Some things in life are just so easy to describe with a simple word or two. A kitten for example, it’s cute and fluffy, and those words are evocative enough for you to picture what I’m referring to in your mind. Some things though, there are just not enough words to stir up such images in your brain to accurately describe something, be it two words or two hundred. But how exactly do you sum up something that’s so gentle, so smooth, yet so powerful and brutal all at the same time? Big Tick really had a major decision on his hands when he created the beast called Rhino, because just that one word, Rhino, so accurately described the synth, yet it does not. I supposed he could have called it ‘The Super Strong, Yet Gentle Rhino’, but that makes it a bit difficult for the public to swallow. Yet Rhino is bold, powerful, and beastly, yet it’s lilting, gracious, and smooth, and it’s here to pack a punch or caress away your sorrows in your music.
How can Rhino be all this, you ask? Let’s read ahead and take a look.
Behind the Curtains
Deep within every powerful synth lie its oscillators and its filters. Rhino is no lightweight providing 6 oscillator slots, and the inclusion of 100+ waveforms with the possibility to import your own, and 2 multimode filters with 6 filter types.
Looking into each of the oscillator sections, editing is fairly straightforward with its large multi breakpoint windows. Each oscillator has been given 4 envelope windows to do your thing with a level, waveshaping, pitch and phase areas.
You also have access to 8 velocity tracking curves to control such things as envelope time, how much waveshaping affects the oscillator, control over the rate of the waveshaping, pitch envelope time and level, initial phase of the oscillator, and frequency modulation control. On top of this, you also have two aftertouch curves that manipulate the amount of the waveshaping or frequency modulation. Last, but not least, there are also global tracking curves to allow you to apply vibrato to all the oscillators together evenly, if you so choose.
The waveshaper is a beautiful tool that affords you greater control and manipulation abilities over your complex waveform. Seeing it in action is so much easier than trying to describe it with mere words, as it is fairly difficult to do.
Even after you tire of the waveforms that are offered, you can easily import your own. Desire a little FM synthesis action? Import DX7 patches directly into the Banks page. Want more control over your oscillators? An additive generator is an option with 64 partials at your disposal in the user-defined section.
The filter modes are not any less endowed than the oscillators are. You’re given 6 filter types of lowpass, highpass, bandpass, notch, analog lowpass and analog highpass. The filter envelopes function just like their oscillator envelope counterparts with multi breakpoint envelopes as well. You are also given 4 tracking curves such as cutoff level, cutoff time, resonance control and pan control.
Even deeper, Rhino presents you with a full featured step sequencer that allows you to control pitch, velocity and step length, with speed control that draws off of your host tempo. Want to add more sugar to that spice? You can also randomize the step sequencer for more interesting sequences.
Onto the last page, we have a total of 17 effects that cover the gamut from delays, panners, chorus, comb filters, flangers, ensembles, phasers, reverbs, EQ, overdrive and more. You have the option to use any of these effects in serial or parallel, which is a very cool feature.
Out of breathe yet? All of this is brought together with a full modulation matrix that’s basically an FM synthesizer with the columns being carriers and the rows being modulators. You have access to all 6 oscillators and two ring modulators. You can control how much you wish to feed the filters levels with each oscillator, or you can simply route the oscillators directly out on a per oscillator basis.
Another welcome feature for the MIDI control freak is the option of MIDI Learn. It’s even possible to allocate up to 16 different parameters to a single control within the interface. Yes, that is not a typo folks, I said up to 16 parameters. Feel free to pick your jaw back up now.
If all this control doesn’t already leave your head spinning, there’s still more. Even if you don’t like the look of Rhino, there are several ‘skins’ available for you to download and enjoy, but personally, I like the gray and blue interface best myself.
Feeling weak in the knees yet from all this power? No need to be, as Rhino gives you plenty to start your sonic exploration with 700+ presets that are available right off of Big Tick’s website.
In Use
As powerful and flexible as Rhino is, all of these features can be a little overwhelming to the beginner. Fear not fellow muso, as Rhino is made very accessible to the beginner and experienced sound designer alike. The Banks page comes up first upon launch, and gives you access to more common parameters right there at your finger tips, and don’t leave you to go digging for aural manipulation.
One of the coolest, and most useful features most synths don’t provide is a large comment section that can give you advice on what you can do with the patch if the patch designer wrote something in for you. If only other developers were so thoughtful with providing this type of feature to help you along.
Of course, behind every great synth, there are great sound designers, and Rhino will not leave you wanting. More often than not, while I was flipping through banks, the sounds that made me smile the most had Daniel Maurer’s name emblazoned in the author’s box. Big Tick also has his fair share of his own patch creations, which do a fine job of showcasing the synths’ capabilities, and I enjoyed them very much.
I was also amazed at the breadth and depth of the sound design with this synth as well. Where a lot of synths are ‘one trick ponies’, Rhino really delivered at all levels. From massive walls of percolating sounds, to loops of sonic frenzy, to searing leads, to vintage keys, Rhino delivers a powerful auditory blow. For those who have always wanted that ‘hardware’ signature sound, Rhino has it, and its only shortfall is by not offering you bog standard pianos, which you can easily pick up elsewhere.
Of course, we can talk all day about a synth, but how does it sound, you ask? Give a listen to the patch called In The Forest for a soft, soothing trip. Do you wonder what the DX imports can sound like? Listen to the patch DX Shimmer Curious about how those electro sequences combine that are scattered throughout the banks? Listen to the combination of the Duh Duh patches to get into the groove. All of these examples were done with no external effects to give you an idea what Rhino is initially capable of. Add a dash of EQ, a smidgen of chorus, and a sprig of distortion, cook until well done, and Rhino is ready to be served up fresh with your musical meal.
With all this adoration, there is the Achilles’ heal in this entire production, and that’s the CPU usage. I can easily hit 50-60% CPU moving from one 6 note chord to another 6 note chord on my 2.53ghz Intel. Considering the massive feature set that Rhino gives you, there should be no wonder as to why the load can be so high. With many hosts now sporting ‘Freeze’ control, and considering you can always bounce down your tracks yourself anyway, it’s merely an inconvenience. I’d rather have this mass of control and huge wall of sound and have to bounce down than to live without our beloved Rhino in its current form.
Another thing I found a bit fiddly was the bank implementation. If you select from the drop down Bank box, the bank that’s loaded does not recall automatically in your song after you have saved and reloaded your song. You must have the Internal Bank selected, then hit the Load Bank button, select the bank you want, and then the functionality will work properly. Big Tick says this will be more straightforward in a future update though, and I look forward to it.
Summary
For the people out there who like the thick, evolving soundscapes and don’t have the wallet substantial enough to buy Atmosphere, or even the next level of a Korg Triton/Trinity/etc, Rhino is the ‘Evolving Soundscape’ rival of the industry. It honestly feels good to compare a hardware synth that costs several hundred, if not several thousand dollars more against this powerful synth, even with its mere 100 Euro price tag.
Of course, no synth is all things to all people. Rhino does present a very digital “razor’s edge” that slices very well, and that’s either something that’s very much your bag, or very much not. Considering there’s a full-featured demo, there are very few excuses for you not to check it out for yourself.
Bottom line, Rhino is what Atmosphere should have been in means of sonic control in the software world, and is offered at a pittance of the asking price. If you love Atmosphere or those Korg workstations, then do yourself a favor and check out Rhino. You’ll be glad you did.
Pros: Excellent pad machine, great ‘bread and butter’ type sounds.
Cons: Can be brutal on the CPU, not the easiest synth to learn for the beginner.
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