Now that I think about it, It may sound "harsh" because of the saturation/distortion dirt effects.

IMO, some of the factory patches are poorly constructed and they show just that!

When I toyed around with the INIT patch... I always got rid of any "harshness" very easily ... so it's not something you can't fix.

I'm not saying the instrument is perfect either, I also see room for improvement both sound and feature wise. .. but at the end of the day, Razor if appreciated for what it knows to do best!

Yes. You can save presets with Razor running inside a free Reaktor Player. You can't save ensembles, but that's not a big problem unless you want to make several banks of presets.

I did load Razor as an FX yesterday to play with the vocoder!

But I'm afraid it's impossible to use the (beautiful) stereo effects because they are part of the sythesis. ... however, you can still use them only if you pass through the vocoder 1st.

That's what the Reaktor FX version is for. Just insert it as an effect and select the vocoder presets - make sure midi is also routed to it

Yes, i tested the vocoder in Reaktor FX version in FL Studio.
Works like a charm.

You just need a MIDI OUT channel linked to the Reaktor FX (In a mixer FX channel).
Everytime you talk or there is a channel running (for example a sampled loop), use the MIDI OUT in piano roll to write chord notes.

Have a good day

Beautiful. I figured it would have to run through vocoder first, but I'm hoping I can make the vocoder as innocuous as possible. BTW. Thanks NI. I bought this, then went and found my washer and dryer thinking I had all this money in the bank. I got home and looked in my checkbook and I didn't have nearly what I thought. I just knew I'd bounced checks. Finally just balanced it and I had a grand total of 7 dollars left in the bank
I was so happy.
I did manage this wonderful gliding string preset yesterday. Can't wait to see what it can do.

The spectral clip feature is so useful!
The basic thing is that is helps tame the high freqs.
But it can really help to tame partials resulting from messing around with the formant (not vowel) filters.

It can sound cold, but that's the nature of this type of synthesis. I don't know that I would even compare it to Massive, etc., however, since they are completely different beasts. The spectral clip, safe bass, phase settings, etc. help.

However, with synths like this, a little saturation, analog tape emu, etc. goes a long way. Here's the "BuzzSaw" preset, first raw, then with some spectral clip/safe bass adjustment, and a little magnetic tape/tube emu:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/31416093/Shared%20Bounces/Razor.mp3

Granted you typically can't just toss it into the mix like a good subtractive plug and have it sit nice, but that's what all those fancy low cut filters are for. This is a different beast.

Oh boy sounds good!

How does Razor compare to Rob Papen's Blade? I'm sorry, I've been having problems with my audio interface and I can't demo and compare them myself right now so any feedback would be appreciated.

Two different beasts, yet similar. Both groundbreaking. Both sound great. I think soundwise I'd give the edge to Blade, but Blade doesn't have a vocoder(Predator does tho')
I love this vocoder. It sounds as good as the one in the MicroKorg. I turned a drumloop into a: rocking bassline, a really nice pluck and an ethereal pad.
My wishlist for Razor:
Separate Modulation for oscillator pitch and fine.
Separate pitch and fine for each oscillator
A delay (would that push CPU over the top?)
Combo fx (like chorus and reverb, reverb and delay)
Bitcrusher

Just picked this up for $9.50 with a voucher that I thought had expired.

Thanks! Are they more or less the same CPU-wise? Or is one of them more efficient?

I prefer this infinitely to what I tried of Blade. The raw oscillator tweakage on Blade sounded thin and wirey, whereas the sine bank of Razor has a lot more presence and "slice" to it, with some really interesting and customizable oscillator and filter setups. I know you can get some great sounds with Blade by piling on detune and other features, but I like to be wowed by raw and basic oscillator settings before adding on complexity.

The "safe bass" thing is better for bass than a suboscillator because if you've got a lot of modulation and uppy+downy frequencies, the suboscillator sounds good when the main oscillator isn't bassy, but it gets muddy when the formants or whatever come down to the lower end, resulting in a buildup of low freqs. With the safe bass feature, instead of a sub you just have a reliable fundamental that isn't going to get louder or quieter with extreme modulations of the filter and oscillator, and that just makes a really reliable bass tone. Add to that the spectral clip which lets you do crazy filtering without burning your ears when a resonant peak crashes into a mountain of already ringing frequencies, and some truly experimental and unique sound sculpting routines, et viola! Additive Bassline Heaven

I love it when someone designs such practical features, you start to wish all your synths had them. Like I love having a separate dedicated Vibrato module on synths, like Ultra Analog and Corona.

Maybe some do have some sort of fundamental lock because some synths have a solid bass and others just always sound all over the place. Probably due to other things though.