As an owner of the very first version of the Receptor, I would agree with Muse Research's marketing copy that this rack-mountable, multi-timbral VST player is a "breakthrough" product, especially for the price (about $1400US). The Receptor is unique and cleverly designed. The user interface is excellent, convenient, and versatile. The manual is very understandable and readable.

On the negative side, it comes a little underpowered. Though its Athlon 2500+ processor seems adequate, it shipped with just 256MB of RAM (upgradeable to 2GB), and its 40 GB drive has many owners already contemplating an upgrade. The knobs are flimsy and the 2U, 19" wide unit was a tight fit on my Gig Rig rack.

In addition, the Receptor is not exactly a universal VST player. Its OS is Linux-based and presently unsupported plug-ins may not necessarily install properly into the system. In addition, users may have to pay a cross-grade fee to install VSTs even for plug-ins they already own (the fee, if any, is determined by the plug-in manufacturer.)

To Muse's credit, they have designed the Receptor so that you can try to install unsupported VST plug-ins, though there are no guarantees by either Muse or the manufacturer that they will work. They even warn that the system may crash as a result, though I haven't heard any reports of that happening.

Receptor uses PACE's iLok USB key for transferring authorized plug-in licenses to the unit. Receptor forum users have complained of bad past experiences with PACE copy-protection systems, but iLok has worked just fine for me on Receptor.

You can call up Receptor's patches and effects on its well-designed front panel, with a 2-line LCD display. But you can also connect a computer, mouse, or keyboard to it to call up a nicely thought-out, user-friendly Mixer screen to select your patches. You can theoretically run up to 16 VST instruments, with up to 3 effects for each.

You can also connect Receptor directly to your computer or to your home network (I have done the latter) and control the mixer screen that way.

I've been playing around with some of the freeware and shareware patches, and it's been a blast to play with the M-Tron mellotron demo plug-in, for example. It seems to take a few seconds to load 16-channel mixes, but patches are fairly quick loading.

I did notice some latency when playing back some patches on my system, but I haven't tried to optimize the settings yet. Muse has published some latency numbers on the KVR-VST forum, and the numbers seem very respectable.

The Receptor may significantly change in future versions, with both hardware and software upgrades likely. But the initial version that I have is still impressive. It's a very well-thought-out product. Where Muse Research faltered is in their protocol for installing VST plug-ins and in their cost-cutting measures--they should have increased the price by $100 or even or even $200 to ensure that the unit came with more RAM, and higher-quality knob