The filters are also surprising. Instead of the standard lp2/lp4/hp2/hp4 there’s a bunch of lowpass and highpass filters with definable peak and rolloff behaviors – so basically you can change a filter’s resonance response in ways that aren’t normal or natural for your standard Moog-diode-ladder or whatnot (usually, as your cutoff increases, the resonance peak bandwidth decreases – with this you can do just the opposite or keep it the same, or modulate how you please). Years back I used to use (odd, experimental, completely unsupported) software that did lowpass in a similar way, and it meant you could do really weird squelchy sounds, and I always missed that ability in modern softsynths. How’s it sound? It’s fascinating, and weird, and rather cool. As additive often is, it’s great at doing really gritty, punch-you-in-the-head digital sounds. And because it’s additive with 320 partials, it’s also great at doing pretty complex evolving sounds (and I guess it has a pretty killer vocoder in it, I haven’t had the opportunity to try it yet). The real excitement money seems to be in the effects section, which instead of actual “effects†in the traditional sense, are really modulations on the additive engine. So a reverb isn’t so much a “reverb†as it is “changing the decay of certain partials so it sounds like a reverbâ€, and then there are crazy pitch-and-overtone based effects, and pan on individual sine waves, and so forth. What’s cool about that is that you can then modulate those things directly from the synth, meaning your reverb can be pitch-following or be tied to the same LFO as your cutoff or whatever.Â
Reaktor is required to use it, although NI has thankfully provided the free Reaktor Player for those unwilling to buy the full Reaktor or Komplete packages. The player has a few limitations – you can’t save new preset banks, although you can create and save new sounds within your DAW – although they are generally minor annoyances. The use of Reaktor as a framework entails a little extra overhead to the workflow – instead of dropping the synth in a DAW slot, first a user has to load Reaktor player, then load the Razor ensemble in the player, then load any saved patches (or start programming). An extra step, although not really one that’s going to hamper your average electronic musician. I picked up NI’s new “Razor†Reaktor ensemble last week. Not like I really had a ton of money burning a hole in my pocket, but, hey, it wasn’t terribly expensive and you know what, I didn’t own an additive synth yet. So now I do. (I’ve always wanted one, to the point where I almost bought a used K5000r back in the 90’s.)Â