Propellerhead Pulsar review

Pulsar is a dual-LFO modulation generator designed to control just about anything that accepts CV in Reason.

You might think that there arealready plenty of modulation options in the Rack, but the Reason paradigm is designed to encourage patching things together, so we don't think you can have enough mod-generators.

Apart from all the obvious controls: waveform type, speed, sync and phase offset, Pulsar also boasts some really cool unusual features, such as shuffle. This parameter adds a shuffle-like variation to adjacent LFO cycles, meaning that even your modulation can have swing. It's something you don't see so often, and it's a very good idea.

Lag is another cool feature: it acts to smooth out the edges of sharp LFO waveform types. When automated, this can add or remove edge from modulation in quite interesting ways.

As you'd expect, it sounds alot different acting on, say, a filter cutoff rather than pitch. Pulsar also features the ability to control the LFO rate with a MIDI keyboard, which can be great for studio and even live work.

The effect's input and output section is pretty formidable. There are inputs for dynamically controlling the aforementioned shuffle control, not to mention the Phase and Rate.

Then come the outputs, featuring multiple instances of each to avoid too much Spider splitting, and even audio outputs as the LFOs go right up to audible frequencies. This, of course, makes Pulsar a two-oscillator monosynth as well!

And that's the theme with Pulsar - you have to muck about with it to see what it can do. There are plenty of preset ideas and combinators to get started, but the best thing to do is chuck itat as many things as you can think of.

For the best and most dramatic results, patch it in to multiple mod destinations (different parameters and different devices alike) simultaneously.