I posted this over on Gearslutz but I thought I'd share it here for those who don't go over there. Pym replied with a correction and some extra feedback so I've tried to include that info here!
First of all, let me say I love this thing. There will be some criticisms below but most of them are minor gripes or mentions of things that would have been nice. Overall it's a beast of a synth and one of my favorite Sequential synths I've had. (And I've had several--Evo, PolyEvo, Tetra, Tempest, and Rev2, which I still have.) The combination of complex sequencer, mod routing, and flexible VCOs checks so many boxes for me and the wavetable just takes it above and beyond...
LAYOUT: Very well designed front panel--easy to find everything and logical. There's a good balance between knob-per-function and a couple of things being available only on the screen through soft knobs, which are all set-and-forget parameters. My only gripe about the layout is that the effects knobs don't correspond the order on the screen. Having them all lined up left to right like on the screen would have been less confusing.
HARDWARE: Excellent keyboard. Solid overall feel but light enough to carry about. The plastic end caps don't feel cheap but they do remind you that you didn't splurge for the wood.
Most pots are pretty stiff which takes getting used to. The Filter pot is easier to turn. Knobs are semi-rubbery with a hard cap. Not sexy but comfortable. Pitch and Grunge pots have a center denent, which is useful. There's some clicking when using encoders to change some parameters, which I've found is fairly typical--not a big issue since encoder values are set-and-forget whereas you want the play with the knobs and switches.
DISPLAY: Crisp screen that is similar to the Tempest's. Having the rotary encoders in addition to the dedicated knobs is useful for fine-tuning. The display also shows the wavetable oscillator name so you can find the one you want.
SOUNDS: Lots of them. On the analog side it really is like having souped up versions of a Pro One, minimoog, and SEM all in one unit, especially when using things like filter drive to find the sweet spots. And the digital waveforms take it into all sorts of new sonic realms. There's a huge amount of bass available but you can tame things right down for nice evolving pads or flutey bits.
To me the distortion amount seems to be preset and the level knob acts as a blend. But Ext Audio in the mixer can act as a feedback source if no audio is present, which is cool.
Some gripes about sound:
- Fairly loud pop when turning the unit off
- Only the Prophet filter seems to track across the keyboard
SEQUENCER
This is one of the things making this a world-class instrument. If you know the gated sequencer from the Evolver and Prophet 08 lines this will be very familiar to you. But @ Pym and co have taken this to the next level by making programming as easy as possible. You can program all sorts of things by just recording the notes on the keys then hitting record and turning a knob to record modulation--similar to Elektron p-locks or DAW automation. Very intuitive. But then you can dig in a bit further to tweak amounts, set slew on for some modulation lanes but not others, change velocity, etc. and that all is very straightforward. Muting a single lane is super useful for performative changes to the sequence. I'll also point out that it's possible to have 2 tracks with the same destination, e.g. cutoff on Track 4 and 5. This can be useful if you want, for example, half of your sequence to have stepped modulation and other half slew limited.
A couple of additional features would be nice:
- Recording modulation without having to hold record would be nice, for example by hitting Record + Play. Recording would start the next time step one is reached and stop on the last step.
- The sequence changes from A to B as soon as you hit the B button. A "Change At End of Sequence" mode would be nice, e.g. user would hit B and A would finish the sequence before changing to B.
And Pym mentioned those are already on his to do list!
EFFECTS
Soundwise some of them sound lovely like the reverb, others are fairly generic like the chorus--good for stereo-izing the signal but don't expect a Juno. The screen doesn't show the parameter number and the soft knobs are in a different order than the dedicated ones which isn't straightforward. Unfortunately the effects LFOs can't be synced. If that's not possible it would be nice if we could at least disengage the LFO and modulate just through the sequencer and 3 independent LFOs. But having them available in the mod matrix and sequencer is super useful.
Overall, I'm really happy with this thing. I'm in the process of paring down my stack of synths and this will easily replace a couple of them.
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