Guess Ill get the easy bit out of the way - have a Radias - really like it, with some reservations:
As a compliment to a virus or a silky or warm and rich sounding synth - its an excellent synth.
If you happen to like cold clean, airy and digital - then you probably also like the radias. It can get very dirty, but it lacks bollox IMHO - (doesnt have the body of a virus nor the sheer brutality of a v-synth, but it can be quite punchy). Its a great fun synth to play with, can produce an amazing range of sounds and is good for textures and general wierd shit with its seq mods and the convenience of allways being in a multi mode, so all 4 timbres are instant access.
Now the hard bit - for balls and supersaws - the JP is worth keeping, for silky richness - the supernova is worth keeping. If you lyer the pair of them for a bit of both - then the radias will do a nice job of dealing with just about over other sound yuou could conceive from airy to nasty and dirty.
The radias cant replace a JP - crank up the unision on it and you can get some decent fatness out of it, and you can program some great fatness on it without having to resort to its unision osc mode and layering thorugh timbres, but its no replacement for a fizzy JP supersaw - though in a mix with some suitable EQ, loads of fx, an exiter, then you might convince a layman - but I would suggest you dont try and instead find new sound on it with the same kind of impact.
Really depends what 'your' sound is. I rather like rolands supersaws sometimes - they have a character that neither the radias nor virus TI can touch. I like the fizzy high end as well - the radias is too clean for that, but add in some distortion in the right point pre-filter - and with some reso yu may be able to get a bit of fiz.
The radias can do nice impactful bass as well - various curve modes on the enevelopes helps with that.
So yes - its a great synth, I really like it - its very easy to program - nice UI, but it is just missing something, so it tends to get background jobs, bass jobs, texture jobs, wierld jobs, or gets layered in with the virus sometimes, or sometimes the odd thin or very dirty cutting job. That was what I got it for though - its was never intended to compete with the virus ti - instead compliemnt it. The rich jobs get left to the virus and the utter brutality jobs get left ot the v-synth - and deep soft pounding kick-like bass tends to be left to a novation ks-rack.
It needs a phatt bastard for a friend.
|