PARSEC Review
As a fan of powerful and unique additive synthesizers, Parsec is one of my favorite Reason Rack devices. Parsec is a dual engine additive synth with four additive modifiers for exploring all sorts of additive sound design. Similar in many ways to Razor and Loom, the fun here comes from mixing and matching various algorithms and effects to play with partials in unique ways that are otherwise impossible on other synths. Like many other Reason synths, Parsec has an incredible oscillator section, but does not offer much beyond that besides a simple reverb and delay, and basic modulation. Given the Reason Rack environment, this is fine, as you can follow Parsec with any of the various effects available from Reason.
Each oscillator is broken down into two sections, a generator followed by two modifiers. You can also bypass the second generator and apply four modifiers to the first generator if you please. Each generator offers over a dozen oscillator types including a couple dozen wavetables. The generators have one main control for morphing the shape as well as some basic filtering for tone shaping. Each of the different oscillator types creates a wide spectrum of partials and tones, some of my favorites include string, sparse, inharmonic, and ratio.
The modifiers are where things get really interesting. Because this is additive synthesis, all the generators are created with a series of sine waves, this also means that the modifiers are applying further processing to the values of these sine waves. This gives an incredibly clean and sterile sound, but also allows you to do things that are nearly impossible with DSP.
Again there are over two dozen modifier types, each of which alters the partials of the generator in wildly different ways. Many of them are filters, reducing the volume of selected partial ranges, some apply motion, and others move the frequency of the partials around to create new timbres. Each modifier has two controls further increasing what you can do to the sound. I wont be going through each modifier, but I’d like to touch on some of my favorites
Ensemble 1: This effect echoes and fades partials to create a granular unison effect. With the right settings it creates random drips as the partials fade in and out
Body Wide and Narrow: these modifiers seem to be filtering various partials, the main control cycles through different filter curves creating lots of spectral motion.
Body Sweep: This is an alternate version of wide and narrow that doesn’t morph between shapes, but lets you change the over all frequency of the spectral curve
Center Freq: Pushes all partials towards a target frequency
Harmonic Stretch: Spreads all partials apart
Filter Curve: Allows you to draw a custom spectral curve for filtering
Pitch Curve: Allows you to draw a custom curve that shifts each partial’s frequency
Partial Envelopes: Allows you to draw a curve that defines the attack/decay time of various partials, great for physical modeling
Audio In: Basically treats Parsec like a vocoder, perfect for endless experimentation and transforming your sound design.
Being able to combine and stack these various engines and modifiers is a blast, there’s more options than Loom, but you can’t stack nearly as many. I’d love to see parsec but with 8 or even more modifier slots to really get into some crazy design territory. There’s enough basic modulation built in to move things around, but an MSEG would be awesome here. As for sounds, I typically reach for Parsec when I want crazy alien sounds, the potential is pretty wild with this one, it can be great for basses and plucks, and ofcourse pads, but it’s so hard to resist making insane Sci-Fi sounds with this one. In some ways, when you look at the modifiers and generators, Parsec is like a precursor to Zebralette 3, and makes me really look forward to what we’ll get from Zebra 3. Even then, each has their own sound and unique set of modifiers and generator types, so I don’t think either can be replaced. Additive synthesis is one of the most interesting and unique creation tools in my opinion, it’s difficult to wrangle in, but really is capable of some wild sounds.