Soft Synths Rule

Ok, while it’s hard to imagine anything with “Soft” in its name doing any ruling, software synthesizers are the future and that is all there is to it. It’s hard to imagine anything as amazing as Reaktor or SynthEdit or AudioMulch being done in hardware, and even if it was, you can bet it would be more than their software counterparts ($395, $20, and $89).

But soft synths still have one inherent limitation, your computer. While your only worry with hardware synths was where to fit them in the room, with software synths you need to worry about maximizing your resources so as to not wake the demon of clicks and pops, and if you are addicted to low-latency, you don't need to go very far before you run into this. And what about live use? You feel comfortable handing your laptop over to the roadie? And lastly, what if you just don’t want or need a computer; you “Just wanna rock and roll all night”? (translation: you are a guitar player).

You can see it coming a mile away like the setup from a bad stand-up comic, what about dedicated hardware to run plug-ins? Brilliant! And I think more than a few people had that same idea about two years ago. Unfortunately, few of these have come to market, even though the technology is essentially already there. Why? Well obviously I can only guess, but soft synths tend to be idiosyncratic, and getting them all to behave nicely so they can be consistent and reliable has proved more challenging than some people have realized. While other “plug-in runners” have arrived, they have all been closed systems, running plug-ins only written or approved by the manufacturers (e.g. the Creamware Noah). Or completely open like the Chameleon, but do not support any of the popular plug-ins already available.

So along comes Receptor, which not only runs the most popular plug-in format (VST), but also comes at a quite reasonable price of $1,399, making it competitive with even going out and building your own machine. Suhweet.

A Judge of Panels

The Receptor is a 2 U rackmount synth that from an appearance standpoint could just as easily be something like a Triton rack. It has the ever present 2 line LCD screen with four knobs underneath, combined with 11 buttons (not counting power and such). Using the front panel almost all of the functionality of the plug-ins that the Receptor runs is accessible. It will take some work with the manual to get to it though, as it is far from intuitive, but then again, what would be, how are plug-in runners “supposed” to work? And of course, most synths or effect units featuring this interface take some effort to make all but the most trivial of changes.

What makes the Receptor different is the amount of variety that lurks underneath, with completely radical changes of sound possible by switching from one VSTi to the next. While it will not give you all the power you would get by accessing the plug-ins via software, if you never hooked this up to a computer you would only the lowest levels of details, and only on some plug-ins. You can even install and uninstall plugs from the front panel.

Of course, two of the main users of the front panel interface would be guitar players who want to use the Receptor as an FX unit or synth players who want to use the Receptor live as a sound module. For both audiences the front panel interface would work very well, as you can set up “Master” presets that can include entire chains of FX and synths, making it very easy to instantly dial in your whole setup, or quickly change setup by just turning knobs (which are nicely backlit for dark club or daytime festival use).

One nice feature of the front panel is the way you do a “Triple click” which will effectively clear the Receptor from any misbehaving plug-ins, taking even less time that it would to power off and power on most hardware synths or effects.

And of course, almost anybody would enjoy just turning on the Receptor with a keyboard plugged in and start jamming away with their favorite virtual instruments, without powering up a computer.

A Real Plug-In

One of the nice things about the Receptor is that you can just plug it right into whatever PA, sound system, or mixing board you are working with. If you are running out the analog ports you have another conversion step. This is especially important for guitar players who will seldom be able to employ the digital outs. Well, rest assured the converters sound great. Rumor has it that they are Frontier audio interfaces in the Receptor, which would make sense as Frontier's stuff is both high-quality and not too expensive. When I was first testing the Receptor I ran it like a straight-forward hardware synth into the audio inputs of my system and was very pleased with the sound.

The Ins and Outs of Receptor

The Receptor is no slouch in the out department, nor will you run out of ins. It features analog stereo ins and outs, S/PDIF ins and outs and ADAT outs (currently, only the first pair of the ADAT outs is accessible, although Muse has promised that in the next rev, all 8 outs will be accessible). I would probably like at least one other pair of analog outs so I could run multi-timbral, but that may just be me.

Update: All 8 outputs of the ADAT outs are now available and individually accessible.

Expandability

One of the complaints I have heard from people who like to complain about things before they have seen them is the lack of expandability of the Receptor. Despite what some people have told me, the RAM of the Receptor is expandable to 1GB, and while the 40GB internal drive is not expandable, the Receptor does support external USB drives, which should give you plenty of room to add that 200GB orchestral library you have been dreaming about.

Update: The Receptor now comes standard with 106GB hard drive which is expandable (at the factory) up to 400GB.

The Strong Silent Type

The Receptor’s case is rugged and feels beefy, all the components feel well seated, and all ins and outs are well marked making them easy to read in poorly lit environments. The Receptor makes relatively little noise compared to a computer so it could sit in a studio session without having to be baffled. (I, on the other hand, am always baffled at my sessions)

The Software Side

Of course the strength of the Receptor lies in the software it runs, without it the Receptor would be just a computer with a really, really, really low resolution monitor.

The Receptor comes loaded with a bunch of software, much of it freeware or demoware, although there are some commercial plug-ins that you receive after registering your Receptor. Now there is a lot there to work with, and free plug-ins should not necessarily be dismissed out of hand, there are some very well done and sophisticated free plug-ins out there that easily rival commercial ones, but more than likely they are not going to cover all your needs . If not you can then navigate to www.plugorama.com and purchase more plug-ins. Plug-O-Rama is similar in many respects to the well-known and well-run KVR-VST.com which makes sense since Muse now owns KVR-VST. It would be nice if these were even more closely linked, as it would interesting to read reviews of the some of the plug-ins that are available for purchase from Plug-O-Rama. Plugs purchased here can be automatically sent to your Receptor for install, so even users who may not be familiar with the whats and wherefores of plug-ins could easily purchase and install a plug-in without having to touch a .dll.

One factor that currently makes the Receptor a little disappointing is that the Receptor only runs “Approved” plug-ins. Now while there are a lot of approved plug-ins, and there were just a whole bunch more announced at AES including BFD and the impOSCar, and emminent support for Spectrasonics popular Stylus, Trilogy and Atmosphere plug-ins, there are still a lot that are not. For me these included the synths that I most wanted to run on the Receptor, Reaktor and Absynth. Receptor does allow you to “try” to install these and any other “unsupported” plug-ins, but all of the plug-ins I tried to install failed. I found this very disappointing. This is not Receptors fault really, since the problem usually lies in the ever-more copy protection schemes that plug-ins use.

Update: Absynth is now compatible with the Receptor as are all the Spectrasonics plug-ins. Reaktor remains unsupported but is promised "soon".

On the flip side of this, there was not time to test all of the plug-ins that ARE supported, so if I did not come to the Receptor wanting it to do something it did not ever say it would do, maybe it would not have been a problem. And these are just two plug-ins amongst the hundreds that Recptor supports. But for me, the real potential of the Receptor will not be realized until a CPU-hog like Reaktor could be given its own computer to play on.

Running The Receptor

You control the Receptor by running a modified version of the remote control app called VNC. The included “Receptor Remote” brings up the mixer/setup window of the Receptor, which is where you can load your plug-ins do your routing or do any other setup you want. While the mixer software is not necessarily very pretty, it is relatively straightforward and easy to use. Here you have sixteen mixer channels, which can each contain one VST Instrument and three FX's. Each channel can then be routed to one of two effects busses where you can add even more effects. This whole setup, as mentioned before, can be saved and recalled. From this screen as well you can access the edit screen for any of the instruments or effects you put here.

If you don't want to remote control the Receptor from another machine, you can just plug in a monitor and keyboard/mouse and off you go. Perfect for live applications where you may want to tweak the Receptor and then hit the stage with a simple setup.

The Manual

The manual is complete and well written, if at times a little dense. Unfortunately the manual only comes as a PDF so you will need to print it yourself if you disinclined to read such heady stuff on a screen.

Conclusion

Although not everyone agrees with me, I think the time of the “plug-in runner” is inevitable. Muse has really done an amazing job with the Receptor, especially for something that is 1.0 as both a product and in the marketplace. The Receptor is reliable, easy to use, and powerful, and even more surprisingly, affordable. While its support for plug-ins is more limited that I would like, this is only bound to increase with time.

So not only do software synths rule, so does the Receptor.

More Updates: Clearly the Receptor has become a success not just a valiant try. Although many were concerned about how long it took the product to come out in production, the timing seems to have been right as the level of professionalism of even shareware plug-ins is quite high and better than a lot of hardware.

I had purchased a Receptor and have been always happy with it, but am even happier now with the final introduction of Uniwire. Uniwire allows the Receptor to run as a VST instrument directly connected to your computer via Ethernet, so it works sort of like a Powercore Firewire or something, except it runs standard plug-ins not proprietary ones, and the list of supported plug-ins grows and grows, I was even told by folks from Native Instruments that they are working with Muse for a full integration with Kore. That makes my mind explode.

So the Receptor has firmly established itself in the marketplace with a number of high-profile endorsees and brisk sales. This can only be good news and I'm glad to see that a product I diligently supported succeed. The Receptor continues to get better and better without getting more expensive (except for the switchover to the new manufacturer) and the list of supported plug-ins grows. So while my summary from before (back in 2004) was "Wave of the Future or Niche market is anybody's guess", it's clear that the Receptor is here to stay.

Check out Receptor here.

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