Review: Media Overkill Waverazor
Another soft synth. Yawn. Wake Up! There is this new soft synth that is very innovative. It is not your normal synth, and it definitely is not “yet another emulation of a synth from yesteryear.”
There is a new soft synth from Media Overkill (MOK) called Waverazor, and it is very different in how it looks, and creates sounds. The people who are involved in creating this synth comes with some incredible pedigrees, Taiho Yamada, Rob Rampley, and Chris Compton, and they were involved in previous incredible synths of the past, including the Alesis Andromeda (love this synth), QuadraSynth (boy, did I used to love my old QuadraSynth), M-Audio Venom, and more.
What’s so different and unique about this new soft synth?
Here is the breakdown.
It’s probably called Waverazor, as it slices a wave and combines it with other sliced waves. The patent-pending oscillator design allows it to create unique sounds, that really sounds like when I experiment with many oscillators and other utility modules in Eurorack and accidentally create a unique new waveform for sound. But in Waverazor’s case, it is an intentional creation of new waveforms. The end result of such carving of new waveforms allows you to create lush pads, aggressive leads, booming bass, crystallizing sounds, or even bell sounds and everything in between.
You can tweak the waveform, DC offset, adjust start/stop points, and much more for just the first OSC, and you have 3 of them to use. Each of the 4 sections of the wave you can slice and mangle, allows you to combine various shapes. Keep in mind, you can still have OSC 2 and 3 as something simple like a sine wave, triangle, or sawtooth, etc. You can mold the sound by using the 3 OSCs and the wave shaper to get just the right sound. I have made some very organic sounding patches (sounds like slicing through flesh with a meat carver) or something like rain spatters on the street as you hear a doppler effect go by from a single note. I have also created simple sounds like an aggressive bass, bell sounds, etc.
There is also a ring mod like feature to manipulate those 4 sections/segments of the waveform. Each section can have individual harmonics that can be modulated by a level and a mod rate that is determined by the contents of each section. Instead of modulating the entire waveform, it modulates portions with distinct controls and harmonics. Hard to explain, but much easier to hear it. It feels like Mutant AM knob does quite a bit with very little knob adjustment.
There is also a multi-sync that does far more than your typical hard sync that allows you to setup multiple hard sync points per cycle, but you can also sync beyond a single cycle.
The center section for slicing waveforms is also an oscilloscope which can be useful when you are combining OSCs to form a sound. I usually start with 1 OSC and add as I need to embellish the sound further to get to my result.
The current version does not allow for full editing of all functions, yet it is powerful enough to get your feet wet and start creating sounds.
I cannot wait to get the full edit capabilities as this soft synth is supposed to have 3 OSCs, 3 Filters per voice (in parallel or series), 3 independent Effects (I have played with it, but I have turned off the effects when I create sounds), powerful wave sequencer and arpeggiator, performance macro knobs, and 2 X-Y performance controllers. I want the ability to edit everything.
Currently at version 1.0.1, and it is $75 due to its lack of deep editing capabilities. It is stable enough, though I have had a minor issue in one of the DAWs, but they have already fixed the issue to be in the next release (minor or major.) When they release the fully edit capable version, this will be $150, according to Media Overkill.
All in all, this is definitely unique, and it allows for some serious experimentation. Now, only if I can add my own waveform sliced segments and I can edit all of the functions, I will be in sound creation heaven. I give this 2 thumbs up for creativity, and not sounding like anything else out there. The cool thing too is I can record a freshly created wave form and use a single cycle waveform in Serum or other soft synths that can handle that as a waveform for an OSC.
I’d run now to mok.com and order it now as I have. So much fun to be had and this is really a teaser version of the plugin. I really can’t wait for this synth to be fully edit capable. Then, I may not be posting much on this site.
Cheers!
