B - Most realistic sounds overall, ramping up and down speed sounds great and has great low end growl
E - Good all around tone balance and thickness and OK growl
A - Good mid range and creamy tone
C - Lots of horn gain and not so much drum gain to me a bit out of balance tonally
D - Sounds more like a phaser than a Leslie to me
Not sure what is what brand. B really reminds me of IK but could be wrong lol. I went for what my ears liked on my studio monitors. Thanks for compiling this and letting us participate!
Thanks for the replies so far. I really like the descriptions. When I did this, I was somewhat amazed by a couple of them when compared to others. Maybe a few more members will give us a review soon so I can make the “big reveal”. As of now, looks like B is taking a lead, and maybe C or D is at the bottom.
I know which one is my favorite, but I’ll hold it back, because bias does affect your judgement. That is why I wanted to learn from others what they hear.
I guess I’m the opposite to being an expert as far as deciding which version sounds closest to a real Leslie because I’ve never had the opportunity to play a Hammond with a real Leslie or to listen to one one its own (i.e. without hearing the sounds of any other instruments). So my list is just about which sounds I personally liked best. To sum it up, I like A, B and E and don’t so much really C and D.
E - I really like the sound of this one. The way the Leslie slows down, the growl.
A - Great sound too. I like the way the Leslie slows down.
B - Again a great sound, but I’m not sure if the growl is not a bit too much for me
C - I don’t like this very much. The stereo effect is far too strong to sound realistic to me
D - This one sounds very muffled (but that may apply more to this particular Hammond rather that just the Leslie)
Hey @Corky, thanks for the effort of preparing this blind test!
I’ll go with the majority - B is my favorite: nice and beefy! But I’m not so happy with the spin-up and -down - it’s a bit too drastic and wobbly for my taste. Maybe a bit more mic distance / less stereo spread would make it a bit less disorienting
E is better in that regard - spin-up and -down are better behaved, and the overall sound is nice and present, albeit not quite as “woody” as B.
A is nice, but a bit bland / 2-dimensional for my taste.
Thank you Corky for doing this! I didn’t take enough time to listen to each one using high-quality headphones or speakers, so my answers are somewhat limited – and why I didn’t respond immediately. But as an owner of several options for achieving an acceptable Hammond/Leslie simulation, I am very interested in this.
Even though A, B, and E are all somewhat different, I liked all of them, with B and E being slightly better to my ears. I had no use for C and D, although if you would have posted just C and D a year or 2 ago, I would have probably been very satisfied. (I feel like a novice wine connoisseur who is being exposed to finer and finer wines that continually enrich my palette.)
Thank you for the response Roland. I really believe some eyebrows will be raised. Most importantly, I hope this enlightens us “Hammondites” to the depth of some of these plugins. I have surely learned a lot during my crazy experiments, and listening to the many forum members who freely share their knowledge and experiences. What would be great is having some VST developers chime in on what we discuss about VSTs… Ray from GGAudio shared some comments earlier on, and there is no doubt he is listening. Guido from GSI has not made an appearance, but he has repeated, and acted on, many of the things we discuss. Would be great to hear from Arno of Acoustic Samples (B5). Even a few words with the IK Multimedia team would be beneficial. (they are also listening)
OK. Time for the “BIG REVEAL” to begin. I will start with the the least desirable (as chosen by the participants) So I will begin with “D”. Some of you figured it out. Here it is with the settings I used.
PROS: It beats the hell out of Arturia’s cheesy Leslie. Arturia respected the Leslie part of the sound so much, they made it the size of a drummer’s throne. BUT, that’s another story.
CONS: I personally think this was a good idea in it’s time, and I liked many of it’s features, but it never delivered. VB3 1.4 beat it by light years when this one was released. I spent more time on this one than any of the others. I squeezed what little resemblance of a Leslie cabinet I possibly could out of it, but it failed miserably . It overtook the organ sound instead of blending with it. I adjusted the mix, but it sounded better with full mix. My apologies to anyone liking this plug, but at it’s best, it is only a really good emulation of a shop fan. Sorry.
Disclaimer: This is my limited test. Anyone is welcome to join in the discussion and voice an opinion, and provide plug settings. I used ONLY the plugin with no outside enhancements, such as EQ. VB3 II was used for the Hammond sound.
PROS: I was somewhat shocked at the sound I produced out of Melda, because I struggled with it for years. As I tweaked this one, compared to the others out of the box, it actually, somewhat held it’s own. But, when I started tweaking the others, it quickly lost ground. I probably listened to this one more, because it seemed to have some hope of competing.
CONS: The problem with this one is it has so many parameters that add totally nothing. The amp section, and cabinet section varies the sound very little, if at all. But actually, I got virtually the same on all of the settings. I do not like the acceleration/deceleration settings.
Disclaimer: This is my limited test. Anyone is welcome to join in the discussion and voice an opinion, and provide plug settings. I used ONLY the plugin with no outside enhancements, such as EQ. VB3 II was used for the Hammond sound.
). So only my personal taste:
That is exactly the feeling I get! 
