Thor

[ThisIsNotTheMusic]

Thor Thor Thor Thor Thor Thor Thor.

I've spent some time tonight playing around with this superb out of the box synth, after investing in a few others such as Expanse, VK2 and Antidote and largely ignoring it for the first 12 months of my Reason experience. I'm actually blown away by the clarity and range in the presets alone. I love lamp? No, I love Thor*!

I just had to put that out there, and am wondering how others rate this awesome instrument in the face of the VST onslaught in Reason? It's so easy to get caught up in the hype. VST's are a huge market and they are all over my social media pipes with there enticing offers and fake news praise and so on No doubt some are excellent, but are they really that much better than what you can do straight out of the box? I'm really wondering if I need to go beyond Re-s too much at all TBH. Interested in thoughts vaguely related to my ambient ramblings.

* The Synth, not the mythical superhero, just so we are clear on that one.

[jfrichards]

Get this free refill for sure:
https://www.reasonexperts.com/reason-re ... ammer.html

[Carly(Poohbear)]

^^ Thors Hammer, is a must ^^ there are plenty of other refils out there for it as well...

A Thor in some shape or form always makes into my tracks....

Don't leave home without it LOL

[Schwendi]

I with you. I have a few REs, but I've made plenty of great music right out of the box. Thor is an awesome synth

[ThisIsNotTheMusic]

Get this free refill for sure:
https://www.reasonexperts.com/reason-re ... ammer.html

Thanks you! I'm missing something here though - how to download this? Do I need to sign up to see the download link? ah yes I see that I do!

[Ostermilk]

Get this free refill for sure:
https://www.reasonexperts.com/reason-re ... ammer.html

Thanks you! I'm missing something here though - how to download this? Do I need to sign up to see the download link? ah yes I see that I do!

Yes, you only need to create an account so you can log in. A bit like here really.

[Raveshaper]

This is just my opinion, let's get that out of the way.

VST synths are essentially stand alone programs that can be 100MB in size on average and contain a ton of code for complicated DSP. That is what gives them their pop compared to RE.

RE units are effectively mods or extensions to the core app of Reason. They can be large, but they are more like function libraries that Reason uses. They also compete with other devices based on available resources.

So yes Thor is great, but when the core app is in the 10MB range compared to as much as 100MB for a single synthesizer, you see the comparison.

[ThisIsNotTheMusic]

So yes Thor is great, but when the core app is in the 10MB range compared to as much as 100MB for a single synthesizer, you see the comparison.

And they say size doesn't matter ....

[Raveshaper]

Again, just my opinion.

I'm probably skewing this; it's more likely that the core app of Reason is equal in size to just one of those synthesizers. But it still makes the same point.

[syrokitty]

Thor is easily worth the price of reason itself impo. Truly limitless and efficient as all get out.

[Oquasec]

You can make some gnarly sounds with all the plugins reason has to offer, but if you are just digging into what one of them can do to test reason out I see the point of this.

And then you come across a wavetable RE with 1000 wavetables to choose from that costs 9 bucks when NI's massive gives you 20 for 99.
However it does take a lot of work to get Reason sounding the way you want it.

[madmacman]

You can make some gnarly sounds with all the plugins reason has to offer, but if you are just digging into what one of them can do to test reason out I see the point of this.

And then you come across a wavetable RE with 1000 wavetables to choose from that costs 9 bucks when NI's massive gives you 20 for 99.

This comparison isn't fair, is it? Massive offers more than just 20 wavetables. And regarding this 9 bucks RE: I tried it, but digging into 1000 wavetables is quite cumbersome (especially without at least basic documentation of the wavetable content) and makes sounddesign more of a trial and error game (which is not necessarly bad - but I prefer a more "engineering" approach).

[Oquasec]

My bad, massive has 24 waveforms. Mixfood has 1000+.
You can see the waveforms in mixfood.

To see what massive's waveforms look like you need to do this http://quadrophone.com/synthesis/ni-mas ... le-images/
I can load up massive's wavetables with expanse or Thor's Cv connections so I'm good
To each their own when it comes to using plugins

[jfrichards]

Thor Thor Thor Thor Thor Thor Thor.
...

This reminds me, putting several Thor synths in a Combinator (6 through a 6:2 mixer is especially impressive) gives all the depth of the most modern synths, and just dragging a different patch onto a Thor in such a combinator lets you go almost anywhere creatively. Turning off all the delays and choruses is often needed for such monstrosities.

[Marco Raaphorst]

Thor is superb. One of the best soft synths ever. It has so many different sounding wave forms (even several types of sine waves, saw types etc). And the filters are great too.

It's not about quality. I guess most people don't have an idea what they can do with the tools which are available in Reason. Don't know what you can do with Thor, Pulveriser, Scream etc. They rather buy something expensive because they think it is better. Well, you need to discover it yourself. Music and sound is about discovering and listening. Not to someone else, but listen for yourself.

[Oquasec]

I'm such a retard for reason because of how it's laid out basically.
You are going to find so many interesting methods provided you know how to use them.

Front part is like any other plugins you'll find on the net. The fun part is the tab button.
Figuring out new ways to do things is much easier in reason when you have the fundamentals of CV/Gate etched into your skull like it's a copy of tekken 7. Using thor as extra combinator rotaries for example, does wonders sometimes and takes up very little space.

It's not like you need to use the cv ports at the back if you don't want to lol there's a right click option for bypassing that.
What I like about this software is the same reason people like using tools such as plogue bidule or reaktor.
The extra bells & whistles for esoteric mechanics are there for the people who are interested in that niche, unnecessary addition some plugins offer.
Whether or not you are one of them is your choice to make.
But so far I've been still running the malstrom/thor & subtractor plugs and don't intend on lettin those go anytime soon.

[chimp_spanner]

Thor is indeed still a great synth! I still find new ways to use it, even now. While I'm here actually, I did find out the other day that you can get a lot more filter "bite" (comparable to VK and the like) if you double-route the filter envelope to the filter cutoff. When you set the filter env knob to maximum it's still pretty dull IMO. But if you assign the filter envelope to filter cutoff again in the mod matrix, it's suddenly waaaaaay brighter. Anyone else notice this?

**Edit: figured it out. Just my (bad?) habit of setting the cut off too low. But this way allows you to have the filter set to absolute zero and still get a nice bright spike!

[miscend]

This is just my opinion, let's get that out of the way.

VST synths are essentially stand alone programs that can be 100MB in size on average and contain a ton of code for complicated DSP. That is what gives them their pop compared to RE.

RE units are effectively mods or extensions to the core app of Reason. They can be large, but they are more like function libraries that Reason uses. They also compete with other devices based on available resources.

So yes Thor is great, but when the core app is in the 10MB range compared to as much as 100MB for a single synthesizer, you see the comparison.

The underlying basic DSP code and principles are still the same whether it is a VST or RE. Whether a plugin is 100MB or more doesn't matter unless it's using samples to generate the sounds. A 1MB or less VST effect can sound far better than a 2GB VST effect.

[chk071]

This is just my opinion, let's get that out of the way.

VST synths are essentially stand alone programs that can be 100MB in size on average and contain a ton of code for complicated DSP. That is what gives them their pop compared to RE.

Most of the size of synthesizers capable of wavetable synthesis, resynthesis, or which have sample-based oscillators, is for the waveforms really. A VA VST synths can be as small as a couple of 100 KBytes. At the very least, i'd say, it's not the size, which makes the sound, or the sound quality. So, basically what ThisIsNotTheMusic wrote. Even the GUI graphics can make a considerable part of the size. And, there's surely not a difference between VST and RE, regarding all that. A RE synth using wavetables, or samples, will also be big in size.

[Oquasec]

A plugin that sounds like Andromeda's space station could probably do a whopping 200kb patch max.
Sound generators & effect/utility modules don't do nearly as much damage to storage space by comparison to sample libraries.

[fieldframe]

This is just my opinion, let's get that out of the way.

VST synths are essentially stand alone programs that can be 100MB in size on average and contain a ton of code for complicated DSP. That is what gives them their pop compared to RE.

Most of the size of synthesizers capable of wavetable synthesis, resynthesis, or which have sample-based oscillators, is for the waveforms really. A VA VST synths can be as small as a couple of 100 KBytes. At the very least, i'd say, it's not the size, which makes the sound, or the sound quality. So, basically what ThisIsNotTheMusic wrote. Even the GUI graphics can make a considerable part of the size. And, there's surely not a difference between VST and RE, regarding all that. A RE synth using wavetables, or samples, will also be big in size.

Arturia V Collection is about an 8 gigabyte install, but Analog Lab contains all the synth engines and is only a few hundred megs. Retina GUIs are expensive!

[tumar]

You can make some gnarly sounds with all the plugins reason has to offer, but if you are just digging into what one of them can do to test reason out I see the point of this.

And then you come across a wavetable RE with 1000 wavetables to choose from that costs 9 bucks when NI's massive gives you 20 for 99.
However it does take a lot of work to get Reason sounding the way you want it.

1. Massive has nearly 90 wavetables


2. Each one can be modulated, so it gives thousands of combinations - and this is fully playable and musically usable worldwide top-notch synth, not mess with thousands trial-and-error sampled waveforms.

https://www.attackmagazine.com/techniqu ... etables/3/

3. Wavetables counted on bucks, LOL Maybe kilograms?

[Oquasec]

Dude. mixfood has wires at the back, & 1000 waveforms with a flexible system.
This sounds like a preference thing. Sooooo useeeee what youuuuu like in your music.

[Raveshaper]

Thanks for educating me on the finer details.

Speaking of VST, Native-Instruments is having a sale on Komplete upgrades.

[Marco Raaphorst]

You can make some gnarly sounds with all the plugins reason has to offer, but if you are just digging into what one of them can do to test reason out I see the point of this.

And then you come across a wavetable RE with 1000 wavetables to choose from that costs 9 bucks when NI's massive gives you 20 for 99.
However it does take a lot of work to get Reason sounding the way you want it.

1. Massive has nearly 90 wavetables


2. Each one can be modulated, so it gives thousands of combinations - and this is fully playable and musically usable worldwide top-notch synth, not mess with thousands trial-and-error sampled waveforms.

https://www.attackmagazine.com/techniqu ... etables/3/

3. Wavetables counted on bucks, LOL Maybe kilograms?

Thor has more. It has OSCs + the magnificent Shaper to create an unlimited amounts of wavetables!