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In case you didn't know, Parsec is now on sale for $59. At this price is it "worth" it? What exactly can Parsec do that things like Vecto, Quad, and others not do? Is the vocoder any good on Parsec? Or is Parsec only a glorified noise/fx machine?

https://shop.propellerheads.se/product/parsec/

Parsec is unique and awesome. I got it for $59 also, and I use it all the time.

I remember getting the Parsec and playing about with it a lot. Really liked it however it's not my first RE I would reach out for when creating.

Found it very easy to create new sounds, comes with loads of patches, I have mainly used it as background sounds.

This track heavily uses it, the Lead and bass are Predator's the rest (except drums) are Parsec..

This is my oft repeated take on Parsec. For a certain kind of sound (ethereal, sparkly, glassy) it is amazing. It fills a gap that none of the stock devices can fill. The downside is that it is not very versatile. If you're making a sort of "harder" style of music like dubstep or trap or whatever else, you may not find any use for it at all and then it's wasted money. If you're making new age atmospheric stuff, you'll only use Parsec and nothing else ever again (haha). I don't do new age but I find those flavors useful at times in some of my stuff. I'd highly recommend trialing or at least giving the sound demos a thorough vetting before buying. Amazing but limited means for any given user it can be either amazing or useless or somewhere in between.

On sale again!? Oh well, if you haven't got it worth a punt at this price. Certainly hit the TRY button

A big YES from me.

JNeffLind wrote:If you're making a sort of "harder" style of music like dubstep or trap or whatever else, you may not find any use for it at all and then it's wasted money.

I disagree, you haven't checked Parsec's formants? They can go hard as hell, if you support these with some sub you can get really devastating results. Parsec is very capable of grungy types of sounds.

of course it's worth.

Obligitory self-spam posting opportunity mode: engaged! Just wanted to back up my previous YES.



Made with 17 Parsecs and nothing else, even the drums. (Yes, 17. 12 Parsecs wasn't far enough )

I think it definitely "lends itself" toward atmospheric stuff... but really it can go in any direction you're headed, IMO.

Yeh total bargin at that price !

Majestik Monkey wrote:Yeh total bargin at that price !

It's a bargin at full price, at half price it's a no brainer.

Among what already has been said about Parsec, I would add that to my experience it also appears to be light on CPU and there is a decent amount of refill/sound banks for it out there...

I think Parsec is worth it for how unique it is. It creates sounds that absolutely can't be made with other Reason devices, but I also think it falls short at more traditional patches. I have trouble making Parsec sound "full" on it's own. I've never gotten an analog-sounding saw bass pluck, or a full supersaw chord stack that I prefer over something in Antidote or even Thor. but it's great for getting weird and creative.

Didn't this use to be $99 and they bumped the price?

Bought it today and I am impressed...it lends itself very well to the ambient sounds I'm looking for.....half price..get it!

It's a great synth. Sounds very unique, got a very nice "sheen" to it. It's also fun to mess around with and make weird patches. Pretty low on cpu too.

The full price is a bit high imo, but it's definitely worth the sale price.

Thanks everyone for the responses! A big issue/selling point of this is the built in vocoder. I did not get to try this out when I trialed it back at Parsec's launch, so does anyone have any info/feedback on the vocoder?

I was never super interested in Parsec, partly because I didn't really see a need for additive synthesis in my music, and partly because I wasn't a fan of the weird-looking UI.

I had never activated my trial period, but I did just this evening and oh my goodness... I was so inspired sitting down with it the first time just going through the presets, that this happened:

Soundcloud link

I think it's safe to say I'm buying this now.

Oh God yes Parsec is a must .....it is the strongest synth for Reason in my opinion!

Just picked it up yesterday It was on my wishlist for the longest time. It is a great sound design tool. Surprisingly not that heavy on CPU also.
If you are looking to create unique textures and sounds I would recommend it highly. you can always try it.

Skullture wrote:

JNeffLind wrote:If you're making a sort of "harder" style of music like dubstep or trap or whatever else, you may not find any use for it at all and then it's wasted money.

I disagree, you haven't checked Parsec's formants? They can go hard as hell, if you support these with some sub you can get really devastating results. Parsec is very capable of grungy types of sounds.

I'll have to take your word for it. In my experience those sounds come much easier in other devices and sound better whereas Parsec lends itself to what I described. But I'm not a sound design master, more of a preset guy actually. For me it's a question of best use. I could hammer in a nail with the handle of a screw driver, but I'd rather use a hammer. When it comes time to turn some screws, I'll be glad the screwdriver is available.

Personally, I always end up with the sparkly sounds that people already mentioned when doing my own patches with Parsec, but it definitely can cover more grounds than this. You will never have any CPU issues with this one and the UI design is quite good, which are 2 major things I like to mention. The approach to additive synthesis is also rather easy to understand, but also sometimes easy to make it sound odd/bad, so there is some randomness involved, for me at least.

I mainly use it for layering or background sounds or processed by Neutron or Polar for the most part, but if you look on the Soundcells patches for it, you will notice that Harald managed to get his signature sound also out of Parsec, so I use some of those also for more important elements in a track.

*Places tin foil hat on head*
Kinda strange timing to this sale. Why is only Parsec discounted? I dont know. Maybe jet fuel can melt steel beams.
*Takes off tin foil hat*

Parsec is cool. Because it gets a little harsh quite easily, I enjoy running it through Thor's filters.

I am definitely seeing that there is a lot of positive opinions of this synth, and so far it seems like everyone is in agreement that it is more of a top/high freq synth that can be fairly harsh.

But oddly, nobody has talked about it being a solid vocoder or not. Has anyone ever messed with its vocoder function? What do you think? What is it comparable to? Is there a software/hardware equivalent that you would compare it to?

I'm on the trial of it right now; I'm going to give the vocoding a try this weekend. Probably going to buy it regardless, given my earlier post in this thread, but I'll report back how the vocoder works out for me.