Thor

[drloop]

Thor is my favourite synth, using it together with nanoKONTROL2 and I have the best HW synth ever produced...

[jfrichards]

One reason Thor is so good is it's lineage directly from the Moog. This free Magic Moog refill, especially run through EQ like Trident, is magnificent. Don't forget to beef it up with Chorus, Delay, and Pultec-style EQ. I think you need to log in to Propellerhead and this will just download:
https://www.propellerheads.se/download/ ... ileID=2428

[selig]

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!

There's a variation on this where you double-assign an envelope as a SCALE of the filter envelope in addition to the main modulation. The result is multiplying the envelope by itself (in your example you're adding it to itself), and the effect is a more exponential envelope shape. This is done to re-create the more modern "curve" capability of many synths, something Thor lacks.


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[Exowildebeest]

It's a pretty strange quirk though, that the Filter Env doesn't cover the whole spectrum by default.

Thor is full of secrets

[selig]

It's a pretty strange quirk though, that the Filter Env doesn't cover the whole spectrum by default.

Thor is full of secrets

Yes, along with the fact the LFO 2 out is half the level of other LFOs, and I'm sure there are others!


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[tumar]

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

I love Thor, as I wrote my opinion on old PUF forum, it's the only part of old (pre-RE) Reason which could exist on VST market as independent product. Before Reason got VST ability, I used only two synths in Reason: Thor and Predator.
However, IMO Massive sounds better. I can't describe it, but whatever you do, Thor patches sounds a bit muffled in comparison to Massive.

[Marco Raaphorst]

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

I love Thor, as I wrote my opinion on old PUF forum, it's the only part of old (pre-RE) Reason which could exist on VST market as independent product. Before Reason got VST ability, I used only two synths in Reason: Thor and Predator.
However, IMO Massive sounds better. I can't describe it, but whatever you do, Thor patches sounds a bit muffled in comparison to Massive.

Some colleagues of mine are using Massive. Sounds great. Impressive patches! Like always with NI.

[selig]

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

I love Thor, as I wrote my opinion on old PUF forum, it's the only part of old (pre-RE) Reason which could exist on VST market as independent product. Before Reason got VST ability, I used only two synths in Reason: Thor and Predator.
However, IMO Massive sounds better. I can't describe it, but whatever you do, Thor patches sounds a bit muffled in comparison to Massive.

I love Massive too, but the only difference I hear in brightlness is when no filter used (well known issue), and I hardly ever use a totally bright unfiltered patch. Adding a bit of HF saturation to Thor takes care of that on those occasions, BTW. But once you use any LP filtering, it's more about the sound of the filters than the oscillators IMO, and Thor stands up to Massive/Spire/Antidote etc. (my other favorites) in these cases just fine IMO.





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[deepndark]

Thor is almost never baked to my taste as it is. I need to futher process it to make it sound good. Usually Scream4 does it to me. There's no other synth than Thor tho, so I gladly accept it for what it is/does.

[Marco Raaphorst]

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

I love Thor, as I wrote my opinion on old PUF forum, it's the only part of old (pre-RE) Reason which could exist on VST market as independent product. Before Reason got VST ability, I used only two synths in Reason: Thor and Predator.
However, IMO Massive sounds better. I can't describe it, but whatever you do, Thor patches sounds a bit muffled in comparison to Massive.

I love Massive too, but the only difference I hear in brightlness is when no filter used (well known issue), and I hardly ever use a totally bright unfiltered patch. Adding a bit of HF saturation to Thor takes care of that on those occasions, BTW. But once you use any LP filtering, it's more about the sound of the filters than the oscillators IMO, and Thor stands up to Massive/Spire/Antidote etc. (my other favorites) in these cases just fine IMO.





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I remember some blind test online, people thought the Thor was the best sounding one.

What I love is that Thor offers both clean and dirty OSCs of the same time. We both are aware that the Wavetable Sinewave OSC is a super handig simply clean sound generator. Many other synths are not capable of generating clean sine waves.

[jlgrimes]

It is still a great all a rounder synth. Does almost any type of sounds but has some great leads, Pads, Efxs.

The variety of OSCS types makes it a good synth even to more modern synths. Also it has low CPU use so you can go a bit wild with stacking them.


BTW. Subtractor and Malstrom are underrated as well.

Subtractor has a nice bottom end and does a good job with simple leads and basic pads.

Malstrom can just get out there and can go wild!!

[Marco Raaphorst]

And Thor is the only synth doing both free running 'analog' OSCs and digital OSCs.

[scratchnsnifff]

Thor is amazing for a stock synth I use to think that the es2 in logic was the best but when I soon after went with reason, that opinion changed. Thor is a blast to work with I love all the fm sounds you can get out of it, only complaint with it is that they really should update it

I think it'd be awesome if it had malstroms wavetables,unison, and something like parsecs modifiers. I love the mix and match approach to Thor I just wish they would add on to it gotta love when you can make some modern sounds with older tools

[kuhliloach]

[Hello New Format Forums ]

"A 1MB or less VST effect can sound far better than a 2GB VST effect." from above I agree with. Thor is a monster, and a good metaphor for everything Reason -- mysterious, complicated, scary, and insanely powerful. I purchased Thor for iOS just to continue learning it.

[TritoneAddiction]

Thor is alright, it's versatile and all, but to be honest I don't really like working with it. I think it looks a bit messy with stuff spread out pretty randomly with arrows pointing everywhere.
With Legend, Expanse and FM4 in my rack the only reason I would go back to working with Thor is for the low DSP usage. Other than that, the other three I just mentioned covers everything Thor does but "better" and they're more fun and easier to work with imo.

Of course it's totally unfair to compare three synths against one, especially since two of them are on the pricier side. But still my reasons for not using Thor still stands.

If I'm going with a Reason stock synth, Malström is way more fun imo. That one actually has some personality. Thor is just ok at everything, but it's not really great at anything.
I'd rather work with specialized/character synths.

[Oquasec]

I literally like all reason's built in modules equally.

[drloop]

I made some classic syntsounds Rolandish with Thor.
Thor love!

[miscend]

Thor is really tame compared to Subtractor. Subtractor has personality and bullocks in spades compared to Thor. But you need to run at high sample rates to get the best out of Subtractor. Pelle of Nord Lead fame did the DSP for both but I think he really worked some voodoo magic when he made Subtractor.

[Hauser+Quaid]

My problem w Thor (and actually Maelstrom and less so Subtractor) has always been the filters. I feel like they're ok, they work, but they lack a lot of character. That's where something like Antidote or ReSpire come in, when you load up a basic waveform and just do a little filter sweep... it sounds like magic.

Hook Thor up thru something with a better filter though and it's an absolute beast!

[miscend]

My problem w Thor (and actually Maelstrom and less so Subtractor) has always been the filters. I feel like they're ok, they work, but they lack a lot of character. That's where something like Antidote or ReSpire come in, when you load up a basic waveform and just do a little filter sweep... it sounds like magic.

Hook Thor up thru something with a better filter though and it's an absolute beast!

Have you tried Primal Audio's three filters, what did you think?


Personally I like Reason's filters. Thor's filters can do a nice impression of the classic Moog sound if you listen to that Bob Moog Thor refill. And there was another guy who did a Sequential Prophet 5 refill with Thor (the demos sounded amazing) but never released it in the end. Pulveriser as well has nice filter too I think.

[Hauser+Quaid]

My problem w Thor (and actually Maelstrom and less so Subtractor) has always been the filters. I feel like they're ok, they work, but they lack a lot of character. That's where something like Antidote or ReSpire come in, when you load up a basic waveform and just do a little filter sweep... it sounds like magic.

Hook Thor up thru something with a better filter though and it's an absolute beast!

Have you tried Primal Audio's three filters, what did you think?


Personally I like Reason's filters. Thor's filters can do a nice impression of the classic Moog sound if you listen to that Bob Moog Thor refill. And there was another guy who did a Sequential Prophet 5 refill with Thor (the demos sounded amazing) but never released it in the end. Pulveriser as well has nice filter too I think.

I haven't tried them, no. But I did see them and thought they looked pretty cool and worth a shot. Only thing they're missing is an envelope!

I do like Pulveriser as well, that's what I usually use in tandem with Thor & Maelstrom. In fact I use it for most filtery things when I just need a low-CPU but good sounding filter (never hurts to throw some dirt on too!). But to me that's what sets a lot of synths apart, it's not the waveforms, it's the filter. If you take a basic saw from Thor or Subtractor and compare it with a saw from Serum for example there's almost no difference as you play them up and down the keyboard. But if you add a low pass filter with an envelope all of a sudden the difference becomes pretty big to me.