Avenger vs. Rapid

[JohnNoizz]

I would like to know after 4 years how is this going...?

[clipnotic]

My personal status: December 2020

I have them both, but I use mostly Rapid (99%)

GUI

Rapid is good readable and clear

Avenger is overfilled and you need a magnifier to read some descriptions also on big displays

Workflow

Rapid is easy and fast to use

In Avenger some features are hidden and / or to small to see

Sound

Rapid has great filters and power in the bottom

Avengers sound good but "has no balls"

Features

Rapid has enough features

Avenger has more features, but some of them are not thought through, so you still have to use alternatives. If you ask about new features, they mostly tell you, you'll get them in version 2.0. For that version you'll have to pay again. That's the reason I stopped posting ideas and wishes, because why should I help them to make money again?

Expansions

Rapid has at the moment only a few expansions and absolutely needs more

Avenger has more expansions and some of them are good

Copyprotection

Rapid works easily

Avenger is horrible and still buggy on my system and I have hundreds of other plugins installed without problems

Support

Rapid has a very good and fast support

Avenger has a mediocre support and you have to search through big forum threads or Facebook posts to find all informations

Customer friendliness

The Rapid team and Facebook community is friendly and very helpful in forums and also at Facebook

Some of the Avenger team are often arrogant and their Facebook community is waste of time and they also gossip about the KVR forum several times ("KVR mob" and so on)

[KenjiDeVries]

...

Pretty much +1 on everything. Though I have to say the Rapid devs/sound designers sometimes present themself in a weird or arrogant way too. But nothing compared to Vengeance.

[Markin]

If Avenger was available without all the Copy Protection shenanigans I would much rather choose it because imo it has better filters and effects. The very basic building blocks of a good flexible self contained Synthesizer.

3 members of my band overruled me and so we ALL ended up with Rapid which has a user friendly copy protection scheme that has so far remained 100% undefeated. No cracks ever.
I prefer Rapids workflow and interface but I am not a fan of its filters and effects, now I've got to live within limitations.
Our whole band has to use 3rd party Phasers, Flangers and Chorus modules to compliment Rapid which pretty much defeated the ALL in one solution.

Neither then.

[teilo]

Avenger is the winner. Not only because It offers far more (features, content) for a more fair price than Rapid.

-Avenger is not VST only and not win only like Rapid is
-Avengers ui is resizable and reskinnable (I hate the Rapid UI)

What? Rapid is Mac/Windows, and is AU/VST on Mac. Rapid is also resizable. Just drag the corner of the window. You also missed the garbage DRM in Avenger that forces you to refresh your license every 90 days.

[SLiC]

Avenger is the winner. Not only because It offers far more (features, content) for a more fair price than Rapid.

-Avenger is not VST only and not win only like Rapid is
-Avengers ui is resizable and reskinnable (I hate the Rapid UI)

What? Rapid is Mac/Windows, and is AU/VST on Mac. Rapid is also resizable. Just drag the corner of the window. You also missed the garbage DRM in Avenger that forces you to refresh your license every 90 days.

Rapid also has 10 themes to choose from (GPU accelerated option, 60fps) that all scale beautifully so you can read the text and displays!

[Soundplex]

Avenger is the winner. Not only because It offers far more (features, content) for a more fair price than Rapid.

-Avenger is not VST only and not win only like Rapid is
-Avengers ui is resizable and reskinnable (I hate the Rapid UI)

What? Rapid is Mac/Windows, and is AU/VST on Mac. Rapid is also resizable. Just drag the corner of the window. You also missed the garbage DRM in Avenger that forces you to refresh your license every 90 days.

Rapid also has 10 themes to choose from (GPU accelerated option, 60fps) that all scale beautifully so you can read the text and displays!

Yes, it is now. My post was from 2016 when it has been released... Things changed and I would also like to change my statement: between the 2 Rapid is the winner nowadays.

[teilo]

Avenger is the winner. Not only because It offers far more (features, content) for a more fair price than Rapid.

-Avenger is not VST only and not win only like Rapid is
-Avengers ui is resizable and reskinnable (I hate the Rapid UI)

What? Rapid is Mac/Windows, and is AU/VST on Mac. Rapid is also resizable. Just drag the corner of the window. You also missed the garbage DRM in Avenger that forces you to refresh your license every 90 days.

Rapid also has 10 themes to choose from (GPU accelerated option, 60fps) that all scale beautifully so you can read the text and displays!

Yes, it is now. My post was from 2016 when it has been released... Things changed and I would also like to change my statement: between the 2 Rapid is the winner nowadays.

Oh, duh. Didn't notice the date. Cheers!

[Markin]

Avenger has a mediocre support and you have to search through big forum threads or Facebook posts to find all informations

But active discussions can be found for Avenger. Easily and they are not all fragmented.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=467127 ...both positive and negative feedback.
Try pointing me to any Forum that openly discusses Rapid, even the one that used to exist here at kvr was shut down by the developer who threw one when the going got tough.
As far as I know there are no active forums regarding Parawave Rapid anywhere on Internet. Not even on their own website.
So your point about search support is meaningless and should be treated as nothing more than fanboy talk.

[Markin]

double post

[JohnNoizz]

My personal status: December 2020

I have them both, but I use mostly Rapid (99%)

GUI

Rapid is good readable and clear

Avenger is overfilled and you need a magnifier to read some descriptions also on big displays

Workflow

Rapid is easy and fast to use

In Avenger some features are hidden and / or to small to see

Sound

Rapid has great filters and power in the bottom

Avengers sound good but "has no balls"

Features

Rapid has enough features

Avenger has more features, but some of them are not thought through, so you still have to use alternatives. If you ask about new features, they mostly tell you, you'll get them in version 2.0. For that version you'll have to pay again. That's the reason I stopped posting ideas and wishes, because why should I help them to make money again?

Expansions

Rapid has at the moment only a few expansions and absolutely needs more

Avenger has more expansions and some of them are good

Copyprotection

Rapid works easily

Avenger is horrible and still buggy on my system and I have hundreds of other plugins installed without problems

Support

Rapid has a very good and fast support

Avenger has a mediocre support and you have to search through big forum threads or Facebook posts to find all informations

Customer friendliness

The Rapid team and Facebook community is friendly and very helpful in forums and also at Facebook

Some of the Avenger team are often arrogant and their Facebook community is waste of time and they also gossip about the KVR forum several times ("KVR mob" and so on)

Really nice "VS" you made here! Thanks!
Glad I got Rapid

[Razzia]

Some of the Avenger team are often arrogant and their Facebook community is waste of time and they also gossip about the KVR forum several times ("KVR mob" and so on)

Lol that's unfortunate. I don't follow the drama so much. KVR may be extra gung ho about being anti- any kind of obtrusive DRM, but Avenger's implementation of codemeter is bad enough that anyone should be wary. It's a shame they can't reasonably take criticism

Avenger as a synth, I would still go to bat to argue that it's one of the most capable softsynth out, after maybe Falcon (which I haven't tried but just throwing it out there based on what everyone says). For my purposes, it's the best one there is. I don't need a bunch of wavetable editing, just the ability to add as many oscillators, effects, mod sources, etc as I need. I still haven't seen an arp plugin that's as powerful as the one built into avenger, especially when you combine it with the sequencer. And you get up to eight of them in any one instance. (IIRC. I have never needed so many) but as is so often the case with Avenger, it's nice to pretty much never feel like you're bumping up against the limits of what the plugin can do and you're going to have to be extra judicious with how you use your next modules/envelopes/whatever.

That said, this 90 day license cycle has me feeling pretty insecure about the longevity of Avenger so I'm trying to move on to other things little by little. If they change the protection to something that makes more sense I will consider buying Avenger 2 when it comes out. If not... well, I'll make do with something like Phase Plant or Rapid (life is sooo hard ).

[HallowedHouse]

I own Avenger and Rapid - both are amazing synths but I use Rapid EXCLUSIVELY for creating patches. Avenger is used with it's presets -a tweakable Nexus. Almost every preset in Avenger's Factory and Expansion presets has no free macros - it is so over worked there is little room for the user. So, for creativity Rapid wins every time. Sound wise - they are both amazing. Modulation wise - both fabulous. Effect wise - Rapid wins with the ability to add as many effects as you like via sends. Arpeggiator wise - Rapid is far superior with midi and ease of use - Avenger is so much messing about although it wins hands down on ARP presets - although again this can inhibit creativity. So, for artists into sound design - Rapid - for musicians into ready made patches - Avenger. Avenger has drums and aux outs for them and a work around for aux out for four oscillators - Rapid hasn't either feature. I love both of these synths but Rapid wins for me, especially as it also doubles as an effect unit. Maybe Avenger 2 will sort out it's arp but it will never compete on external effects as they have said that this feature will not be added(btw Rapid already has reverb shimmer as an effect, one of the new features of Avenger 2). So, both Avenger and Rapid offer features that are simply endless but Rapid is my first choice for creativity - both are equal in terms of sound (all my opinion, of course).

[moonchunk]

I'm using both but I actually prefer the frequency spectrum of Rapid. It could be what one of the previous respondents said, about Avenger's low end not being as powerful. I wouldn't put it that way, but I would say that the way Rapid's programming shows off sounds throughout the frequency spectrum is more exciting to me, even if I like avenger quite well for some patches. (& I like the "freeze" Spectral Synthesis they've added - & I may want to get some expansions for both of these because I don't have quite as much time to devote to learning synth programming as I thought - I'm finding it difficult enough to learn to express myself in tracks).

Vintage Sole was not my first choice of an expansion, but the crazy amount of "stretched tape" pitch flux worked into one of those presets showed me that the preset programmer (who works for both Parawave & Vengeance Sound) was taking advantage of each synth very nicely in different ways. The character in some of the presets in Rapid are personal to me - it's not like other synth presets aren't great, but you can tell when something was a joy to produce and I generally get that with Rapid's expansions and factory sounds. I am currently the owner of one of Vengeance's 5 packs, and I'm looking for suggestions. I also recently got quite a number of Rapid's expansions. I find myself thinking of these 2 beasts in very different ways - but it's like was also said above, for general purpose (Nexus-like) library fillers, Vengeance seems like a flexible and durable kit piece. For shimmer, spectral coverage, inspiration and creative immediacy I enjoy Rapid a bit more.