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The best way to describe this synth is by reversing the metaphor of the "one-trick pony". To me Rhino is sort of an "all-the-tricks-except-one pony". But let's start with the many great features of this wonderful peace of gear.
Rhino is a rather complex 6 oscillator FM synth with a powerful assortment of filter types and a rich effects section. Add to this a waveshaper and a built-in sequencer and you get a lot of parameters to keep track of. The GUI does a wonderful job at that. Once you get used to the controls being located on seperate pages you'll feel right at home and in control. The superb modulation matrix deserves an extra mention for ultimate user friendliness and ease of use. And the tasty coloring adds to the stylish appearance.
The nature of this synth lends itself best to complex and evolving sounds of any timbre. It ranges from metallic to silky, from smooth and deep to in-your-face. The combination of FM, AM, flexible syncable envelopes, two very nice sounding filters and orginial high quality effects let's you create just about any pad you can think of, the lushest atmospheres or the craziest effect sounds. Which brings me to Rhino's only shortcoming, if you can call it that: because of the filter character it's quite difficult to coax a fat VA moog-like dance bass out of it. That's one of the very few tasks it seems to have difficulties with, which is also apparent from the otherwise excellent presets available. But hey, you've got hordes of other synths for that.
The presets. Since Rhino was released we've been blessed with regular updates which include some of the best presets available in any synth. New ones are being cooked up while I write this. Definitely another strong point of this synth. Along with these presets Tick released new skins, a new font, new wave forms, new filters(!), new effects and all of that for free. The very few technical problems of the synth (of which I never experienced any - no crashes whatsoever) are being addressed immediately. All in all customer support at its best.
The documentation is excellent as well and there are sound design tutorials on the site.
The value for money of Rhino is unmatched. You get an extremely musical, inspiring and fun synth with substantial regular upgrades and tons of goodies at a very low price. Even if you couldn't program a synth for shit, it'd still be worth the money for the presets alone. You simply can't go wrong with this one.Read Review
Rhino is a rather complex 6 oscillator FM synth with a powerful assortment of filter types and a rich effects section. Add to this a waveshaper and a built-in sequencer and you get a lot of parameters to keep track of. The GUI does a wonderful job at that. Once you get used to the controls being located on seperate pages you'll feel right at home and in control. The superb modulation matrix deserves an extra mention for ultimate user friendliness and ease of use. And the tasty coloring adds to the stylish appearance.
The nature of this synth lends itself best to complex and evolving sounds of any timbre. It ranges from metallic to silky, from smooth and deep to in-your-face. The combination of FM, AM, flexible syncable envelopes, two very nice sounding filters and orginial high quality effects let's you create just about any pad you can think of, the lushest atmospheres or the craziest effect sounds. Which brings me to Rhino's only shortcoming, if you can call it that: because of the filter character it's quite difficult to coax a fat VA moog-like dance bass out of it. That's one of the very few tasks it seems to have difficulties with, which is also apparent from the otherwise excellent presets available. But hey, you've got hordes of other synths for that.
The presets. Since Rhino was released we've been blessed with regular updates which include some of the best presets available in any synth. New ones are being cooked up while I write this. Definitely another strong point of this synth. Along with these presets Tick released new skins, a new font, new wave forms, new filters(!), new effects and all of that for free. The very few technical problems of the synth (of which I never experienced any - no crashes whatsoever) are being addressed immediately. All in all customer support at its best.
The documentation is excellent as well and there are sound design tutorials on the site.
The value for money of Rhino is unmatched. You get an extremely musical, inspiring and fun synth with substantial regular upgrades and tons of goodies at a very low price. Even if you couldn't program a synth for shit, it'd still be worth the money for the presets alone. You simply can't go wrong with this one.Read Review
This is the first downloadable synth I ever bought online. After using the free mda-Version for quite some time I decided that as little as $19 should be money well spent for the GUI alone. And I did not regret it.
The shiny new interface is clean, easy to read, easy to understand and for a VSTi even relatively pretty. So this alone would justify the price.
But it doesn stop there. Imageline also added a second modulator which gives a lot more options for creating diverse and exprimental sounds. The effects and the excellent EQ add even more value to the package and especially the reverb is quite useful for creating spacey fx sounds. The delay is more of a "spice up" effect than a real delay given the reduced parameter set, it this respect it's highly useful though.
The only feature I really miss - and it's a quite simple one, too - is the ability to reduce the polyphony. Since the synth lends itself so well to programming bass sounds it would be nice to switch it into mono mode.
The DX is rather easy on the CPU, even with the FX turned on, and it didn't crash once so far in Cubse SX.
This versatile little synth has become an indispensable tool and ends up in almost every track I produce. I figure it's also a good starting point for those who want to try their hands at FM synthesis but are overwhelmed by the FM7 interface. With the nice GUI, the added effects and at this ridiculously low price you can't go wrong.Read Review
The shiny new interface is clean, easy to read, easy to understand and for a VSTi even relatively pretty. So this alone would justify the price.
But it doesn stop there. Imageline also added a second modulator which gives a lot more options for creating diverse and exprimental sounds. The effects and the excellent EQ add even more value to the package and especially the reverb is quite useful for creating spacey fx sounds. The delay is more of a "spice up" effect than a real delay given the reduced parameter set, it this respect it's highly useful though.
The only feature I really miss - and it's a quite simple one, too - is the ability to reduce the polyphony. Since the synth lends itself so well to programming bass sounds it would be nice to switch it into mono mode.
The DX is rather easy on the CPU, even with the FX turned on, and it didn't crash once so far in Cubse SX.
This versatile little synth has become an indispensable tool and ends up in almost every track I produce. I figure it's also a good starting point for those who want to try their hands at FM synthesis but are overwhelmed by the FM7 interface. With the nice GUI, the added effects and at this ridiculously low price you can't go wrong.Read Review
