many times over.” They rate this software a big 9 out of 10 and call it “a highly attractive synth.”