[MBTC]

Thanks for the comprehensive feedback, very much appreciated. I think Sylenth1 is a great synth too, it's just that to my ears (and for the types of sounds I prefer), this one seems to provide a much simpler path to producing over-the-top good sounds (and that's saying a lot since Sylenth1 was dead easy to program). There were certain categories of sounds I just couldn't seem to create right in Sylenth1... Some of the presets were great, but some things were odd about it, like phaser characteristic seemed to have a profile signature sound you couldn't escape (not flexible enough), and some other things seemed odd. Most importantly, if you had a mix that was not quite perfect, Sylenth1 did not seem to want to cut through with its sounds as much, and Dune does? Reminds me very much of the Virus which was always prominent in the mix.

I do find the mod matrix a little bit limiting as you said, it does not feel as flexible as something like Zebra2, but despite my love for Zebra2 this thing just seems to sound better, and I mean by orders of magnitude.

I have not yet purchased it, but I almost surely will. It just seems to be a factory for good patches, at least with my programming style. I love the UI. At $139 I can't go wrong.

Thanks for the comment about the INIT patch as well, I figured that one out a little later as I browsed banks.

Updated side note: I had never tried Hyrda so it's hard for me to comment there.