Zero vs kHs ONE vs Hydronexius

[K1TTENM1TTEN]

Hey everyone! So all three of these are on sale at varying degrees. I already own Predator, Antidote, and PX-7, so which do you all think is the "must have" out of these three? Or are none of these "must have" in your opinion? I am curious now that they have all been out for a while, what is your opinion and are you using one of these (or more than one, or if any) regularly?

[Melody303]

Zero is too CPU hungry to be a reasonable addition to my rack. I bought kHs One about a year ago, and I don't particularly regret it, but I don't use it very often either (about once or twice for every 10 projects), but that's a matter of my familiarity with the native synths drawing me back to them over and over again rather than some flaw with One.
I tried Hydronexius for the first time today, and it's pretty damn impressive. I've yet to decide whether to buy or not.

I also tried Red70 today and enjoyed it so much I'm teetering on an impulse buy on it. It's very basic, in a few ways it has less breadth than the Subtractor, but in others it has more, and I like the oscillators and filter on it.

[boobytrap]

Zero! Or kHs One

[Loque]

Zero. A real synth.

[decibel]

i havent really gotten used to zero properly yet but i love khs one..

have you trialed revival yet ? i think its on sale at the moment as well, its pretty decent yeah

[tibah]

One is great, but not "special" enough for me to buy it. UI doesn't help with me wanting to use it either.

Hydronexius will give you loads of sounds, in a certain "frame" of tweakability.

Zero is a modern synth, with a modern sound and some nice bells and whistles.

I would say this - get Zero if you're fine with the CPU hit and if you're planning to upgrade to R9, so you can have some proper use for the new bounce in place.

Get Hydronexius if you want a broader palette of ready to go sounds with an easy interface and no real synthesis to learn behind it.

Get One if you feel it is for you.

[Melody303]

I bought kHs One because while trialing it, I wrote a song in which I used it for an acid line, and I didn't want to replace it. Sure, I didn't have anything bad to say about it, but chances are that if it weren't for that song, I wouldn't have bought it.
Just now I started another project with three Ones I programmed on the spot, to get some perspective about Red70.
The differences between Subtractor (my main go to synth for nearly everything) and One are far larger than the differences between it and Red70.

[dvdrtldg]

I bought kHs One because while trialing it, I wrote a song in which I used it for an acid line, and I didn't want to replace it. Sure, I didn't have anything bad to say about it, but chances are that if it weren't for that song, I wouldn't have bought it.

I've bought so many REs that way. Trials are dangerous

[Carly(Poohbear)]

I bought kHs One because while trialing it, I wrote a song in which I used it for an acid line, and I didn't want to replace it. Sure, I didn't have anything bad to say about it, but chances are that if it weren't for that song, I wouldn't have bought it.

I've bought so many REs that way. Trials are dangerous

Don't forget you can bounce the track so you have your song without having to buy the RE....


I would buy the Zero, it's a massive synth and so flexible, there is so much too and that can also put people off, it's quite a learning curve compared to Hydronexius..

Hydronexius I beta tested and created sounds for, it's nice and solid, easy to create sounds, I find it very creative and inspirational..

In fact I just used both Zero and Hydronexius on a track I did last week (see sig)...

[dvdrtldg]

I bought kHs One because while trialing it, I wrote a song in which I used it for an acid line, and I didn't want to replace it. Sure, I didn't have anything bad to say about it, but chances are that if it weren't for that song, I wouldn't have bought it.

I've bought so many REs that way. Trials are dangerous

Don't forget you can bounce the track so you have your song without having to buy the RE....

The assumption there is that it takes me less than a month to make all the decisions I need to make when mixing a track

[Noplan]

I prefer Zero, because it is the best RE instrument in my opinion . Yes, it is CPU hungry but even my old pc can handle it if i don*t overdo it.

[Sinistereo]

Hydronexius is a very capable ROMpler with a large soundbank. ONE is Subtractor's bigger, better looking, and more successful brother. Zero is the weird Nobel laureate who lives next door and keeps causing brownouts in the neighborhood.

Such different beasts! If I had to keep only one, I'd choose Hydronexius, because it covers so much ground, albeit without a ton of flexibility.

[XysteR]

Zero all day long...

[K1TTENM1TTEN]

So for all those saying Zero is the winner, I do see one common statement amongst its owners, and that is that Zero is very power hungry on DSP. I have downloaded the trial off all three of these and I was pretty blown away that a single instance of it hit 2 bars of DSP, and sometimes even 3 bars. Both of my studio computers are no slouch and have 5th generation i7 processors. Is there any word if Blamsoft would be able to make this synth more efficient? Most of my songs would require multiple layers, and being restricted to only two or three instances of Zero would definitely limit its overall effectiveness. Not gonna lie though, the thing does sound top notch! It seems to compliment Antidote very well.

I haven't gotten to give One and Hydro a solid go yet, but I definitely look forward to it. In my opinion though the Hydro demo songs sounds rather meh/early 2000s Korg-esque (not a big fan), but then again I've also never liked Rob Papen's demo songs, either. Do you all find Hydro to be better sounding in action and in use than the demo tracks?

[eXode]

I'd vote for Zero too.

For reference, I have an i7-3770K @ 3.5 GHz with 16 Gb RAM, running Windows 7 64-bit (SSD disk for my OS). I made my demo song with this system.
You can load the demo songs by choosing File... Open in the menu, then click on the Rack Extensions icon in the browser and navigate to the Zero Hybrid Synthesizer folder, and then into Songs to find and load the demo songs. Yes, it is CPU heavy but I still managed to make that song without running out of CPU.

Also, worth mentioning is that I hope that people don't trial this when running the open beta of Reason 9. The beta has logging code and therefore performance is affected.

Finally, some tips regarding CPU in Zero:
Using more than 4 operators will affect the CPU usage.
Polyphonic sounds with long release (esp with a high poly setting) will also affect CPU.

[TritoneAddiction]

I would go for Zero, not because it's my favorite synth to work with, but because I feel it offers something different to everything else in Reason.

[pjeudy]

I already own Predator, Antidote, and PX-7, so which do you all think is the "must have" out of these three? Or are none of these

Predator+Antidote = you Already have kiloheart One covered.
PX7 is an ancestor of Zero = Zero can do Fm and other "modern" or common synthesis.
Hydronexius = cool when you don't want to do a lot of synthesizing and don't mind preset sounds (*I like it for that*)

But if I had to choose one for my self, it would be Zero.