Nexus

I wanted to warn anyone who has a setup where they attach their laptop to a dock that includes a monitor in addition to using their DAW detached.

Since Nexus 3 does away with the USB dongle as its method of copy protection, it now tries to look at your computer hardware devices and come up with a "computer ID" as some sort of unique identifier. This causes a problem if your driver configuration changes when you are docked vs. not docked. Nexus 3 detects this as a violation of the registration and makes you login to reauthenticate every time you dock/undock.

I provided ReFx with very detailed steps on how to recreate this issue, but they haven't responded. Another warning, if they cannot "help" you in a single free remote session, they tell you they will charge you for subsequent sessions.

Although I can understand the hate for USB dongles, imho they have broken their product and don't care to address it even with detailed description. I am uninstalling and will not purchase from ReFx again.

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I really love this, it is so helpful in music production. The developer must keep up the good work.

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GOOD SAMPLE BASED SYNTH

This is a bit like Omnisphere in that it uses sample librarys and manipulates the sounds with effects, it has some great sounds but as they are sample based you cant really tweak them much, other than basics like reverb, delay and gate etc - you cant get right into the 'core' of the sound and change it liek you can on proper synths that create the sounds themselves.

it has a nice thick sound and most of its presets are great.

the user interface is nice and comes in white or black, its CPU usage is minimal but higher than average for sample based playback.

this synth can be bought as a hardware synth too. Read more

Review Nexus 2.02

Sample player with tweakable sounds and a high quality effect library. Very low cpu use whilst sounding amazing.

User Interface

PRO: Crisp and clean and quite easy to use.
PRO: ARP and Trancegate have a really nice and easy to use GUI
PRO: Comes with different skins.
CON: You have to pay for extra skins which is kind of a let down.

Sound

PRO: Sound quality is really nice, often due to the use of Arts Accoustic Reverb (which is great), delay and other effects. Obviously they can be turned of - Nexus still sounds good then.
PRO: Loads of different sounding expansions available
CON: The standard presets are definitely focused around trance/dance mostly.

Features

PRO: Comes with intuitive-to-use arp, trancegate, effects, mod-matrix. Sounds are much more tweakable than in Nexus1.
PRO: Layers of sounds and sequences can be turned on/off individually.
PRO: Arts accoustic reverb on board, plus loads of other effects of a very high standard

Documentation

PRO: Manual is great and easy to read. Has many Pro-Tips.
CON: No vid tutorials I know of

Customer Support

PRO: Has been brill so far for me.

Value For Money

PRO: Often said to be to expensive all I can say is, that I would buy it again and be happy again. I also like how I get new soundsets on a regular basis on a planned schedule.

Stability

Didn't crash one on me while loads of other vsts did. Read more

Review Nexus 2 version 2.0.1

User Interface:

Im going to say right from the off that Refx Nexus has revolutionised the way i work with music.The user interface is very pleasing to the eye due to the various skins that can be purchased,although when you purchase Nexus 2 you get 4 free skins and the Dance Volume 2 expansion which is great.Navigation within Nexus 2 is made easy with a single mouse click to access the various features within.There is nothing to confuse the user as within a couple of hours of using Nexus 2 you'll soon be very familiar with the instrument.

Sound:

The sound of Nexus 2 is non other than brilliant,the quality rivals many top hardware synths without a shadow of a doubt and possibly sounds better than most.
Added in version 2 are the excellent e.q facility which are:

new EQ types: lowpass, highpass, bandpass, bandpass2, notch, peak, lowShelf, highShelf,Q factor for each band
free frequency (20-18000hz) for each band
separate gain (-/+24db) for each band
on/off switch for each band

these features alone make Nexus 2 a winner.

Features:

Nexus 2 comes with a ton of new features and i in particular love the way i can mute different layers within any given multi-sample preset,you can transpose and detune any given oscillator which then brings endless possibilitie's to new sounds being created.You can also create an empty bank and save and rename those edited presets to your own banks.The arpeggiator is totally user programmable and there is a great arpeggio library included.my favourite feature is the shuffle feature within the arp page as i regurarly use the 66% shuffle option which adds great value to the way i work.
Nexus 2 now has 2 MultiFx and the new Phaser has 16 stages and sounds truly amazing..i could go on but you have to try Nexus 2 to really find out what it can do.

Documentation:

Documentation is well explained.(Enough said)

Presets:

I myself own about 10 of the available 20 expansions and plan to purchase the Dance Volume 3 expansion in the week however again all expansions are of the best quality and developed by the best sound designers around and all credit is due to Refx for the sheer quality of sounds provided.
Everything is there from Electro to trance and from the down right gritty industrial to the chilled out spacey stratosphere expansion.There is something for everyone here and scope to then edit and re arrange those sounds into something totally different.

Customer Support:

The Refx customer support is one of the great things about owning Nexus as they are on hand every day on the forums answering user problems and you can also submit tickets for any other support.
I like the fact that the people who designed not only Nexus but even the sound designers are there to offer advice so for that reason support is 10/10

Value For Money:

For what you get with Nexus version 2 i think the price is second to none and when you buy various expansions whether it be 1 or more you instantly get a 15% discount when you go to checkout so for me this is really good value for money

Stability:

There are only 2 occassions where Nexus 2 has crashed for me using 2 presets,however this is expected in a new product and as always will be rectified with later updates and does not cause much for concern.I cannot deduct a point for this reason as it is very new and the problem only lie's with the muting and unmuting of a certain preset.Other than that i can run easily 10 instances of Nexus on my machine not that i need that many.All in all the stability for me makes Nexus 2 a winner.

Overall:

If you don't own Nexus 2 then Get it! It's already improved my workflow to no end and is probably my favourite piece of gear now that it's at version 2 and the fact that Nexus now uses a copy protection dongle which holds your licence makes it more attractive and it's also a very welcome addition to an already great piece of kit.I for one would recommend Refx Nexus 2 to anyone making electronic music as from the start it oozes creativity with fantastic results and i hope this review has been helpful
cheer Rob Lee Read more

This VST took my attention when I've discovered it, it is so well done and easy to use. The presets sounds awesome, but I could use a little more as a built- in presets, even if they use the same ROM samples bank, which is quite good (around 4 Gigabytes). The look is also nice...looks like a Akai 1000.... but sounds better ;)

I really like the feel that the sounds have, mostly in their own ambiences. Nice gate sounds, arpegiator, delays and reverbs (for a synth...obviously).

The sounds are really inspiring, which is probably the most important feature in any instrument. The sounds are fat without being too mid-bassy. They are definite and clear without being too airy and fuzzy. The ambiences are large and deep...which is my kind of stuff. I have been able to use it in many soundtrack situations. I also have some expansion libraries that sound also great.

The VST is very stable, I didn't have any crash with it, even when many instances of the VST were open in my DAW. It doesn't ask much to the CPU which is not of big importance for me since I work on a very powerful CPU.

Overall this synth have all the good reasons to be in the top ones. I hope that the company will continue to develop it for a long time, as it is one of my favourites ones.

Definitively a good thumb's up!! Read more

Nexus is fantastic!
It gives you all the sounds which you need to do a real clubhit. It has really everything. Lead sounds, pads, arpeggios even drums - everything in outstanding and authentic quality. It costs really little CPU and you can open it up to 10 times. I use it for all projects at the moment. The GUI looks just beautiful and "clean". You can handle it without reading any manuals. You can change the look by purchasing skins from refx which are really killer btw (i LOVE the black skin)
Furthermore you can expand Nexus by purchasing additional soundsets (called "expansions" because they come with new sample content)
so Nexus is always up to date to the market. (at the moment electro sounds are very trendy) But Nexus can do very impressive "nature" sounds too. Like Orchestra sounds or guitars or flutes. Its really all in one, where you needet tons of plugins before.

all of my producing friends use Nexus already. It makes things so much easier for us dance producers. A must have! Read more

In the 1990's each decent producer owned a workstation with a decent set of presets and a good sequencer. Nowday's composers use a decent sequencer and a workplugin. And it is as a workplugin Nexus really steps in like a gusty wind with a heck alot of decent sounds, good looking user interface, a simple and effective modulation matrix, and a heck alot of inspiration for that matter. It took me 15 minutes to finnish a track with Nexus.

People complains about that you cannot do much with it since it is a rompler, that is Nexus strongest side. Having over 600 sounds and 100+ per expansion makes it definitly useful. I cannot give this 10/10 on VFM because it lacks a decent way to expand it further.

Expansions

The expansions that Nexus can use is rather useful and gives the user more sounds to use. The Bigtone expansion gives very decent pads, Dance drums unleches over 676 single drumhits + 600 drumloops, Dance Orchestra brings you 128 top notch orchestra sounds.

Skinable

Nexus has several different skins that you can load and use. For instance there is a decent metalic skinpack that gives you nexus as gold, silver or bronze. Also there is for the retro's classic looking skins from a TB303, Comodore C64, and Vengeance (a slightly purple skin).

What Nexus lacks.

There are a few things that Nexus lacks. First and foremost an editor so you can expand the sounds on your own. What expansions also lacks is first and foremost a decent General MIDI expansion, since Nexus allready is decent doesn't mean that it could live without the GM patches. Also wanted on my wishlist is a jazz expansion, since Nexus allready got a really good orchestra expansion, but it is way too much layered sounds and the sounds are quite mudded. I definitly miss single trumpets, saxes, and other jazz instruments that could be useful. GUI wise it could be good if there was a high contrast skin for sight impaired persons. The skins that are available are decent, but they are somewhat hard to read for sight impaired persons like me. Apart from that it's all good with me. Read more

Nexus gives you all you need to make a modern dance hit! It aims mainly to all techno/trance producers and gives them an absolute awesome pro sounding library. Some people complained, that they are not able to do sound design with Nexus, but hey: this product has to be seen as a pure ROM / preset player, to give you the fattest dance sounds on earth (I am not joking). Most producers I know, do not even want to do their own sounds from scratch (and not able ;), most are pure preset users (as I am)
I have tried many synths that aim to the dance music, but no synth comes even close to the superior quality of Nexus. No wonder that Vengeance-Sound has made the factory presets (and many expansions)

Yes, there are expansions, to "expand" the basic Nexus. Refx monthly releases Expansion of all kinds of genres. There are expansions for chillout music, Psytrance, Peter Siedlaczek Pianos, real Analog sound, Orchestral, House/Electro, pure dance drums and many more. Refx does the best to improve the variety of sounds, so its not only interesting for trance / dance / hardstyle or whatever, producers.

If you are into modern dance music, you NEED this beast.
Check out the demo (even if it only shows a few presets... the full version comes with more than 750 presets and 4gigaby sample material)
Full version costs around 299$... a fair price for this amount of usable sounds! Read more

All I have to say is the is probly the greatest plugin I have ever owned! The sound quality is impeccable! Trance,House,Hardcore ect ect ect can be made with ease! It comes with hundreds of HIGH QUALITY sounds! There are also expansion packs that you can purchase for a reasonable price.
If you produce trance music look no further! This is probly the greatest plugin for trance producers. If your crazy about ReFX Vanguard it makes it sound like a $30 casio keyboard!
It comes with an advanced arpeggiator with presets and the ability to make your own presets and save them. Same goes for the trance gate which is like Vanguards but a step further! Both are quick and easy to program. Make that Trance Leads arpeggiate or gate with ease!
The build in effects are nice. I like the delay alot and the reverb is nice too, helping you to come up with endless variations of sounds. Simply put, these sounds are PRO!
Now for the cons............You have to put in extra hours of work to b able to afford this with ALL the expansions. $249 is well worth it for this plugin........When you add around $70-80 for each of the 6 expansions your looking to spend over $600 like did. However I have at least a thousand of the highest quality, non-lame sounds of today!! I cannot find any plugin that does what it does so well! Also there are a pack of skins you can use to change its appearance. Another $20! Read more