Go2 £42

Web timespace.com Format Mac/PC Dutch sound, instrument and effect designer Rob Papen has built an amazing roster of virtual synths over the last decade, including Predator, Blue and SubBoomBass. What the range has always lacked, though, is a ‘budget’ option for those who don’t necessarily need all the depth and extensive feature sets of those particular powerhouse instruments, but still covet their sound and technological foundations.

Enter Go2, a thoroughly capable offering from Papen (and renowned coder Jon Ayers) at a price that puts it in reach of everyone. Go2 only has one oscillator (plus a sine/square sub tracking it an octave below), but it’s an adapted version of the one from the flagship Predator 2 synth, generating two waveforms at once (from a menu of 128) and thus, to all intents and purposes, qualifying as a pair. The two waves es are manipulated and morphed to create hybrid rid shapes, and Go2’s envelopes, LFO, Arpeggiator, eggiator, XY Pad and other modulation sources ces can be exploited to control the morphing phing in real time. The XY Pad is noteworthy: the exact same one found in many of Papen’s other r synths, it enables movement of the ‘puck’ to be e recorded and edited as a path. Two filters and five effects are also onboard.

Go2’s o2’s single-window interface is touted as a key selling point, but we don’t see it as a particularly big deal (with this or any other softsynth). What really matters to us are the sound and workflow, and on those fronts, Go2 is a belter, delivering everything from basses and leads to pads and FX, with all the style and substance we expect from the Papen stable, via an interface that, while by no-means ‘beginnerfriendly’, is as accessible as they come.

All that considered, the sub-£50 pricetag is quite astonishing.

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