HY-POLY

First thing I have to say is I've uninstalled most of my synths after purchasing this! I also recently purchased ANA2, which is great but if I will be honest I've only opened it up a few times compared to the fact that I am reaching for HY-POLY every day, even if I don't feel like doing anything musical I'll still load it up and just make a couple sounds for later use. I've never had so much fun with a synth. Like others have said, it is easy to understand, but when you've been doing sound design for a while they all kind of are... for me the real difference is in how fluid it is to use. I find myself not being afraid to undo things that didn't quite work out instead of trying to force something to work, it's just quick and easy to do, no need to twiddle with an OK sound to make it acceptable and getting sidetracked on it just because you don't want to lose the time you put into it. If you already have the kind of sound you are going for in your head than you can achieve it quickly. If you just want to see what comes out then that is rewarding too.

I like the design of the oscillator section, the task oriented workflow is pretty cool and adds to the overall workflow experience for me. The FM in it is pretty fun since you can adjust the base waveshapes that you are using for the FM, it's almost like having a couple extra operators. The feddback FM option is really fun for doing FX type sounds.

To me it sounds really good, I like the filters... they aren't too extreme in any way so for me that makes it versatile, and I really like how the resonance acts if you want to crank it, it doesn't sound to whistley, that always annoys me. The visual feedback on this synth is also really nicely done in my opinion. You can quickly see everything that's going on with the modulation but none of it ever feels distracting, I only notice it when I'm looking for it.

I haven't really done much with the MIDI FX so I can't really comment on that part, but it's really nice to have them in there for when I get around to it.

The FX section is one of my favorite parts: there are a ton of FX you can add and pretty much every aspect of it can be modulated, for me this really makes it shine because these days FX has become such a core part of sound design, no longer are they just an afterthought, for me the FX are just as much a part of the sound as the filter. Having envelopes and LFO's and MIDI modulators at my disposal to shape the FX and have it built into the patch is stellar. I know it's not the first synth do this, but it's the first synth I've seen that does it like this. Speaking of modulation, there's plenty of options there at your disposal. I especially like the "Random" modulator, it generates a random number every time you press a key, I can't wait to get around to seeing what all I can do with that on percussive sounds.

Is it the perfect synth? There's no such thing since synthesis is such a huge topic, but I do think it's the perfect balance of capability versus workflow. If I need something with more capabilities I have options, but honestly I'm usually reaching for HY-POLY. This is a true bread and butter synth that I can't get enough of. I've never felt a synth was more worth my money.