Invader 2

Although not chockful of features, Invader 2 accomplishes what it set out to do - give you a simple, nice sounding, easy to use synth for a meager price. Far from harsh, Invader 2 is right at home in an EDM, IDM or ambient environment.

Smooth and analog sounding, very low on CPU, definitely a winner! Prestes are also very good.

Highly recommended.

What a Fantastic Synth.

Right out of the "box", the presets are so inspiring, and the sound?!?

My gawd, so clean and smooooooth sounding, like butter! Just get it, already.

Don't be cheap, pay for it - worth its weight in crypto (whatever that is now).

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Highly recommended. The sequencer recording function is fun to play with, I'm just purchased the plugin and it sounds great, easy to use, clean UI. I feel bad I couldn't donate more than $7. This is a $50 plugin IMO. Good for way more than just bass - it comes with a nice set of presets to show what all it's capable of (which is basically anything from bass, to pads, to keys, etc.). I particularly like the bells with the ARP. You can get some great sounds on the lower end of things especially. Download the demo and get to know it, then buy.

Summary

Fantastic synthesizer. Great Sound. Great usability. Perfect for beginners to start with synthesis as well as for experts who are in search of an fast to patch great sounding synthesizer. One page. Nothing confusing. Everything is there immediately.

Pros and main features:

• The filters (LP+HP, LP+Drive, BP) sounding great.
• The oscillators are good sounding as well and offering interesting waveshaping possibilities.
• Faders for the envelopes (I love that because you can 'see' the shape of the envelopes).
• The effect unit (a variety of delays like tape, diffusor, phaser type) is great too and easy to use as well.
• A nice little and freely programmable seq.
• The layout is perfect. One page. Nothing confusing. Everything is there immediately.
• Because there are not much controls Invader 2 can be easily controlled via a MIDI controller.
• Perfect for beginners because of the layout and you won't miss anything for a while (or maybe ever).
• Perfect for experts too. Whether you want a synthesizer you can operate fast and blindly because it's that easy to operate or because you want every now and then a break from feature monsters... here you go.

Contra and feature requests:

• I can't see any contra aspects. Really. It's pay what you want and starts at $5 (the dev suggests $25 I think) so what to demand? It sounds great, the layout is great. I don't see a competition so worth to grab any time.

General:

• CPU hit is okay. For the sound completely fine. Nothing to worry about.
• I do not use presets so nothing to say about that.
• Demo is available.

P.S:

My main synthesizer is Zebra 2 and I love the complexity of it and that Zebra can do almost everything... and exactly here is the reason where Invader 2 kicks in: it's a break... no decisions about where, how, what ... super sound and dead easy to use. The last software synthesizer I bought was Aalto in 2013(!) because I found nothing interesting and nice enough but Invader 2 is worth the attention and worth to be owned.

This is my kind of synth - relatively simple, very easy to use and with a great sound. As you can see, the interface is clean, clear and uncluttered. It basically has everything right there on the front panel. The only exception is the filter section, where you have a choice of Filter 1 or Filter 2, each of which has its own controls. So you see the one you're using, not the one you aren't. It's a joy to program because it's all right there, at your fingertips. Patch selection is a breeze and, crucially, saving your own patches is a doddle.

The synth itself is a classic V/A with two oscillators, plus a sub-oscillator, a low pass filter - two types to choose from - and pairs of LFO's and ADSR envelopes. The mixer section allows you to add in noise and ring modulation and this is also where you set the overall volume of the patch. The oscillators have the usual range of V/A waveforms plus a "Sync" oscillator mode which does wonderfully good hard sync without any effort. Next to the mixer are Unison controls that include proper unison modes, that clone the oscillators, as well as "emulated" unison that uses a DSP cheat to save on CPU. The "6*8" unison mode combines 6 voices of real unison with 8 emulated voices for a really big sound. CPU use, generally, is very good for this quality of sound. There is an HQ mode but turning it off doesn't really make anything sound worse, nor does it save you much CPU.

As mentioned, there are two different low-pass filters to choose from. Both sound basically similar but one has a separate high-pass filter with a single control (cutoff) and the other has a drive circuit that adds nice saturation to the sound (which is my favourite).

For modulation, you get two ADSR envelopes, each with a velocity slider, plus two LFOs with delay. Adding modulation is really straightforward - each section has modulation sliders and all you have to do is select a source and set a level. It's great because you can see what modulation has been applied right in the section you are looking at.

The presets are mostly very usable. There are a few slightly weird ones but most of them can go straight into your projects if you want. But with something that is so easy to patch, you'll probably end up making your own sounds from scratch. It is so easy to get great sounding patches from Invader that it's just not funny. It seems to have so many sweet spots that it's easy to fill up a folder with great sounds in a single evening.

Overall this is a very slick package that combines the two major things I look for in a VSTi - great sound quality and ease-of-use. The GUI looks fantastic and works even better (three different UI sizes are available). Everybody needs to download the demo and try this out for themselves. It is well worth the effort. I love it so much I bought it twice.

Very nice looking and sounds really good. The sound is a bit clean but this is what i like about it. It runs perfect for me in FL Studio. You can right click -> create automation clip there. I remember the old Invader. How many years gone by since then? :D Thumbs up for the Invader 2.