Waldorf Rocket Synthesizer - Black/Green

I took delivery of this today, got it out of the box and routed it through my mixer with a delay effect. Within about 5 minutes I was writing the most amazing techno tunes. The sound is much better than I expected - and what I really like about it is the simplicity - there are no presets, no hidden menus, just straightforward knobs and switches which let you get straight into making sounds. Within an hour I had made a whole variety of sounds, from acid basslines to crunchy trance leads. I plugged in my midi controller keyboard and found that the rotary dials on the keyboard mapped to the controls on the rocket so I could control it that way (and using the pitch bend wheel produced some amazing stuff).I personally find softsynths frustrating and inspiration-killing. Whereas this little beast I can see myself playing with for ages - instead of moving around a mouse and worrying about processor power, it lets me get straight to tweaking sounds. Also it's compact, so you can add it to your studio without taking up extra space.If you want something with a range of 'real instrument' sounds or something with a wider palette like Pad sounds, bells etc, then this probably isn't for you. It's really for lead of bass sounds. Also, there is no memory in the machine - you can record your settings to midi if you can be bothered, but it doesn't record every setting - you have to remember what position certain switches were in and move them back there to get the same sound. The way I intend to use it is to have a midi sequence playing and then tweak the knobs in real time whilst recording into an 8 track.For me it was just what I needed to add a bit of analog sound to my recordings without breaking the bank. It's amazing how many different sounds you can get out of it. I have no real knowledge of synthesis, but found it no problem to make great sounds just by guesswork. But that's not to say it's just for beginners - I bet someone who understands these things would get great joy from it too.Another nice touch is that it comes with a power plug with adaptors for each country which fit snugly on to the plug, so if you take a rocket trip abroad, you won't have to use one of those ropey travel adaptors. It is powered via usb, so you can use the supplied wall plug, or a USB hub, or a computer, etc.I'm really surprised another reviewer has said it is overpriced. What else can you get for the same amount of money that does anything like what this synth does?In summary, this does exactly what I had hoped it would. It is simple, intuitive and hands on and inspires creativity. No technical problems or lengthy consultation of the manual to get it working.

Its ok a little bit basic but you get what you pay for worth buying for the filter

Yes, it's limited. But to dismiss it as just a toy is just lazy - you need to spend some time with an instrument.So there is a digital oscillator, which can generate pulse waves or up to 8 sawtooths (sawteeth?) before passing through a 12dB/octave multi-mode analog filter with resonance. The attack is fixed permanently to "very fast indeed". The decay control is shared between decay and release but can be switched off for release. The sustain is fixed at full level but again can be switched off. The controls for the filter envelope are shared but the filter envelope doesn't have sustain, being effectively an AR envelope.I have discovered you can do swells if you hold down a note with sustain off and then switch it on - the time it takes is determined by the decay knob. The fixed attack makes this synth most suitable for lead and bass sounds.With a bit of twiddling, the filter is capable of some almost speaker busting squeals and thumps.The arpeggiator is a useful addition - I love arpeggiators! It can be synced to MIDI clock.The pseudo-polyphony mode is useful should you need to odd sawtooth chord but really this instrument is best thought of as a monosynth.

Excellent synth for the money, really good, crisp, loud sound output. It is built very well, especially for the price, filter is very good, arpeggiator works very well, fun to mess around with. It sounds good but has a very ‘samey’ sound, don’t expect a rich palette of tones, the sound can be filtered and varied in a number of ways but it’s basically variations on the same sound... and is limited what it can do but what it does it does very well. If you want to use it in a midi setup with a number of other midi instruments then bear in mind you will need a midi splitter box, you can’t daisy chain it unless all the other machines have midi thru so you can put it at the end of the chain, it only has an in and an out. Other inexpensive synths also may lack a midi thru , part of cutting costs I suppose, so it’s likely you will have to address this but midi thru boxes are not too expensive at around £50. It will filter external sound sources apparently but I haven’t tried this yet, I will at some point though as the filter is quite aggressive and could be interesting to experiment with. It doesn’t save patches unless you use the software plug in thingy so if you are hardware based it is good to sequence it from something which will allow you to set the values so that you can recreate the sound you want when you play back your sequence at a later date. Very decent and fun synth at an affordable price.