Razor Review - Reviews - Music Tech Magazine

Razor offers a new and innovative slant on the technique of additive synthesis. Mark Cousins experiences the cutting edge.

Price: £69.00
Manufacturer: Native Instruments
Website: http://www.native-instruments.com

Reaktor Razor synthesizer

Reaktor has been a breeding ground for some of the most unusual and distinctive software synths in music production, particularly those that show little regard for the conventions of subtractive synthesis. The results, however, can be somewhat hit-and-miss, occasionally hampered by an impenetrable user interface and a sonic output that sounds as confused as the instrument looks! Native Instruments’ latest Reaktor Ensemble, Razor, offers a new and innovative take on additive synthesis, but can it also be an intuitive musical tool and an instrument that you’ll want to keep returning to?

Cut-throat

Razor has been designed by German producer Errorsmith in conjunction with Native Instruments and works with the latest version of Reaktor 5.5. If you haven’t purchased Reaktor 5 or Komplete 7, it’s worth noting that Razor will also work with the free Reaktor 5 Player (which is well worth investigating in its own right given the free Carbon 2, Newscool and Space Drone Ensembles included with it).

Although seemingly pitched as a tool for dubstep bass lines, Razor is a highly versatile and unusual synthesizer that could work across a range of genres. On first impressions, Razor looks much like a traditional subtractive synthesizer: there are two oscillators to play with, a filter section, envelopes, LFOs and an effects sections – all of the features you’d expect to find on a traditional virtual analogue synth. However, behind the scenes Razor is creating and sculpting its output purely in the additive domain, using 320 partials to assemble sounds on a ‘harmonic-by-harmonic’ basis.

Surgical blade

Despite its additive roots, Razor looks and feels like an immediately friendly synthesizer, with a clean, efficient interface and plenty of familiar knobs and controls to grab hold of. But as you begin to delve deeper, you realise that there’s a lot more to Razor than meets the eye. As well as traditional oscillators, therefore, you’ll also find oscillator modules with intriguing titles such as Sick Pitchbend and Octaves to Saw, all delivering a distinctive ‘non-subtractive’ sound. Even the conventional filter types seem closer to sound being filtered by a ‘molecular’ filter, with a surgical accuracy you wouldn’t expect to hear from a typical subtractive filter.

Overall, Razor’s sound is edgy and digital, but not at the expense of power, depth or beauty. As you’d expect, Razor’s dubstep presets – like the various Wobbler basses included in Errorsmiths’ preset bank – deliver all the grit, distortion and seismic activity you’d hope for. An intriguing ‘Safe Bass’ control helps here, reinforcing fundamental frequency energy irrespective of any settings you establish. However, there’s a lot more to Razor than just dubstep bass lines, with some superb eerie pad sounds and ambience effects, many of which benefit from Razor’s built-in additive reverb algorithm.

Sharp synthesis

Although sonic delight is abundant in Razor, there’s one obvious caveat worth mentioning: with as many as 320 partials to play with, Razor isn’t light on CPU usage, occasionally hitting 15–20% of CPU resources (on a single core, of course) when playing some of the thicker polyphonic patches. Turning off the sumptuous 3D spectral view certainly helps (and you can also switch the quality of Razor’s output between Low, Medium and High), but users of dual-core laptops expecting to run multiple polyphonic instances should be wary. That said, one good synth is worth more than half-a-dozen weaker ones, so it may be a price worth paying.

With so many virtual instruments on the market, it’s rare that you get to hear a truly distinctive and original synth like Razor. Thanks to its well-designed interface and unusual additive-style output, Razor is a synth that stands out from the crowd, producing sounds that are definably its own. Although we’ve played with plenty of additive synths over the years, none has had the immediacy and sonic power of Razor, and as you delve deeper into its architecture you really start to appreciate its awesome potential. MTM

10/10 Verdict - Razor is a distinctive synth that demonstrates the true potential of additive synthesis. Full of sonic potential that won’t disappoint!

WHY BUY

Unique additive sound
Clear, easy-to-use interface
Powerful vocoder options

WALK ON BY

Can be taxing on CPU
Extreme sounds and effects

Score: 10/10

This review first appeared in Music Tech Magazine issue 100
Filed under Reviews, Samplers, Software

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Native Instruments Razor Review