Bazille

I am not a super experienced synthesist, so I will not try to give a techy review. I'll leave that to the people who know more and care more. This review is way more subjective and opinion-based.

I primarily use presets (with some tweaking to taste), and this synth does not disappoint with the presets. I've spent 3+ hours going through favoriting all the ones I like and I'm still not even halfway through. But that's what we call one of those good problems. Tastes vary, and these things are very subjective, but I like a higher percentage of presets in Bazille than in any other synth.

Simply put, I just love the sound of this synth. It probably has just about the most unique sound of any synth I've used, and I've tried 50+. It just has a "je ne sais quoi" (to use a douchey French word) that I've not heard anywhere else. Just playing it and listening to it makes me feel... I don't know... nostalgic... or maybe pensive is the right word. I have an affinity for sounds that are vaguely retro-ish and analogue, especially patches that sound like e-pianos. Or anything that sounds vaguely like bells, tuned percussion, or any other sound where it's hard to say for sure if it's natural or synth. This synth does all those very convincingly. To me it's more "organic" and analogue than even Diva. Which is really important to me, because I really dislike the extremely digital-sounding synths you hear in a lot of EDM and electronica these days. I definitely like a more retro sound, and Bazille really hit the spot for me. It just sounds nice in a way different from most other synths I've used, including the other u-he synths. At first I was afraid that Bazille would be redundant since I already have ACE, Diva and Zebra, but it most definitely has its own character and unique strengths. In the course of a week or two it shot to the top of my list, above ACE, Diva, Absynth, Zebra, everything. I'll still use those other bad boys lots (I still can't find anything that beats Diva for fat analogue bass), but this is the first thing I'll try for most things, especially chords and leads.

As I said, I don't do much patching myself, but the more I learn about patching, the more I appreciate the visual, modular nature of Bazille (as well as ACE). Much more than any other softsynth I've used, these two synths make it very easy to follow the signal flow, because the patch cords create a visual map. Either of these would be a fine choice for someone that was trying to learn synthesis from the ground up. I will definitely concentrate on these two as I continue to learn more about synthesis.

I really only have two "sort of" complaints about this synth. As with almost all u-he products (especially Diva and ACE), Bazille will do cruel things to your CPU. Bad, unkind things. Just don't even mess with any of them if you don't have a computer less than three years old with a minimum of an i5. And even if your rig can handle it, you still will probably want to render or freeze most instances. It's that bad. One single instance can spike your CPU, and 2-3 will almost for sure take too big of a bite even on a big rig. The other complaint also applies to all u-he products. I really wish they would switch to a preset browser like you see in Massive, Absynth or Synthmaster. This would be especially helpful in a synth with 1,700 presets! But they stuck with the same format for their newest synth, Hive, so I'm not holding my breath that this will change.

Overall, great synth. Try it for yourself. I DLed the demo pretty much out of boredom, not having any real intention of buying it. Then two weeks later I just had to do it. It won me over.