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This think exceeds my expectations. Pretty much anything you can think of can be dialed in. It's not as immediate like most synths but learning it's depths can yield surprising results. The build is very reliable and sturdy. Encoders are smooth and positive and displays are crisp and insightful. There is a great FB community that regularly has the ASM engineers visit to listen to users and offer help when needed. This is definitely a synthesizer for sound designers and synth players.

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Verified Customer zZounds has verified that this reviewer made a purchase from us.

I bought this a while back after gassing for a synth that I could actually touch after using Ableton for the last few years. I bought another one from a legendary company and just did not get what I wanted from it so i sent it back. Then i ordered the Hydrasynth. It arrived and I was blown away by the solid build quality and it felt like an instrument. The thing was heavy! It was not a light weight plastic sandwich. I went through all sounds installed on the machine and liked a few here and there. It sounded like a "hifi" synth coming from the other unit I sent back. The ribbon controller was really cool. All in all I bought some settings from a guy on the internet and tried out the cool computer app which allows you to transfer settings as well as back up and organize sounds. Yet this synth again was not really what I had in mind when I bought it. If I did not send back the other synth I would have sent this one back too!. But thank god I kept it. Time went on and I would occasionally noodle with the sounds and then very recently I stumbled upon a course on Sonic Academy by a guy named King Unique. I watched the videos with the Hydra in front of me. I followed along and learned about all of the controls and was blown away at how deep and easy this machine can be to do what I envisioned when I bought it! The Synth is capable of getting some very modern sounds dialed in and then taking them into outer space. There are Banks A-E and each bank has I believe about 120 something patches. You can label them and save them on your computer. The Synth has really cool FX. There are these things called Mutaters and they are capable of making insane weird things out of the oscillators by themselves. Speaking of OScillators, the Hydra has the same ole Square, triangle, sine etc plus a horde of other starting points. There are three separate oscillators to start with. Then you have two sets of filters. These filter sets have all the filters you need. You can control both filter's Freq and res at the same time! You always have control of at least one filter while you can also have something else live on selected encoders. Guess what after all the oscillators and filters we still have two of the mutaters I mentioned as well as FX! If you are dizzy from all of that head on over to the left side and you will find the most powerful Arpeggiator I have ever seen. Once again you will have instant control over 8 dedicated encoders just for that! I'm sure you have heard that this synth has Poly aftertouch. AND a ribbon controller from one side of the keybed to the other. The synth has CV control section and can be controlled by your computer . The only thing this synth is missing is a sequencer. I bought a dedicated sequencer called the Pyramid to control it for now. Ableton 11 will be able to control the Hydrasynth correctly with the new MIDI implementation. So if you are looking for a synth you should stop here. The Hydra has the capability of making very low bass sounds as well as alien pads and scorching leads the likes we have yet to hear. It is well built and if you take the time to get the Sonic Academy tutorial and watch it, you will love this monster. I promise:)