Tracktion’s Collective 2

[Examigan]

Tracktion releases Collective 2

https://www.tracktion.com/products/collective

[Danilo Villanova]

$10 update from v1, not bad

[Examigan]

A great deal imo

[Old Norse]

Check if you've got some Tracktion Cash in your account, I paid $7. Less than a beer down the pub.

[Teksonik]

I was also able to buy version 2 for $7. I'm such a sucker for a deal.

First impressions:
The GUI colors are horrid. Please give us a way to change the pre-school color scheme. Yes I know someone is going to come along and say "I love the colors" and to that person I say get to the nearest emergency room as fast as possible, you're having a stroke....

But seriously there are some nice presets included from folks like Wolfram Franke et al.

The sample content is decidedly lo-fi for 2025 and the overall core sound is a bit raw. Some may like that but if I'm being honest, I'm not a huge fan. As I work making patches with Collective 2 I keep asking myself why am I not working with Nexus 5 or Avenger 2? They sound much better overall and have at least if not more sound design capabilities.

I hadn't worked with Collection version 1 in quite some time and I'm starting to remember why. Still for a $7 version update one can not complain. I'll certainly get that much fun out of it.

If you're going through the factory presets be very careful as they are not level matched and can vary wildly in volume.

[telecharge]

Check if you've got some Tracktion Cash in your account, I paid $7. Less than a beer down the pub.

That thought occurred to me checkout, but at $10, I decided not to bother since I never used it before and wasn't sure if I had any.

As I work making patches with Collective 2 I keep asking myself why am I not working with Nexus 5 or Avenger 2? They sound much better overall and have at least if not more sound design capabilities.

Appreciate your impressions, as always, but consider the cost difference and spare a thought for those of us without your awesome synth collection.

[BBFG#]

With Tracktion cash it's a quick buy for six dollars. But the site is not letting me complete purchase using PayPal or Credit Card. Tried all the recommendations in three desktop browsers and on Android as well. Contacted Tracktion support and hoping to get it resolved quickly.
It seems there's been a privacy update across the boards that has more to do with those browsers than Tracktion itself. So it may effect me from any purchase anywhere. Maybe they're trying to save me from a BFBinge!

[mabian]

Regarding the Nexus 5/Avenger question... consider the price difference and... as far as I know, this is the only powerful all-round rompler I know of which is native Linux.

I'm also using MSoundFactoryLE by Melda which doesn't have stellar sounds as well, covers a lot of ground and works pretty well in Wine, but it's Wine and not native...

I don't have V1, but I'm anyway considering shelling 25$ out for this one...

- Mario

[Teksonik]

Appreciate your impressions, as always, but consider the cost difference and spare a thought for those of us without your awesome synth collection.

I'm afraid you've misunderstood my point. I wasn't addressing anyone else or what synths they do or do not have in their collections.

My point was that is doesn't make any sense for me to spend time with Collective 2 when I have much better sounding and more powerful options at my disposal. It's not a prudent usage of time.

Of course it's not fair to compare synths with widely different price points but when you're choosing which synth to work with cost doesn't factor in, only sound quality and range of sounds.

If Collective is the best sounding synth in your collection then I will indeed spare a thought for you but that has no bearing on what synths I should be spending my time on.

Regarding the Nexus 5/Avenger question... consider the price difference and... as far as I know, this is the only powerful all-round rompler I know of which is native Linux.

As I wrote above, price doesn't factor in when considering quality. No, it's not fair to compare Collective 2 with more costly options but if one is concerned with sound quality then it may be necessary to spend more to get more.

As much as I love Linux I don't use it for making music and if Collective 2 is "the only powerful all-round rompler for Linux" then I don't think I'll be changing my opinion of the OS as a viable music making platform any time in the near future.

If there is one patch in the factory collection that sums up Collective 2's sound quality for me it's the Grand Piano patch by synth legend Klaus P. Rausch. To be honest it's a very low quality sound for a synth in 2025 even coming from the hands of a master like Rausch.

For the money Collective 2 is probably worth the $25 sales price at the moment if one can not afford alternatives or none are available but if you were to ask me would I do the upgrade again even for the near freeware price of $7, I would have to say no, I would not.

I'll give Collective 2 another go just to make sure my initial opinion is correct but there is a very good chance I'll uninstall it to get the 2.2 gigs of drive space back and simply concentrate on the superior options in my collection. Others should proceed with a course of action that fits their wants and needs.

[mabian]

I'm not trying to convince you at all Teksonik, just comparing our views to say that there can be very valid reasons to get Collective 2 besides absolute sound quality. For example, I liked a lot AiR XPand 2!, but dismissed it not because of cheese sound; rather, I didn't want to support their bad attitude - broken update promises - towards customers, iLok usage, the fact that the GUI was not good to use in a Full HD screen, the awful preset browsing. Actually, I was using it for a lot of stuff.

I see here a possible substitute for XPand 2, even though I have tons of stuff by Native Instruments, Melda, Arturia, and others, and the possibility to have something native Linux, even though Melda and Arturia play pretty well in Wine.

If I can choose, I back who invest in releasing native Linux stuff. As others said, apart from acoustic sounds, it's pretty easy today to make a lot of stuff sound good if you know how to use the various FX processors that are available nowadays. even if the raw sound is not so great.

- Mario

[0degree]

The GUI colors are horrid. Please give us a way to change the pre-school color scheme. Yes I know someone is going to come along and say "I love the colors" and to that person I say get to the nearest emergency room as fast as possible, you're having a stroke....

I need to do some quick heath checkup because I actually enjoy those colors

[mabian]

The GUI colors are horrid. Please give us a way to change the pre-school color scheme. Yes I know someone is going to come along and say "I love the colors" and to that person I say get to the nearest emergency room as fast as possible, you're having a stroke....

I need to do some quick heath checkup because I actually enjoy those colors

Cannot say they are great, but they are not so terrible either. Of course, it would be great if they were customizable. In the end, it's almost orange and teal centric... the text is quite well readable, moreover.

[bnz]

Haven't bothered much to look into the details: ss this still a subset of Biotek or is it becoming its own thing?

[bnz]

By the way, compared to Biotek 3, I think this is looking rather good. I can't express how ugly I find Biotek 3. In addition, I find that double-click behavior of the preset browser to load a preset unbearable.

[pchase]

"High sound quality" is not always desirable, that's a certain aesthetic. Otherwise lofi everything wouldn't exist.