EQUATOR 2 Review
Awhile back Plugin Boutique hooked me up with a copy of Roli’s Equator 2. This synth is a bit of an odd one, designed primarily to be used with an MPE controller or specifically the Seaboard, Equator might not seem like a particularly special synthesizer. If you dig into this sequel a bit there’s actually some neat stuff to discover, it’s sort of on par with synths like Rapid and Pigments in that it has both wavetable and granular synthesis, a deep effects section, and a fairly comprehensive modulation system. A good chunk of the UI/feature set is dedicated to MPE controls, I do not personally own any MPE hardware, so I will not be able to speak on these features or how they compare, but it does look like a large portion of the presets utilize MPE. This is important as many synths “allow for” MPE, but don’t quite have a sound set built around this feature. The UI is really lovely in my opinion, soft purples and a flat design just make it pleasing to look at. Equator gives you six oscillators, two(really eight) filters, full modulation, and a 12 slot effects section with over a dozen effects to chose from.
OSCILLATORS AND FILTERS
Each of the six oscillators can be set to either wavetable, sample, granular, or noise mode, each mode has their own set of controls which will be displayed in the center console. Having six oscillators is a bit overkill, it’s a lot to work with, but nice for layering, this is made even more special by the inclusion of a dedicated filter per oscillator. Each osc gets a full filter, with no limitations followed by a basic tone control so you don’t have to waste the filter on highpassing or basic dampening. There’s a fairly decent library of included samples/ tables, though many of the tables aren’t the highest quality. I noticed phase rumbling in quite a few, and some just didn’t have very interesting motion. This is normal, you want a variety to chose from and sometimes “not the coolest” waves make for useful content. I really like the noise engine, it has a nice pleasing crackle when density is turned down
Wavetable: The wavetable engine is fairly simple, you ofcourse get position and detune controls, but there is also 2 fm sources, ring mod, and basic phase distortion all simultaneously. The FM and RM occur after the filtering which is nice, and the ability to do filter feedback is possible, though it gets noisy fast. Being able to do FM after the filtering is such a nice touch, and there’s quite a few ways you can combine these different oscillator effects to get interesting and fun results. What Equator is lacking in osc effect options, it makes up for in simultaneous processing. They also sound very nice, they are nice and aggressive with a nice natural distortion rather than trending towards noise.
Granular: This granular engine isn’t my favorite, they don’t give you the widest assortment of options or range. There seems to always be some level of jitter applied no matter what, so you can’t quite achieve those resonant granular sounds. Rate only goes from 1-100 hz, so neither super slow or fast. The window shape is nice, letting you change both the width curve and tilt of the window for a variety of shapes. Probably the most interesting aspect of Equator’s grain engine is the sample index. Each included sound is loaded as a collection of sounds that can either be selected via key region, or manually with the sample index control. If done manually, this causes no audio dropouts, so you can blend between various sounds, and even modulate the control. This is pretty neat with some of the sampled instruments as the formants will shift as the samples remain in correct key, creating a really neat morphing effect. It even has a bit of a sample rate reduction quality as you get into the more extreme playback reduction.
Filters: As previously mentioned, each oscillator gets its own filter, which is just an incredible option, but they also all get summed into two main filters. These are the exact same filters that each oscillator gets, which at first felt like they should have been a bit special as they are the main ones, but upon further thinking I realized it just means they didn’t cut anything out of the “smaller” filters. There’s a variety of the standard shapes, LPF/HPF/BPF, and there’s also a comb. Any of the filters can also be used for saturation or wavefolding instead, which is again really nice per oscillator. I really appreciate the extra tone control on each filter as well.
EFFECTS
There’s quite a wide variety of effects to chose from, all your classics like flangers, chorus, delay etc. But there’s a few cool additions here as well. For one the parametric EQ has five nodes and every control can be modulated, you can stack these as well if you want for more extreme shaping and motion. One nice option to see is the noise gate, there’s lots of cool effects you can produce with a noise gate, and there’s not too many synths that have one built into the engine, so it’s nice to be able to work this into a patch. The model distortion comes with a very wide variety of distortion modes to choose from. Last I want to mention the grain delay, a really nice option for shimmery textures, but also glitches out in a very pleasing way when modulated.
MODULATION
Equator gives you five envelopes, four LFOs, two MSEGs, a host of controller options, math, and four static randoms. The envelopes and LFOs are all basic, you get sample hold and random as options as well. The MSEGs are a bit tricky to work with, but always nice to have. The keyboard options each come with a fully customizable curves, with up to 4 to pick from per destination. The inclusion of math is always nice, it’s rare enough that I don’t have any personal use cases, but there is quantization and lag, which can be really fun when combined with macros. I do appreciate 4 static randoms, most synths only give you one, so being able to apply extra variety is nice. There’s also a nifty “flip flop” modulator that switches on and off per keypress which can be used in fun ways.
I can’t say I break out Equator all that often, but when I do it is a pleasant surprise. There’s just enough unique features to make up for its short comings. I enjoy exploring the new sounds I can produce with each synth, rather than comparing their quality or ability to reproduce sounds I’ve already made with other synths. The variety of filters distortion and wavetable effects makes this a great tool for textural synth design, especially when you add in the sparse noise and some granular elements. Hell, even the noise gate is a great tool for textures. I really owe it to this one to give it more time, from my experience with the sound engine, there’s a lot of surprising sweet spots. Areas of sound design that don’t quite work on other synths, but manage to work just right here. I do hope one day to have access to a proper controller to test out the MPE capabilities of these various synths. MPE isn’t high on the list of priorities for me, but I can see some expressive advantages to it while performing or recording.
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EQUATOR: https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/1-Instruments/4-Synth/7062-Equator2?a_aid=61c378ab215d5