Parawave Audio

The appealing thing to me about this synth is the sound. Avenger and Rapid have similarities, but I find myself looking more forward to a session in Rapid because of the character of sound design that draws me into the controls. 3 Oscillators per layer (8 layers) the wavetable transitions are smooth as silk. But I'll be honest, the same reason I keep coming back to this is the reason I keep being fascinated by U-he's work. The nuance behind the programming makes each synth different. It's hard to say what makes the oscillators and filters do what they do. Rapid has a "drift" thing you can turn on, like Syntronik 2. But even without it the organic righteousness of the lows & mids throb & hum beautifully, and the brilliant sheen on top is so pronounced that I can't help but think there's some proper, well thought out sound processing behind it that is being caught up to by Avenger v2 no doubt. I would like to only pay for one - like I would like to pay for only 1 $250,000 sports car. But when I demo'd Rapid I could tell these are very different animals. The new features of Avenger 2 make me glad to have that, but there are some patches in Rapid that are completely unique, that I'm sure I'll turn to at critical creative junctures. I'd give this 4 starts if I thought it was dropped from development, but the web site claims they're still following an upgrade route and I am excited to see where the future will take her.

The synth itself is fantastic. The possibilities are massive and the FM synthesis or resynthesis as well as graintable synthesis is massive despite the low CPU. The presets that are included sound highly professional.

However, I have to deduct a star for the worst support in the world, which is also sometimes very personally insulting. Manufacturers don't like hearing about bugs or features, and updates and essential bug fixes are unfortunately very rare.

I like the idea of having just one synthesizer and learning how to use it really well, rather than jumping back and forth between a bunch of synthesizers and using them all poorly. I have tried all the synthesizers everyone talks about, but for me Rapid just meets all the criteria: a synth that does everything and does it well! The fact that you can use Rapid as an effects plugin makes it even more versatile! Rapid replaces a dozen synthesizers and effect plugins and is extremely light on CPU! The best value for money.

This synth appeared for me out of nowhere when a friend got it. I have never paid this much for VST synth before but this is incredible and I'm very glad I got it! There are so many complex options but they are so straight forward it remains approachable and intuitive to work with. No synth before had let me create great sounds by end of day one of this high quality. The workflow some of the best I ever worked with. The built in effects are awesome too, the reverb sounds so good I end up using Rapid FX instead of my usual reverb and effects.

5/5 Really good synth that out of nowhere became my endgame.

For me, this is the best synth in the world. I have other synths like Serum, Massive, Avenger. But Rapid has become my go to synth. The workflow and the quick and amazing results that you get from this synth is just awesome.