MusicRadar Verdict

Huge sounds, overwhelming options, great value and easy modulation, all in a crazily priced package. Is it a synth, is it a sampler, is it a ROMpler? Who cares? It’s great!

Pros

+
Big, big, BIG sounds.
+
Fully featured synthesis and sampling.
+
Easy to use considering the scope.
+
Great for soundtracks and sound design.
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Incredible value.

Cons

-
Might be a tad overwhelming.

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What is it?
Performance and verdict
Hands-on demos
Specifications

The Synth Factory Horizen: What is it?

At a Glance

macOS: 10.9.5 or Later, 64-bit Intel or Apple Silicon
Windows: 8, 10, 11
Format: AU/VST3, 64-bit
Requires 15 GB available disk space
Buy at Plugin Boutique

When you discover the vast range of features within Horizen, and that it’s at version 2.5, you might well ask, as we did, ‘how did I not know about this before?’. Maybe it’s because it’s one of those ‘is it a synth? Is it a sampler? Is it a ROMpler?’ applications so it falls between the definition cracks (clue: it’s all three). Or maybe it just hasn’t been marketed that well. If it is the latter, this is now sorted because its developer, The Synth Factory, is now under the Tracktion umbrella, one that covers the mighty Dawesome, makers of some of our top-rated synths including Myth and Kult.

It is essentially a 10-voice sampler/synth, with four sampler voices, four synth voices and two loop players. Each synth features both dual oscillator VA and wavetable engines, plus FM – so that covers pretty much all of your sonics. Each voice, however, has many further options, with 16-part unison, drag-and-drop and customisable modulation, four effect send slots and multimode filters being some highlights.

There’s also an X-Y pad option that lets you blend between eight of the ten voices, a Player area where you can use a dual arp setup, or employ a chord player (see below for more on these), or layer sounds using a KeyScale function. Oh, and you can import your own sounds. And use up to four master effects. See what we mean? Now you’re wondering why you hadn’t heard of Horizen too, right?

The Synth Factory Horizen: Performance and verdict

There’s a lot going on here, so rather than focus on individual parts – we’ll be here all day, if we do – we’ll look at how it all slots together as one instrument, and its overall workflow.

Also consider...

Spectrasonics Omnisphere 2 — (Image credit: Spectrasonics)

• Spectrasonics Omnisphere
A different beast, yes, but a great alternative to any synth that has this much scope.

• Sample Logic ultraSPHERE
Shares much of the DNA of Horizen – maybe they are related – but costs more and has only four voices.

All of the ten sample, synth and loop voices can be accessed from tabs across the top of the UI – the ones not used are shown muted. We found it easier to get our head around Horizen by loading in one of the 350+ presets and stripping it back to its individual voices.

For the four sampler voices, then, you can choose from (what we counted) well over 600 sounds, and the UI handily puts all four voices up at the same time so you can quickly mix and match them together – sounds are listed over 15 categories including Pads, Synth and Favourites.

For each synth voice you can switch between the VA and Wavetable modes. The former has two oscillators, each with nine waveforms, plus Pulse Width, Octave and Detune controls. For the Wavetable synth you get access to one of 21 wavetables plus one of six LFOs. Finally for the loops, you choose from different categories, like One-shot and Ambience, although slightly confusingly, the All category doesn’t seem to include all the options available.

Once you select your sample, synth or loop voice, you can then access all of that extra power per voice. Highlights here are the extensive modulation which not only allows you to define modulation curves, but simply drag and drop them to destinations, of which there are many. The effects are also pretty cool, allowing dramatic changes to be made with four send effects (choose from one of 17 types each) and another four master effects which sit on top of all (up to) 10 voices in combination.

The Player and X/Y options

Two of the main UI tabs – Player and X/Y – deliver a lot of performance scope. The Player options include two arpeggiators (with six types) with lots of tweakers including Tempo, Swing, Note Length and Pitch Offset. Handily, these can easily be applied to whichever voices you like as they are all listed to switch on and off.

A neat Chords feature lets you select a root note, chord type and octave and then gives you 16 chord options to choose from (shown on a keyboard). However, the X/Y player is the most hands-on and exciting feature, letting you fill two slots per corner with one of the ten voices (so up to eight in total), and you can then modulate between them, record movements or automate as much as you like, fading and blending between voices. All of these performance extras add up to yet more dynamic drama in what is already a very moving instrument.

Practically horizontal

Summing up, that’s a huge amount of power per voice, crazy modulation options, loads of performance options and massive sonic potential. The overall sound you get is BIG, then, but, surprisingly, lots of the presets also focus on less complex Plucks, Keys and Bass categories, so as well as the evolving monster stacks that you probably expect from a synth of this power, there are more traditional keys options here too.

Honestly, we could have filled another five pages on everything here

The only criticism we have is that the options can be overwhelming; go one voice at a time when designing sounds. If you don’t, you might just get the kind of ‘use anxiety’ that we imagine supercar owners get when they go down to the corner shop in their Lambos. Honestly, we could have filled another five pages on everything here, but for $129, Horizen is a simply stunning instrument/synth/sample/ROMpler/thing.

MusicRadar verdict: Huge sounds, overwhelming options, great value and easy modulation, all in a crazily priced package. Is it a synth, is it a sampler, is it a ROMpler? Who cares? It’s great!