MusicRadar Verdict
If you simply can't get enough presets and have plenty of cash to spare, syntAX is a reasonable buy, but those on a limited budget would be far better off investing in something like reFX Nexus or Arturia Analog Factory.
Pros
- +
Loads of presets!
Cons
- -
Many sounds are lacklustre.
MusicRadar's got your back Our team of expert musicians and producers spends hours testing products to help you choose the best music-making gear for you. Find out more about how we test.
Billed as "part synth, part interactive sonic revolution", Vir2 and Bunker 8's Kontakt Player 2-powered synth ROMpler can hardly be accused of underselling itself.
A collection of 2000 patches covering such standard fare as leads, basses, pads and FX, syntAX unfortunately can't live up to its own hype.
Although some of the sounds are indeed fairly pleasant, albeit unspectacular, many of the patches are weak, dull-sounding or just pointless.
Little effort has been made to put the Kontakt Player 2's engine to good use (the so-called "expert" view gives you an ADSR to tweak and little else), and the sheer volume of the available patches makes locating the wheat amongst the chaff a testing task.
"MC5 were playing on the radio": Pere Ubu founder David Thomas has died after “a long illness", aged 71
"An unholy amount of features in a standard-sized compact pedal": Mooer Prime Minimax M2 Intelligent Pedal review
“The most musical, unique and dynamic distortion effects I’ve ever used”: Linkin Park reveal the secret weapon behind their From Zero guitar tone – and it was designed by former Poison guitarist Blues Saraceno’s dad
