...Not really jazzed about Rapture Pro-What Am I missing?

 
Am I missing some new functionality or workflow enhancements? Is it less buggy?
I'm usually an early upgrader and always buy full upgrade pkg. w/Sonar
but frankly I'm kind of nonplussed.
 
Not trolling, I love Sonar, just seems like  dim pro and rapture combined w/slightly better GUI and
apparently, after reading some posts possibly a resource hog.
 
Mel
P.S. just don't shoot me in the face.

So far, I think it shows great promise as what it was evidently intended as - an all-rounder, fire-this-up-first-and-it-will-likely-get-you-going-quickly kind of synth with a big library and a nicely designed interface that lets you use it how you want to - browsing presets, making quick tweaks and adjustments or going full deep dive. But it's held back from that, for me at least (and apparently others) by taking way, way too long to start up in the first place, and thus any project I use it in will take that long to load.
 
So since I was an early adopter on this one - I chose it over jumping on the intro price for Orbit, which I kind of regret now as I think I'd be getting more use out of the latter - I'm sure hoping they get that sorted out with a fix fairly quickly. The load time issue is pretty much a showstopper for me, and it's too bad as there is in fact a lot to like in there. But it needs some spit and polish for sure. 

Kamikaze, does it start up relatively quickly for you, or take a mysteriously long time to load?

Hey, thanks. Saw your similar post and replied in another thread. I guess we don't need two saying the same things... maybe this one can be more about features and general worthwhile-ness or lack thereof. Again, with the exception of this issue it seems like a solid synth with lots of potential!

RP has some issues, and Cakewalk is more than aware of them. If you're going from Rapture to Rapture Pro there's much less difference than going from Dimension Pro to Rapture Pro.
 
Rapture and Dim Pro were getting long in the tooth. I've had stability issues with Dimension Pro and I expect that at this point, they won't get fixed because they're too random. It looks to me like there were five main goals with RP:
 
1. Not have the artificial division between the two instruments.
2. Update to a more modern code base.
3. Not obsolete existing expansion packs so people could do everything with RP they did with Rapture and DP.
4. Make it easier to use in live performance, or for "live in the studio" fans
5. Provide a modern platform for future content.
 
Those all make sense, and I suspect when Cakewalk gets the tech issues sorted out, RP will be a "workhorse" kind of synth. I will say that playing with it has reminded me just how much good content there is between Rapture and Dim Pro.
 
The biggest roadblock may turn out to be finding out why performance varies so much according to different people. Some say it loads really fast, some say it's painfully slow. BobF's comment about how he sped up load times dramatically by excluding the content from his virus scanner goes to show that we'll probably have to figure out a new repertoire of system dos and don'ts for RP, just as we have to for SONAR and other Windows programs.

It is a REPLACEMENT for DimPro and Rapture.  It allows you to add 2 elements to already complex DimPro programs
 
It ADDs new content.  Many synth companies spend most of their resources on content, since that is where the money is after the engine is finished.  Hopefully Cake will be providing "teasers" of new content they can then sale, rinse and repeat.  Evergreen the synth,  until Rapture SuperPro comes out.  At the very least Cake should have a site where users could upload sounds/patches.  That would keep interest up.
 
It ADDs performance tricks, esp. w/ pads and the vector pad.
 
Hopefully they'll keep refining the performance aspect - I'd love to see something similar to Alchemy's Remix pad.  Another nod to Alchemy is expanding the engine.  I'd love to see wavetable sequencing, along w/ the wavetables, added.  And control, such as using the mod wheel to sweep through the table (I love using the FIZMO wavetable knob for that). I'd love to see some kind of visual editor for SFZ that you could open from RaptPro (that could be a nice stand alone product, too, for all those who hate programming in text).
 
I'm hoping it follows the new SONAR parameters, with frequent updates to keep it current and in the public's eye.
 
@
 
 

Doktor Avalanche
It was released too early. It probably needs another 3 months of service packs and then it will kick ass.

+1 Cake is really listening, taking in feedback.
 
Idea is really good.

AT

I'd love to see some kind of visual editor for SFZ that you could open from RaptPro (that could be a nice stand alone product, too, for all those who hate programming in text).
 
@
 

I would pay for a program like this. Seriously. This would open this program wide open!

Very early on I had a audio interface (it was called a sound card back then!) called Turtle Beach Pinnacle. It had an on board Kurzweil M1 synth on it that was programmable. It wasn't hard to program, if you knew what you were doing. If you didn't know,.it was difficult.

Several people made editors for programming the on board synth and charged money for it. At first I resisted buying. I mean I could teach myself to do it for free! I ended up buying the most expensive editor for the synth because it was also the best. I never regretted the purchase.

Same here. If we had a sfz file creator program with drop down menu style choices, this would help the user base create our own programs to share with other users. I would pay for this.