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A fabulously analogue sounding synth!

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• Review
• Manufacturer's Description

Releasing hardware synthesizers right now in our industry's development seems either very brave or very foolish.

Established, well-known manufacturers such as Waldorf are continuing to produce standalone instruments but many other companies which started this way, including Access and Novation, are increasingly 'bending' their products to acknowledge that most of us spend our days making music in front of computer screens.

Accordingly, there are now dozens of hardware synths with FireWire or USB connectivity, offering instant integration into our Mac or PC-driven audio sequencers. Flying in the face of such technological hand-shaking comes a revised version of Neptune 2. Here's a true hardware monosynth whose closest nod to 21st Century integration is the provision of a couple of MIDI ports.

Overview

There's a reasonable chance that many of you reading this will never have seen the original Neptune but for those of you with a unit or a photographic memory, you'll note that the slightly unpleasant creamy-orange livery has been replaced by the new altogether more stylish royal blue.

Visual overhauls are one thing but no synth sells by its looks alone and while Neptune 2 doesn't look to completely overhaul its ancestor's feature set, some important improvements are now offered.

Firstly, this is now a synth that properly behaves itself while you're editing, with smoother and more even response from its potentiometer knobs.

This might sound trivial but as you'll spend at least 80% of your time with this synth twiddling dials, it's much better to work with a box that offers a predictable response.

The front-panel LEDs have been improved too, with larger, bright light-blue LEDs dotted, where relevant, all over Neptune 2. These are much easier to see and use than before and do a useful job, particularly in the LFO section.

Additional front-panel functions have been included too, with a Keyfollow toggle switch in the filter section and a 'Free Run' button within the switchable LFO/Osc 3 section.

The first of these allows the filter's functionality to be affected by an incoming pitch, whereby higher notes open the filter more than the lower notes. The toggle allows three positions with full and 'half' operation alongside the option to switch key-follow off altogether.

The 'Free Run' button allows Oscillator 3 to operate without being tied to the keyboard, so that it doesn't track incoming pitch. Further improvements include a 'truer' white noise generator, which now generates noise all the way up to 100kHz. To round off the new functions, Neptune 2 now features a dedicated power button labelled, rather sweetly, 'Energy'.

Sounds

So, what does all of this mean for the Neptune 2's sound? Well, it's pretty fabulous, as you can hear on the DVD. Neptune 2 shares its predecessor's pure DC design, which means that there are no capacitors involved in production of a signal here at all.