Massive

I've heard people say that Massive isn't a useful synth - that everything made with it sounds the same, that it sounds distorted and "digital," and various other insults.
Are they right? Not in the main, but a few of their assertions are true. Massive DOES have a distinctive sound, but that sound is one that fits into nearly any modern electronic music style - and one that can be obscured without too much difficulty using external effects. And it IS digital. It's a wavetable synth, after all - if you wanted a Moog emulation, you've come to the wrong place. As for it being distorted or high-range-y, this is simply a myth, mostly due to the presets included with Massive.
The one criticism of Massive that is completely accurate is that it's a CPU hog. There's no way around this. Use a polyphonic patch with Massive, and you'll probably be using quite a lot of CPU power. It's hardly debilitating, though - on my reasonably modest PC, 2 or 3 years old, I can and do run multiple instances of Massive along with many instances of other synths. And the result is worth it. Massive sounds great.
I could run through the features and break down the GUI for you, I suppose, but that's what the developer's website is for. I'll keep to the essentials: Massive is a powerful synth with possibilities that are impossible to exhaust. Its presets only show a fraction of the sounds it can create, from heavily distorted dupstep and DnB sounds to enormous trancey supersaws to (dare I say it?) analog-sounding sequences and basses.Read Review