But... THE SOUND.
More than pretty much any other "digital" synth, it feels and sounds like, hard to express... like an instrument. I mean that in the way a great guitar and amp feel, or how a great analog synth feels. If you've grown up knowing nothing but plug ins and MIDI controllers, I don't think you'd understand.
When I first tried it, I knew it was something. I think it was around Christmas or something... I was kind of distracted and I honestly didn't have much time to play with it. I picked it up with some Christmas money with a note to "get back to it" when I had some time. Today I had some time.
I had been seriously G.A.S.'n over the Modulus .002. That synth haunts my soul. I think about it all the time. I honestly considered selling off most of my hardware synths and just getting it. It just sounds right to me in pretty much every demo I've ever heard. ...but, it's $5200. I spent a lot of time with the instruments I'd have to give up to get one and it did feel scary to have all my eggs in a few baskets, as nice as those baskets were. I kept telling myself, "well you've got software too." And I do. Great stuff. I mulled it over for a while and decided that the .002 would be my "if I won the lottery synth." But, in all my hardware synth evaluation I kind of felt like I could let my Virus go and not be too sad. It hit me. Since it's been out I've lusted for a Fizmo. No such thing as a software Fizmo. Trust me, I've tried to get close to it's character in Serum and Codex and I couldn't. I spent all last night listening to Fizmo demos.
(So where the hell are you going with this Mark?) Anyway, something today made me think that before I put my Virus up for sale I should check out MPOWERSYNTH a bit more deeply. I had a vague memory of getting a really amazing kind of overdriven cloudy dark pad on it while it was still in beta. The kind of thing I love about the Fizmo.
I nailed it! Now, don't get me wrong, if you look at the feature list of both instruments you'd say, "What the hell are you blathering about, Mark?" I know, I know! But... there is something about it. I've never owned a Fizmo (though I spent hours playing around with one in a music store I worked in) but I have owned a TS-10 and that is one of those digital instruments that always felt like an instrument to me in a way that the Virus, various Roland ROMplers, Micron, never did. Don't get me wrong, I had a lot of fun with the previous mentioned instruments, but they never felt the same to me as my guitars, TS-10 or some of my analogs.
What am I talking about? I can't quite put it into words. It's surely not the UI, which is not that great and can be confusing. I must say the core sound of the oscs do sound beautiful to me. Very, very little aliasing. The filters sound great too... and there are a lot of them. The effects as well. Great. Hands down the best effect section of a software synth. Maybe that's what I'm digging on. The way the synth functions seem to meld (pun intended) into the rest of the synth's features and not just a "I tagged on some reverb, chorus and delay" kind of thing. Perhaps it's this (oh I'm going to hate myself for using this word) synergy that makes it special. Somehow it comes together in a way I don't think many other digital instruments do. Most seem like a bunch of features stacked on top of each other rather than a stew of elements that work together.
