I compose ambient and trance, I like both of the plugins, I am leaning toward electraX, but can anyone who owns both comment?

I guess I'm looking for nice ambient and polished high energy trance sounds.

(btw, I own a few plugins already, so my question is really specifically about these two plugins)

I think you can't go wrong with either one. I don't have Gladiator but I have played around with ElectraX and I think it's just lovely. So versatile and easy to program.

I have both. Imho ElectraX is clearly a big step up from G2. It's more versatile, easier to program (but as deep as you want it to be), the GUI is better and the sound... the sound is.. jaw dropping excellent.

Not that G2 is bad though! But with ElectraX Tone2 have made a really well thought out highly optimized (amazing low cpu load) workhorse synth.

Only thing is that we need more presets for eX!

But you tried both demo versions didn't you?

If you need mono legato or swing in the arp, get ElectraX. It's also more traditional types of digital synthesis - 3 oscillators with with fm and wavetables and 2 parallel/serial filters. Sounds excellent. Gladiator is a little different. I'd say it excels more in experimental tones because of all the processing that can be done on the oscillators and morphing the additive type sound sources and such. It's cool for effects and pads/soundscapes, but for bass and leads, ElectraX kills it. You can of course get nice keys, pads and all the rest of it out of electraX as well. Just doesn't have the whole harmonic morphing thing that gladiator has.

Thank you all for the replies. I think today I may buy ElectraX and u-He Zebra as well.

A good day!

hurray for the weekend!

Still no mono legato in Gladiator v2.3 ?

My vote also goes for ElectraX. I don't know why, but Gladiator doesn't really do it for me. I also like the interface a notch better in EX.

/C

Good question, I only just saw the email of it's release. I don't know, didn't see any mention of it though. Last year Markus repeatedly said it was impossible though so I don't expect it to be there.

I saw this thread: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=304060&start=0 &postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=electra

I also saw this has been updated since 1.0

Those that own it, is it stable? When you make knob movements does it respond immediately and smoothly? Click sounds, what was that all about? Was that demo related?

Sadly, I can't check the demo out for a few hours till after work, but I really am hearing excellent stuff on ElectraX

There is a issue with Electrax in Logic (at least for me) that they have promised me they are working on fixing.
One instance (usually the same one) is silent when you reopen your project with more than one instance of the synth. You need to click the gui before it makes any sound. It will work as expected for the rest of the session.
You need to do open the GUI every time you reopen the project. It also affects the bouncing out of audio and is not happening in 64 bit bridged mode.
All other instances in a project works as expected...

I would get Electrax if I had to choose between the two. I own both.

I think most things got fixed with 1.1. There is still a bug where turning oscillators on or off does not take affect until the amp envelope is allowed to finish. So if you are playing back a sequence of overlapping notes (or notes where the attack happens on any note before a previous decay/release is finished), then oscillator buttons don't respond. I find this kind of annoying when making adjustments as a midi pattern is playing. Apparently the intended behavior is for a new midi note to trigger changes to button/control states. I personally think that turning a button on or off should just happen immediately like with other synths, but they apparently do things like this to save cpu (so they say).

Other than that little beef, it's a great sounding synth and does use very little resources which is nice.

Of the two, I pick ElektraX. I feel its approach to sound synthesis is more refined and yet familiar to most people. If I recall correctly, its LFO rates can go way up into the audio spectrum, which comes in mighty handy for making sound effects or adding some dirt to your sounds if used at low levels. Also, there is more modulation capabilities than is in Gladiator.

For Dubstep basses, ElectraX wins hands-down. Gotta be able to modulate those LFO speeds while being also tempo-synced.

I knew I recognised the voice ...
the audio and video are horribly out of sync on my system...like if part of the audio was deleted accidentally
rsp

Well, I bought ElectraX and u-He Zebra. Two fine synths! Zebra is so complex, it is mind blowing what Urs has created.

ElectraX can generate some complex sounds too, but it seems a lot more streamlined in the workflow dept.

I like the GUI, just wish you could scale it a bit on some laptops with 1200x800 res or so. The gui takes up the whole screen.

Electra sounds VERY sweet without taxing my CPU too much

I think it needs some KVR reviews eh?

Thanks again to all who replied! You all helped a lot.