Hi! I just wanna recommend a VST that still is unknown to most people:
Parawave Rapid is a beast of a synthesizer. I use it several years now. It’s a very versatile synth with a big bunch of awesome features.
In my opinion it’s better than Pigments, Massive X, Vital, Avenger 2, Serum, etc. I even would say better than Serum 2 because you can do things in Rapid that are not possible in Serum/Serum 2.
It’s even 8x multitimbral and very CPU friendly.
This VST is still quite unknown because the manufacturers don’t have good marketing strategies and do not advertise it much. But it’s one of the best VST synths i ever used. It’s even my go to synth for a long time now.
I do remember trying out the demo, as I did for most (Pigments, Massive X, Vital, Avenger 2, Serum) Actually had Serum back in the day. My problem with most of them was CPU hit.(old man/old computer) Can’t remember why I didn’t go with this one to be honest. Maybe the price or something. Wound up with Tone2 Icarus, Saurus, and Electra, Waldorf Largo, and Surge XT after all these years. Which is actually MORE than enough. I like all of them for different reasons by oddly enough, Largo is the one that i go to most often. It just has a unique sound due to it’s carefully selected wavetables and interesting architeture, that Waldorf DNA as it were. If I had enough money to buy a Hardware synth , it would defo be a Waldorf.
PS…the demo sounds in Largo are pure shit, compared to what one can actually do with this thing.
Ill check it out fully later, I’m still trying to find my one true synth. I know life itself is a series of compromises, the closest I’ve come is Minimal Audio Current 2.0. I’ve got a copy of Phase Plant I never use, as well as Synthmaster 2.9 (been meaning to look at 3.x), Diva (barely used) and I do like Surge XT which has the benefit of being free as well.
There is one or two things on each that just annoys the piss out of me though. Minimal Audio Current unbelievably doesnt have velocity to amp pre-mapped and mapping it is a pain in the bollocks because there isn’t a good single destination to send it to. Synthmaster GUI is laggy, the cursor gets stuck in knob edit mode etc. Diva is nice but I’m too used to multipoint envelopes now, they can’t even be set to time divisions. Surge XT doesn’t animate automation, etc.
Same here with Synthmaster 2/Synthaster 3. I own the Everything bundle but i never used it in my projects. I just played around with it sometimes.
I got a request from the KV331 CEO to write a review about Synthmaster 2 when it freshly was released.
For the effort they gifted me with a lifetime licenses for the Everything bundle plus free lifetime licenses for all their other available and also all their new upcoming products in the future. Isn’t that cool?
I think the Synthmaster 3.2 GUI might be not the prettiest, but it is a very capable synth, also can sound high quality. I usually set it to maximum quality in the settings as default. Certainly it has more features than Rapid. So I would consider Synthmaster 3 as often underrated. It is a bit hard to get used to it, but if you are, it provides so many possibilities and sound colors. The GUI is not laggy here at all under macos. Also have the impression that v3 is way less buggy than v2.9 was (had a similar experience with the v2.9 like you).
But I have no experience at all with Rapid, only judging by the webpage and the videos. What do you think are the unique synthesis features of Rapid? Is there a lot of cross-OSC modulation possible? Is there audio-rate modulation?
P.S. What I really like about KV331 that the SM3 development is very opened regarding feedback and communication.
I forgot about SM3 more than one time, too, but I think it really is mainly because the GUI is not as polished as the other ones, and maybe some workflow stuff is “uncommon”, or it’s sometimes difficult to intuitively understand how a feature actually works (lag of visual highlighting, after I forgot again how it works ).
I love the sound of SM2.9, its very, very capable and laid out well. The cursor and GUI bugs are a little frustrating, my “complaint” is just the minor bug bear of the glitches as opposed to a serious criticism.
Paid to upgrade my version to v3 last night, didnt get a lot of time to play with it though. What i did/do like about SM is that you can run it standalone for more dedicated sound design sessions. Looking forward to digging into it.
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