reFX Nexus 5 arrives on Black Friday, and the plugin will leave its rompler history behind for the first time and be a full-featured Synthesizer.
Nexus 5 is now officially released, and the features are confirmed.
It is now a full-fledged Synthesizer plugin with various synthesis options (VA, sampler, time stretcher, wavetable, retro, grain, cloud, and FM) and a fully accessible modular engine.
Besides the new GUI design and full access to the engine, it also offers a new bucket brigade delay emulation, particle reverb, vowel filter, rotary, pusher, and more. Retro is a new sampler engine that reduces the bit and sample rate per voice, giving you 80s-style sampler results.
Also, the information about the sound content is confirmed. Nexus 5 comes with more than 1,100 brand-new factory presets, giving you more than 5300 presets in the standard version to explore.
The developers promise that it covers all modern genres: EDM, Melodic Techno, House, Vintage Synths, Hip Hop, Lo-fi, Retrowave, Cyberpunk, Drum and Bass, Trance, and more!
reFX Nexus 5 is available now for a Black Friday/Christmas price of 199€ instead of 279€, and ships with 44.5GB of samples and 5352 presets.
The Value 10 with 64,1 GB of samples and 6795 presets costs 399€ instead of 499€, and the Complete bundle is 1999€ instead of 4599€. The latter gives you 273,4GB of samples and 31725 presets. It runs as a VST, VST3, AU, and AAX plugin on macOS (native Apple Silicon + Intel) and Windows.
Article From November 18, 2024
Nexus is the most comprehensive rompler plugin out there, with 30.000+ available presets, but also the most expensive. For the maxed version with 30.000+ sounds, you’ll have to pay 4599€, the price of a high-spec MacBook Pro M4 MAX or two Teenage Engineering OP-XY.
High price, full control? No, until a few years ago, you had minimal options for adjusting sounds. That changed with the Nexus 3 and later with the Nexus 4 more and more. With Nexus 4.5, they went further and made it to a full synth with editable oscillators, filters, etc.
reFX Nexus 5
In the latest newsletter, reFX announces the new version for Black Friday. The highlight will be that Nexus 5 removes its rompler clothes/chains and becomes a full-featured Synthesizer.
For the first time, you can design your own presets from scratch. This was previously only available to partner sound designers. In Nexus 5, anyone can create new sounds and build even their own expansions. This huge step forward will also please third-party sound designers and will open the third-party expansion market.
reFX promises that the plugin will have no more limits and that users will have full access to every function.
New Features
In addition to these openings, there will be new things to discover. According to the newsletter, Nexus 5 will have a newly designed UI and librarian that gives you full access to the sounds, layers + routings, synthesis, multi-FX, and more.
Up until now, the topic of synthesis has been very tight-lipped. In reFX Nexus 5, you can use the multi-synthesis engine entirely for the first time.
It’s not yet official, but a user on KVR Audio shared that you can work with virtual analog synthesis, wavetables, sampler with time-stretch, retro sampler, granular, cloud, and 4-operator FM.
reFX says in the newsletter that you can also upload your own samples for the first time. Then, you will find built-in modulation and multi-FX processors, including delay, reverb, vinylizer, and more.
As a bonus, reFX Nexus 5 will ship with an N2 Retro Mode that takes you back to the Nexus 2 days. It gives you the “old simplicity” of the Nexus 2 UI with the original remasted skin with the same colors and style.
The new version also includes many new sounds. Manuel Schleis, sound designer of reFX confirms that Nexus 5 will include 1100 new presets from the reFX sound designer team.
First Impression
Bravo, or should I shout, finally? Many producers and sound designers have long wanted this step from rompler to full-fledged synthesizer for Nexus. If the synthesis options etc. are right, then Nexus 5 can become a very exciting Synthesizer workstation.
It will be exciting to compare it to Omnisphere 2, Falcon 3, or HALion 7. All information will be published on November 29th on Black Friday.
reFX Nexus 5 will be available on Black Friday with special introductory upgrade pricing during the annual BF/Christmas Sale, depending on when the user bought the NEXUS license:
- before July 1st, 2024 (applies to customers who bought NEXUS1, NEXUS2, NEXUS3, or NEXUS4): $79
- between July 1st, 2024 and August 31st, 2024: $39
- on or after September 1st, 2024: Free
More information here: reFX
There are far better options available and there have been for a very long time (and a handful of them have already been expertly mentioned in this article, nice work SA). This bloatware has been overpriced and overrated for so long that I would simply say, not enough and it was always going to be too late.
Avenger has been kind of the Synth version of Nexus.
But both suffer from the issue that the expansions are simply too expensive (at least when you want more than just a couple).
It is great if refx opens for more parameter editing, as it is nice to be able to tweak the presets, turn them in to something else, if you have gotten the synth and some expansions.
But the main reason to get Nexus or Avenger is for the expansions. Sure the layering is nice, but that just takes too much to time to set up, if you are a producer and not a preset-designer. Perhaps a media composer that will need specific sounds that they can use for the media they are working on, and will need the same sound over and over again. But if you are designing sound for songs, the process i simply too complex, compared to just layering and sequencing in the DAW, using multiple synths or instances.
One synth feature that is mostly missing in most synths, though is the sample “warping”. Avenger has the same algorithms as Simpler in ableton, but when I tested that feature, it only seemed to be enabled for multisamples. Not like in simpler, where you just drop a sample, and you can play it time-stretched over the keys, and apply filter and envelope on it.
The only synth I have seen that is similar to Simpler, but 3rd party is CR8 from Waves, and that is a company many are not willing to support. It might be possible in serato sample, but that sofware is not designed like a synth to play, I don’t own it, and when watching videos I have not seen any that makes it clear that it can work in that way.
i don’t get the pricing? it should be the other way around,
all time NEXUS users should get the upgrade for free, or am i misunderstanding things over here?
before July 1st, 2024 (applies to customers who bought NEXUS1, NEXUS2, NEXUS3, or NEXUS4): $79
between July 1st, 2024 and August 31st, 2024: $39
on or after September 1st, 2024: Free
It’s correct how it’s written there: customers who bought it before July 1st, 2024, including existing customers of NEXUS 4, 3, 2, 1 pay $79. And it becomes cheaper if you bought Nexus 4 after the July 1st, and free if you bought just recently. It’s called a grace period. Why free? Development cost money or do you work for free? And if there are people using Nexus 2 or 3, for example, it’s fair offer to upgrade.
U-he has a superior upgrade policy.
sure, they are one of the best on the market
sure, they are one of the best on the market
Serato Sample will let you play samples (or sample segments) chromatically, if I recall correctly. I’ve barely used it since I picked it up a couple years ago, stem separation notwithstanding.
okay… DJ software vs Synthesizer 😉