With all the additives out now it's a little easier to evaluate C5000 than it was when it was one of the only additive synths available. I must admit I'm not a big fan of additives in general. I find their sound a little plastic and hollow and samey. Most of them need a lot of effect processing to have much presence.
C5000 is especially guilty of this. A quick spin through the preset banks reveals quite a few very nice airy soundscape pads and lots of very unconvincing and thin leads & basses. It's a bit of a one-trick pony, but it does perform its one trick quite well. If you're looking for a pad machine with a very digital and synthetic sound that allows for some fairly complex evolving sounds then this might just fit the bill. C5000's resynthesis functions are pretty poor compared to things like Vertigo, Doppelmangler, and Cube2, so don't expect to use it to construct believable hybrids of real acoustic or electric instruments.
The interface is nicely laid out and fairly intuitive. CPU usage is modest, especially considering all the effects that are enabled on most patches. The onboard effects are good enough that you'd probably just leave them on instead of replacing them with better, dedicated alternatives most of the time. Overall though, I think this has been outclassed by some of the other additives. If you really want to explore these kinds of sounds I'd suggest you first look into Cube2, Vertigo, Doppelmangler, White Noise's Additive, or even ConcreteFX's Adder. I can't imagine why this is currently the top-rated synth here at KVR.Read Review
