Rhino

Easily the best VFM ever, incredible sound and flexibility (and this is coming from a raving z3ta+ fan). It's an industrial death machine, an FM powerhouse and an ambient/Newage wonder all at the same time. It even does some VA sounds respectably.

The UI is my least favorite thing about it, and it's what kept me away from Rhino until my resolve finally broke down. It's not hard to use once you get used to it, but a lot of controls are only accessible by clicking or right-clicking on things that aren't buttons. For instance, to get to the additive synthesis panel, you have to choose a User waveform (and to edit it, you have to choose the same one off the menu again). On that panel, the bars pointing upward change the level for various harmonics and the bars pointing downward change the phase, but there is no label in the UI to tell you this. Reading the manual is a must -- thankfully it's a good manual, and there are tutorials online as well.

Within a couple of hours of purchase I had built a decent FM bassline-and-drums loop patch from scratch, and this morning in 20 minutes I made a very unique harpsichordish sound from scratch using additive synthesis. Aside from a couple of weird quirks in the tempo-synced envelope editor (which can be worked around), it's not difficult, it's just obscure. :)

The limited bank of presets that comes with the demo is greatly expanded by the downloadable banks at Big Tick's site. Those pads! Those scary ambient atmospherics! Those DX7 ports! Awesome stuff.Read Review