Ravity R

Ravity (R) is a *proper* drum machine. It's not going to replace your copy of Battery or BFD for big multi-sampled kits. Oh no. It's a drum machine - and it's a bloody good one! This little fella has a couple of extra special tricks that make it stand out a mile. But more on that later.

UI
Really nice to look at - well laid out and easy to understand.

Sound
Great, crunchy - tough-as-nails drum machine samples. That's the primary function, although there are some acoustic kits and some weirder ones, it's the synthetic-and-proud-of-it drum kits that are great here.

Features
...and here's where the special features come in.
(1) In-place-preview.
Start your sequencer playing, then go to the preset browser in Ravity(R) and start clicking on kits. You'll hear your track played by each kit as you select them - but you don't have to commit to the change. Only when you decide on a kit and double-click is it actually loaded. Simply fantastic!

(2) Drag-n-drop kit building
From windows explorer onto the drum pad buttons. champion!!

(3) 6 outputs each with a full LFX1310!! OK , you could set this up in a modular host, but it's just so damn convenient here. wahay!!

Documentation
Comprehensive-ish. Could do with a bit more on the middi assignment features and the short-cut knobs at the top of the GUI, but more or less complete

Presets
The kits provided are, as I said, great drum machine kits. Think Dr.Rex and you'll be in the same ballpark.
But , of course, that's only half the story. You can build all your own kits, too, natch!

Customer Support
Haven't had to use it, don't think I will. Yeap is fairly regular on KvR, so I'd imagine it's fine.

VFM
If you're doing electronic music and you long for a good drum sampler that doesn't confuse you with velocity layering and midi-note assignemnt, this is perfect. The in-place-preview alone is worth the asking price.

Stability.
Rock solid. Never budges.

Not long after I tried the demo of Ravity(R) , I knew I had to have it. Try the demo yourself - you'll probably get hooked, too :-)Read Review

If you like romplers you'll like ravity. The style of editing feels very much like sitting with a JV1080 and an editor/librarian app.
The UI appeared a bit fiddley and imprecise at first, but after reading the manual I found out that there are several ways to enter data, and then everything was all right.
Though its not a tricky synth to use, giving the manual a quick look is recommended. (There are some grammatical errors in there though.)

I gave the presets an 8. They are quite good, but a bit limited in their range, and I dont think they demonstrate the full capabillities of ravity.

The selection of waveforms is great and so is the sound quality. I havent spent more than about 8 hrs actually editing yet, but so far I am 100% happy with what Ive heard.

You can use 2 oscilators per layer, and a maximum of four layers so there is definatly room for complex sounds.
The arpeggiatior is like they usually are, but since you can use different arp settings on each layer you can create pretty nice stuff.

Its easy to lose track of time playing with this baby. Its intuitive and inspiring to use.

Bang for the buck.. well, its pricey no doubt but it also has the potential to be a real workhorse(its very easy on the cpu). Personally I feel that I got more than my moneys worth, but I also feel that its exactly what I have been waiting for so I am clearly biased.

(Update: This review deals primarily with Ravity(S). It was written before the split. Perhaps some friendly Admin can move it?)Read Review