RAPID Synthesizer | Rapid 1.8.0 released | Free "SP - Granular Elements"

[wagtunes]

[REMOVED]

[wagtunes]

[REMOVED]

[fluffy_little_something]

For you as a sound set maker a high-price synth is not so good, I suppose, as you thrive on popular synths rather than mighty ones few people use.

Except Falcon, which sells for a lot more, is one of my best selling libraries.

If a synth is actually WORTH what they're asking for it, people will buy it and libraries will sell. Omnisphere, $500, is also one of my best selling libraries.

But this synth is simply not a $235 synth and thus will not sell.

Sorry to be so blunt, but it won't.

I don't know your patches, but maybe your Falcon patches are simply better than your other sets, so you get the impression that those expensive synths sell so well, while in reality maybe cheaper synths sell a lot better, but your patches for them are not to people's liking.
Also, cheaper synths tend to be simpler synths, so people are more likely to make their own patches.

I agree, though. I expect something truly outstanding from any synth beyond $200. I get the impression that $200 (VAT included) is kind of a threshold most developers do not dare exceed.

[parawave]

But from a purely business perspective as a sound designer, I have to evaluate the potential of selling sound libraries for this synth. At $235, I do not see many sales at that price. Thus I do not see many sales of any library at that price.

I don't see a realisic calculation here.

You sold your last Falcon library for $35. If you would offser a soundset for RAPID in this price range you just have to sell 7 units to get your investment back. I don't know what your typical sales count are on your soundsets. But I think it should be high enough to justify 2-3 weeks of work on a set. Where is the problem with that? Sound Designers are not our only target audience. There are a lot of musicians, producers and composers out there who don't want to sell sounds. Also: They are the ones who typicaly don't complain about GUIs and evaluate the sound more than features. And this is absolutely understandable, the end product is sound and music and not features. I also don't understand that so many people insist on import and wavetable editor. What, do you want to create music, or just waste time fiddling around with one cycle waveforms. Again, read the name of our product.. what is it implying? Fast and good sound design. Not "you can do everything" with this synth.

[themerx]

Tested it. Gui is s*it, first it was okay, but more you look it, more you hate it. Font is bad. CPU usage ok, could be better. Sound is nice, although nothing super special, Spire sounds better. Quite limited synth too. Somehow not inspirational, maybe because of gui, dunno. But very easy conclusion; wayyyyy too overpriced. There is no way that people will buy this at this price, as there is better alternatives avaible for cheaper. Like wagtunes pointed out, there is no point to sound designers to buy this and make libraries for this. Told ya guys, you made a suicide for overpricing this.. Too bad, because Rapid has some potential, as it still sounds okay. Will check this again, when it is version 2, if your company and Rapid is still alive then.

I'm glad you replied.

I want to make something clear to the developer and everybody else.

As I am able to get this for $156, given the sound and what it has, were I simply buying synths to make music, this is a no brainer. The sound is good enough that I can justify it at that price.

But from a purely business perspective as a sound designer, I have to evaluate the potential of selling sound libraries for this synth. At $235, I do not see many sales at that price. Thus I do not see many sales of any library at that price. This would mean weeks of work on my part for almost no return.

Look, at far as price goes, being able to get this for $156, I have no horse in this race. You could sell it for $10,000 and it wouldn't matter to me. I'd still get it for $156, which I'm not 100% certain won't happen if I really fall in love with the sound. But for the future profitability and life of your company, I sincerely urge you to consider lowering the regular price to no more than $199. I think at that price (below the $200 ceiling) you at least give yourself a chance to make a fair number of sales of this one.

Like I said, I have no horse in this race. It's no skin off my nose if you want to sell this for $235. I'll still have my $156 synth unless you revoke my discount for speaking my mind. But if you don't want to shoot yourself in the foot with this one, you'll take the advice of somebody who has been in business his whole life and seriously reconsider your pricing policy because I'm calling it now. It's going to be a disaster.

My 2 cents for whatever they're worth.

Unfortunately, around here, not much.

In this time you wrote and complained about this synth, you could better try it and see that the quality in each element is much better than other synths, Sure, You are a sounddesigner and want to earn money with a synth, but it seems that you have more time to discus about it. Cool down and give it a chance.
I tried the demo and I invest a lot of time to test everything. The reverb is really clear. Compare it with other internal synth-reverbs, which sounds very often metallic (like sylenth). compare the distortions which are playable in high notes without aliasing effects, other synths are not able to do and the CPU is relaxing. Compare the two band shaper with.... hmmm... there is no synth with a cool FX like that.
Sure You can get Sylenth for low budged but sylenth isn't able to do all this stuff and also not in this quality.

Another example. People spend a lot of money in U-HE plugins (me too) which hasn't wavetables, multisamples, layer,... but they do because the quality is much better than the crappy sylenth shit.

Sometimes I think, people only hear what other people say. Avicii used Sylenth in one of his old videos an everyone is thinking "wow, avicii used it, so it MUST be a good synth".

I will definetly buy RAPID and for me it is not too expensive. These kind of sounds are not available in other synths. I don't care about what the crowd says, because I have my own ears and I only belive them and they told me, that Rapid is awesome! A synth I was waiting for.

[fluffy_little_something]

I agree on the wavetable thing, I would not want to mess around with custom wavetables, either. Good factory wavetables should be enough.
I remember some threads here where they were talking endlessly about using external tools to convert wavetables between formats etc., that was just beyond me

Don't you think that 8 complete layers is a bit of an overkill? I get the impression that most people don't use more than 2 or 3 layers per patch when a synth has multiple layers (Dune2 etc.).

[Mirko R.]

I agree on the wavetable thing, I would not want to mess around with custom wavetables, either. Good factory wavetables should be enough.
I remember some threads here where they were talking endlessly about using external tools to convert wavetables between formats etc., that was just beyond me

Don't you think that 8 complete layers is a bit of an overkill? I get the impression that most people don't use more than 2 or 3 layers per patch when a synth has multiple layers (Dune2 etc.).

Hey. You're right. So I told in one of the last posts, that I made the wavetables. That was a really hard task to get into it. I wrote three different wavetable generators/calculators software to create them. That was pure mathematik and my brain said to me "are you kidding me?"
Later it was a lot of fun but generating good wavetables is really really hard. I hope I made enough and you're lucky with it.

Thanks to all others for the compliments and critism.

[recursive one]

Sorry for the OT, but I'm feeling a bit of deja vo here.

Can anybody remember which synth received these comments when it was announced?

To me, it's sounds just like another software synth. Nothing special.

For me the sounds, were just ok sounding..not bad, just average to me.....

Unimpressive and rushed product.

Good for trance fans. Nothing else.

Maybe 1 or 2 updates before it's dead.

price 139 euros

Good luck...

At 139 euros, I don't think it's worth it.

[fluffy_little_something]

Sylenth1

[recursive one]

Nope

[fmr]

Sound Designers are not our only target audience. There are a lot of musicians, producers and composers out there who don't want to sell sounds. Also: They are the ones who typicaly don't complain about GUIs and evaluate the sound more than features. And this is absolutely understandable, the end product is sound and music and not features. I also don't understand that so many people insist on import and wavetable editor. What, do you want to create music, or just waste time fiddling around with one cycle waveforms. Again, read the name of our product.. what is it implying? Fast and good sound design. Not "you can do everything" with this synth.

Let me add something to the table:
You say sound designers are not your target audience. IMO, any synthesist is a sound designer is some sort of way. Sure. I started when there were no memories in the synths, and we had to program EACH sound from scratch. A litle after, appeared the first synths with memories, but still they were just a few, and if we wanted variety, we would need to create new sounds, and find some way to store them (that's one of the reasons I started with computers, the other being the will to create music with programs like Csound - old school).

I may be wrong, But I am still convinced that many users program their own sounds (I do, and fro what I read here, many others too). Sure, every now and then, we buy a preset package (I rarely do, but I am convinced that many buy a lot more than me). This helps to keep the synth "alive", since it brings variety to the table, and some freshness. Also, it helps keeping the synth being "talked". How do you think that things like Nexus, Sylenth, Spire, even Serum, or even the really old Synth1, are kept alive? Because every now and then someone comes with new sounds for it.

So, the more you put in the synth to help this variety, the better for the users who want to create their own sounds, and for you too, because it helps to perceive an added value that justifies a higher price.

IMO, a vavetable synth created nowadays that doesn't allow the user to create wavetables or even create new ones out of sample analysis is severely limited. Even Waves Codex, which I saw being sold for like $50,00, can do this. A full featured wavetable editor... OK, that can be a little out of ordinary, but Serum has it, and Icarus has it too, and Nave also. And DUNE userds have been requesting this for a long time (according to what I read, Richard even started one, but the project was abandoned or is in standby). Synthmaster developer also has this in his "to do" list, I think

If there was so litle demand for such a thing, would you think that so many synths would include or had plans to include this feature? And the wave analysis is something that more or less everybody takeds as granted in a wavetable synth nowadays. Even in the old times of Microwave and Microwave II, the SoundDiver editor could do this, and it was done via MIDI.

If I wanted just the sound, the competition, as I wrote in the beginning, is HUGE. Things like Spire, Sylenth, Predator, Hive, Elektra 2 and many others will bite your market share big time. They have the sound and many of them have the ease of use too. Maybe not so many layers, but, as you put "people just want to make music" so, who cares about layers?

As I said, I see this synth in the same level as, let's say, Icarus or Elektra 2 (€ 149,00 / $199,00), therefore, it's price, to be really competitive, has to be in the same range too. IMO, of course.

[wagtunes]

[REMOVED]

[fluffy_little_something]

Nope

Was just guessing because of the price of 139 euros.
No idea then...

Whatever it is, 139 is a lot less than anything over 200. It is more of a psychological thingy.

[wagtunes]

Sound Designers are not our only target audience. There are a lot of musicians, producers and composers out there who don't want to sell sounds. Also: They are the ones who typicaly don't complain about GUIs and evaluate the sound more than features. And this is absolutely understandable, the end product is sound and music and not features. I also don't understand that so many people insist on import and wavetable editor. What, do you want to create music, or just waste time fiddling around with one cycle waveforms. Again, read the name of our product.. what is it implying? Fast and good sound design. Not "you can do everything" with this synth.

Let me add something to the table:
You say sound designers are not your target audience. IMO, any synthesist is a sound designer is some sort of way. Sure. I started when there were no memories in the synths, and we had to program EACH sound from scratch. A litle after, appeared the first synths with memories, but still they were just a few, and if we wanted variety, we would need to create new sounds, and find some way to store them (that's one of the reasons I started with computers, the other being the will to create music with programs like Csound - old school).

I may be wrong, But I am still convinced that many users program their own sounds (I do, and fro what I read here, many others too). Sure, every now and then, we buy a preset package (I rarely do, but I am convinced that many buy a lot more than me). This helps to keep the synth "alive", since it brings variety to the table, and some freshness. Also, it helps keeping the synth being "talked". How do you think that things like Nexus, Sylenth, Spire, even Serum, or even the really old Synth1, are kept alive? Because every now and then someone comes with new sounds for it.

So, the more you put in the synth to help this variety, the better for the users who want to create their own sounds, and for you too, because it helps to perceive an added value that justifies a higher price.

IMO, a vavetable synth created nowadays that doesn't allow the user to create wavetables or even create new ones out of sample analysis is severely limited. Even Waves Codex, which I saw being sold for like $50,00, can do this. A full featured wavetable editor... OK, that can be a little out of ordinary, but Serum has it, and Icarus has it too, and Nave also. And DUNE userds have been requesting this for a long time (according to what I read, Richard even started one, but the project was abandoned or is in standby). Synthmaster developer also has this in his "to do" list, I think

If there was so litle demand for such a thing, would you think that so many synths would include or had plans to include this feature? And the wave analysis is something that more or less everybody takeds as granted in a wavetable synth nowadays. Even in the old times of Microwave and Microwave II, the SoundDiver editor could do this, and it was done via MIDI.

If I wanted just the sound, the competition, as I wrote in the beginning, is HUGE. Things like Spire, Sylenth, Predator, Hive, Elektra 2 and many others will bite your market share big time. They have the sound and many of them have the ease of use too. Maybe not so many layers, but, as you put "people just want to make music" so, who cares about layers?

As I said, I see this synth in the same level as, let's say, Icarus or Elektra 2 (€ 149,00 / $199,00), therefore, it's price, to be really competitive, has to be in the same range too. IMO, of course.

Thank you. A voice of reason.

[fmr]

Hey. You're right. So I told in one of the last posts, that I made the wavetables. That was a really hard task to get into it. I wrote three different wavetable generators/calculators software to create them. That was pure mathematik and my brain said to me "are you kidding me?"
Later it was a lot of fun but generating good wavetables is really really hard. I hope I made enough and you're lucky with it.

You did a good work with the wavetables, for what I saw so far, but since you already has the tool, isn't it just a matter of creating a GUI, adding the analysis/resynthsis capabilities, the possibility to calculate interpolated waves when just some slots are filled, and we have the tool ready to use? This has been done so many times already that I am still amazed when people argue about the possibility.

The Microwaves even had a much more esoteric feature call "User Programmable Algorithmic Wavetables", and this was in the eighties.

BTW: I also think that eight layers is too much for a sound. Unless this is to create multi-timbral programs or some sort of combined patches.