I must say I'm still pretty impressed by Saurus. It still sounds great and I've made some lovely sounds with it.

I'm also a bit surprised that there's been no updates but I guess the devs feel that it's pretty feature complete already.

(Please don't crap up this thread with Diva comparison talk).
Last edited by cyberheater on Fri Aug 24, 2012 10:26 am; edited 2 times in total

Sold it. Got Oxium instead.

The things that really bugged me were the inefficient UI (relegating often-used mods to the damn matrix) and the pronounced, ugly, and decidedly digital harshness when driving feedback/resonance/tube.

I didn't think it was a total loss, there's some nice sounds to be had with it when you exploit its sweet spots, but I had those bases covered with D... (oops). Damn impulse buys... the virtual (aliased) grit on the virtual keys got to me, I guess.

I was impressed by Saurus after just 20 minutes of playing, especially as i started doing some of my own sounds...

There will be new soundbanks at the Tone2 website soon.

Personally i already made around 150+ presets for it which is the most ever besides Waldorf PPG Wave 3.V (around 200+). Some of those presets are published with the "Vintage" expansion, others are maybe included with the next soundset and the rest will follow later (with some more i hope...)

Besides the fact i also like other synths like e.g. Oxium this is currently my "go-to" synth. I also like the other Tone2 synths like e.g. ElectraX and Gladiator 2. I'll spend a lot of time with ElectraX in the next weeks/months for both an upcoming official expansion and my own signature soundset.

The Tone2 "guys" just work on new soundbanks, updates (e.g. Gladiator 2.4) and also some new stuff (no details yet).


Ingo
Last edited by Ingonator on Tue Aug 21, 2012 11:45 pm; edited 1 time in total

I keep meaning to check out that Himalaya retro bank. I might get Saurus when it comes on sale cheap in the market. My only other Tone2 synth is Firebird+. I do wish you could hidethat Saurus keyboard though, it is ugly and doesn't provide good visual feedback when the sequencer is driving the plugin. Firebird lets you hide its kb and that makes it very efficint regarding screen space.

I really hate the Demo but mostly because of the demo restrictions which makes it for me not very usable. Because I don't like Oxium there was some money left to buy Saurus...

IMO it's a good VA. I would put in the same department with Steinberg Retrologue. Very optimized algorithms, also with Unison and very flexible. I use it very often for leads and plucks and it fits very well in the mix.
I would say it has a bit a signature sound (Tone2 sound?) which is not really analog but also not digital.. some kind of "pseudo analog" but in a good way.
I'm not a big preset user but there are some very nice presets eg by Bigtone.

Saurus is one of those synths which don't "reinvent the wheel" but one of those which "just work" if you know what i mean.

I found that it sounds even better with an EQ added (e.g. Stillwell VibeEQ at around 110 Hz). It doesn't mean it sounds bad without (and in some cases with the EQ it sounds worse) but it could improve the sound IMO.

I am tired of people saying that if you use an EQ it's "cheating"...


Ingo

I'm amazed how CPU efficient it is. I can have a full songs worth of Saurus and don't need to freeze any tracks which is pretty incredible considering how power hungry some synth plug ins are.

I also find the interface to be very quick to dial in sounds. I'm a big fan of the single page interfaces and Saurus does not disappoint.

I assume they also mix by mic placement alone as well

I demoed this and thought it was just a sub set of Electrax... sound was nice, but nothing over electrax imo. I didn't thnk it was the premier soft synth.

I think it's great, and am working on a new demo track for it.

Also it's only at v1.0... it will be really cool to see what's in store for this synth in the near future.


-Rob

I finally bought it a month or so ago, but haven't had much time to use it until recently. I like what I've heard/seen so far. It's a nice contrast to Gladiator2 and ElectraX due to its relative simplicity and overall warmer sound. I do wish that it had more filter options, though.

I am a pretty big fan of Tone2 but when I demoed Saurus I wasn't all that impressed. I was not impressed with Diva either. Neither is for me.

i think it's a great synth. easy to work with, great fat sound. am doing more 'modern' music, so the vintage bank didn't do much for me. but for fat arps, pads..basses...it's pretty great...

I'm getting on just fine without it. The demo left me cold and there's so many great instruments out there I don't miss this one a bit.

The Mac version was missing functionality in the gui... that hasn't been fixed yet? (been away for almost 3 months).

I found the demo restrictions so annoying that I was always back to square one with 10 minutes to go somewhere... never got a single sound I really liked cause it timed out too soon. Even if I might have liked it enough to buy otherwise, I am not going to buy a synth in the hope I can actually use it to my satisfaction once the ridiculous demo limitations are gone. I do like the feature-set and one page gui though.