Nexus is a self titled Next Generation VST. The interface was designed by Vanguards reFX, and the sound sets where personally hand crafted by the highly respected Vengeance. With names as big as those two, Nexus should absolutely grand. I have had a chance to get my hands on Nexus so let's see if truly be the Next Generation VST...

Is.Nexus.Truely.the.

Next.Gen.Synth?

 

 

What reFX say about NeXus

NEXUS is a next generation rom synthesizer of highest quality that will make your dreams come true. Forget about the usual bread & butter ROM synthesizers whose sounds are boring, stale and lacking punch.

NEXUS explores new territory and delivers complex, ultra-fat and up-to-date soundstorms that could not sound any better from the most expensive and best hardware - all at the tip of your fingers.

NEXUS provides you with everything you need to create the new hit. Do you need the most powerful dance leadsounds to become famous in your club or a Gregorian choir to create the atmosphere of the next trance hit? Whatever you need, NEXUS will supply you with what you have always been longing for.

Features like the freely programmable arpeggiator, the versatile trancegate or the factory-library optimized for the most popular genres make this the best ROM synthesizer on the market.

Even though the sound is first rate, your CPU is spared. You can expand NEXUS with new sounds by installing genre-specific expansion packs or customize the look of the GUI with our themed skins.

Are you ready? You better be.

After placing your order, you will receive an email with a license-file attachment. You will also receive a DVD in the mail a few days later which you need in order to install NEXUS. On that DVD is a PDF with installation instructions

 

 

 

At a Glance

So lets get things straight first. reFX Nexus is not really a synth, it is a Rom Synthesizer. Every single patch has been hand crafted by Vengeance yes, but you won't be able to change any of these sounds except for a filter and a few built in effects.

 

The Interface

The interface is quite pretty, and the downloadable skins can make it even prettier. My personal favourite skin is the Kill Bill. The interface is clean, uncluttered and simple, I like the digital screen in the middle because it adds a nice feel of a modern day real synth.

 

There are two things I don't like about the interface however, one is the knobs which just don't feel tight, new or comfortable. It feels like they are on a strange angle and they are a little annoying to use with the mouse.

 

The second thing I don't like is that it can be a little difficult to navigate around the middle digital screen to figure out how to load in banks, set up arps ect.

 

Is the interface Next Gen? sorry reFX, as much as I love your synths there is nothing Next Gen about this interface. It is good, but it not quite what I would class as Next Generation material.

 

 

 

Patches

The sounds a synth makes are much more important then how it looks and feels. Vengeance is my absolute favourite sound designer so I was expecting big things from he's NeXus sound set, and he delivered in a big way!

 

You can tell from the built in standard soundest packs that Vengeance has taken a lot of time to produce these on some serious hardware. Each sound has been carefully crafted and recorded note by note.

 

The basses, pads and synths impressed me a lot, they sound thick and fat and crunchy, especially on the really low end of the keyboard which is often hard to get sounding right when you are just using soft synths.

 

I really enjoyed the new Electro styled soundest available on the NeXus site, and the other sound sets I like are the minimal house and Perpetual Motion. These are some seriously pro sounds!

 

I do have two small issues with the sound sets, the first being their size, each one from 400- 700 meg each. I know that a lot of data is kept in them, but for each sound that is brilliant there is a sound that could have been left out. For most people space is not an issue, but personally I really enjoy working on my notebook sometimes and my sample library is starting to get really taxing!

 

The second problem I have is the loading times for each soundest which can sometimes be a little annoying. We all know how many presets we need to go through to find that right sound, and while it is very easy to navigate through Nexus, waiting for each path to load in is quite annoying.

 

Built in Effects and Filters

One of the main selling points for Nexus is that its "Next Gen" statement. It was designed to be the perfect mix of a sample player and a synth. To achieve this, reFX have given the player a Filter, delay, reverb and an amp mod.

 

The amp mod, Reverb and Delay all work exceptionally. I really like the sound of the Reverb, it is bright, clean and simple. The Filter however is the weakest point, especially for electro producers.

 

Electro bass relies on the filter for its squelch, ripping sound but in my opinion the NeXus filter is too weak for this and not flexible enough. A couple of LFO's would be great too!

 

Overall

NeXus is not the Next Generation of VST's, not even close. It is however an exception sampler, with an exceptional sound library.

 

If they truly wanted to make it a Next Gen VST, I personally would like to see more FX, a matrix to assign filters and mods to the sound, morphing and a much stronger filter.

 

However, even though it falls short in the VST department the sounds are so well designed that I would use them anyway and I truly looking forward to each Vengeance update.

 

Score

7/10