EUROPA Review
Europa was one of the few synths Reason created as a standalone plugin, I do sincerely wish they continued this trend, because they make a lot of really cool plugins. Luckily Reason Rack can be used as a plugin, and it’s actually a pretty fun tool, I’ll discuss more about Reason Rack in a future review. Europa, in a lot of ways, is Reason’s flagship synthesizer, it can almost be thought of as their response to Serum. I wouldn’t describe Europa as a “Serum clone” by any means, mostly due to the fact that it lacks a full wavetable system. Europa has three oscillators, each with a variety of synthesis types, two oscillator effects, a spectral filter, and unison. These feed into an analog style filter, then finally into the effects section.
OSCILLATORS:
Each oscillator can be set to one of over a dozen oscillator types ranging from basic shapes, to FM, to Karplus Strong, Wavetable, and other strange modes. Next are two modifiers, these are oscillator effects that alter the main shape. There’s over a dozen different modifiers to chose from allowing you to apply osc sync, folding, phase distortion, more FM, unison, and more. If there wasn’t enough variety in oscillator design already, they are then fed into the spectral filter which has over a dozen filter types and a harmonic modifier with another 8 options to chose from. This spectral filter can do typical filtering, resonators, formants, random amplitude filtering, spectral lag, and can even apply an envelope shape or wavetable as a filter. The sheer volume of combinations here is astounding, it’s just such a deep oscillator engine with so many options to play around and experiment with. I really do not give this synth the time of day it deserves.
Finally each oscillator has a simple unison stage and they all get mixed into the analog style filter, this is sorta where Europa breaks down. The analog filters sound good, but there’s not many to choose from, and there’s just not much to after this point. The effects section is pretty basic too, you get some basic effects types with standard controls, but nothing too exciting. And I think this is where most Reason synths fall a bit flat, they have absolutely incredible and interesting oscillator sections, but don’t quite have support from the rest of the synth. I think this is ok though, they are meant to exist within the Reason ecosystem, where you’d have access to all of the reason effects and cross modulation, but it’s most noticeable here with Europa unfortunately.
MODULATION:
Europa’s modulation is one of the better for Reason synths, you get 4 total MSEGs and three LFOs with a fairly competent modulation matrix. One neat thing you can do with the MSEGs is use the “edit Y-position” toggle, this will lock all MSEG nodes on their horizontal axis, and let you free draw their vertical position. When you use the last preset, which is evenly spaced random values, the “edit Y-position” toggle essentially allows you to free draw an MSEG shape. This is super useful if you’re using the spectral filter’s “envelope 4” mode, which uses the MSEG shape to determine spectral filtering shape.
Europa’s UI also feels just a bit dated, it’s not bad, but it exists as a “Reason device”, especially now that Europa can no longer be purchased as a standalone plugin. I really like what they did with the oscillator, there’s just so much to play with and control in that section. Would love to see this expanded into a more complete synth with more versatile modulation, effects, and filter sections. I think Reason does a really good job making the oscillator section for each of their synths, and if you use Reason Rack as a synthesizer, and just treat each synth as an oscillator within a more complex system, it begins to shine a little brighter.
EUROPA is no longer available as a plugin, but it comes included with REASON
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REASON: https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/81-Bundles/89-Complete-Collection/8018-Reason-12?a_aid=61c378ab215d5