This should really be a standard now in synthesis knob control, hard or soft. It really helps. I know, it's a tiny thing to do ctrl-click or whatever to get a different rate, but the accelerated approach really helps me just concentrate on what I'm doing without having to turn into an octopus (or at least, a squid)!
Massive X is one of the first soft synths in a very long time (along with Pigments) that has me thinking at night about what I could do with it, and eager to get up in the morning to try something with it.
Pigments and MX are really two very different synths, despite both being wavetable-based. I find Pigments great for really interesting delicate sounds, especially interesting plucked or blown sounds, many of which sound quite acoustic instrument in quality. MX is better for out-there, new instrument I don't know what I can call it but really sounds amazing sounds.
It's a waste of both to worry about whether they do Moog bass (of course) or subtractive analogue emulation (sure). There's so much more to explore.
What MX and Pigments both have is this really modular approach to instrument design; you'd only get this kind of flexibility on a hardware synth in something like the Moog One, or Waldorf Quantum at this point -- nothing else in hardware comes anywhere close.
Combine that with the ability to mix filters, endless modulation, fx, multiple styles of modulatable oscillators, and the promise of "endless and infinite sound" that the MI industry's been preaching since the first Moog Modular is really here, in extensive ways.
I was there when Massive OG first came out, and loved it long before the squee-wub-wub crowd turned it into their own. I remember being, "hey folks, look over here! You're really missing it!" at that point.
This is ten times so. I'll just leave it at that. The rest of you will find that out soon enough.
And yes, there's miles to go both in development and sound design. And, if I'm not mistaken, if the GPU-accelerated UI is making use of QT and/or Direct3D and other 3D graphics technologies, well, with the right time and talent, you could really blow the doors off graphic interface design with that technology, if you knew what you were doing, and could trust your customer base to have sufficient hardware in place. I don't want to overimagine on this side, but a GPU-based interface will definitely reduce the need for cycles from the CPU, and allow for possibilities not seen before. The current GUI, elegant as it actually is, is really a 1.0 design; I expect to see a lot more on this front over time, though the developers will have to proceed carefully, as they already obviously have.
Released half-baked? No-one who says that knows software development, at all; this already demonstrates the YEARS of effort that have gone into it. Rough edges and further work to do? Sure, but even to get it to a smooth post-launch quality, that's about 10% of the overall work that's gone into this left.
Finally, the whole aliasing thing: COMPLETE distraction, has nothing to do with anything. You can't even hear a -70db noise floor, much less particles of harmonics at -132db, it's truly crazy to suggest otherwise. As to whether that will affect the quality of modulation (oooo, let's start a "it's stepping!" argument, why not? There's still a hoof left of that dead horse to flog, maybe, randomly?), well..... in highly technical terms: no.
Some of the most interesting early Klangmusik was made with Hewlett Packard sine wave oscillators (the first oscillators ever made, analogue) and believe me, those were not pure sines. A pure sine is the simplest, least complicated thing to do on a digital software system, so if there's anything other than that in MX, it's evidence of careful, musical intention, not engineering blindness, so forget that whole argument.
On with the show. Make some presets with what you have, and share, to demonstrate your OCD prowess online, that's the best way.
