Faastwalker wrote:This opinion is going against the grain so I hope I don't offend as everyone else seems to be going nuts for this one. I had a different perspective on this feature laden behemoth of a synth. This thing looks beyond capable & certainly has some impressive features & sound capabilities. But for me it feels a bit like the soft synth equivalent of an all singing & dancing Workstation type device. Each new device being bigger, better, more capable ('this one goes up to 11') than the last.
Where will it end? I still feel like I've barely scratched the surface of Zero! Do I want another behemoth synth in the fray? I'd actually like to see more specific, focused synths that are good at doing specific things. Simple devices with a less is more approach in terms of features, parameters & a plethora of built in FX. In the context of the Reason Rack I think this kind of device works really well.
RedRocks Ivoks is still pretty much my favorite synth in Reason. On the face of it it's a minnow compared to something like Expanse. But in the context of the Rack it's a building block to whatever you can dream up. Or have people stopped thinking about the Rack in this way? Preferring instead the all-in-one approach? Saying that, next up for me is probably going to be Nostromo once I've saved up for it & possibly after I've got the measure of Zero
![Wink ;)](./images/smilies/icon_e_wink.gif)
There is only so much RE Megasynth I have hours in the day to learn. Otherwise these things are just expensive, feature laden preset machines. Where's the fun in that?
In principle I agree with this - haven't even trialled eXpanse yet, so I'm not going to address it specifically, but I do really like the simpler building-block devices in Reason that invite hooking shit up to other shit and taking full advantage of the modular possibilities. The blurb for eXpanse makes a big deal of "keeping everything in the box", but using stuff
out of the box is what I love about working in Reason, particularly when it comes to filters and FX. 64 LFO waveforms? I can use something like Shape, or Ammo, together with a variety of signal-warping utilities that give me a billion LFO waveforms, as well as the fun of creating/modifying them. And while an onboard suite of FX is nice, I feel I'm paying for compression/distortion/reverb/etc options where I'm already spoilt for choice (of course there are exceptions to this, e.g. Revival whose preamp does particularly excellent distortion/saturation)
That said, I love Zero and Nostromo which are big-ticket synths - and knowing me, I'll probably try eXpanse, fall in love with a sound and buy it - especially as it's got a shitload of CV inputs. But maybe not until I've spent a fair bit more time with these other monsters