Ignite VST has released Heat Up 2.
Heat Up 2 has been designed from the ground up with the Urban music producer in mind.
Heat Up 2 comes with a 20GB library including 300 instruments and 400 presets. The library covers a wide range of categories such as: bass, bells, brass, choirs, drum kits, gated instruments, hits, keys, leads, organs, pads, plucks, strings, synths, guitars, harps, vinyl sound, chimes atmospheric pads & more.
All the sounds have been recorded in 24-bit audio / 44.100Hz. Heat Up 2 comes with many effects such as overdrive, distortion, reverb, delay, flanger chorus, phaser, gater, sequencer and much more built in, helping the user to sculpt the sounds.
Ignite VST has designed the layout to be simple to use, so a user does not get overwhelmed with features on the main screen. Only the most necessary controls are shown. Deeper sound sculpting features are placed in the LCD screen and only a mouse click away when a user needs them.
Features:

• Envelope Controlled Filter Section with High pass & low pass filter, ADSR envelope, resonance & mix controls.
• Reverb with Room size, damping, width & mix controls.
• Delay with Speed, feedback, mix, sync to host tempo and ping pong mode.
• Flanger Chorus with Rate, depth, pre-delay & mix control.
• Master Section with Gain, pan, ADSR & LED level meter.
• Keyboard with Pitch, mod wheel, mono, polyphony & portamento modes.
• Sequencer:
  • The Sequencer is a unique combination of step sequencer and arpeggiator with note length control, speed & steps control.
  • Load/save custom sequencer presets. Heat Up 2 also comes with pre-made presets such as Arps, Mellows, Chords & more.
• Parametric Equalizer:
  • Built in 3 band EQ with bandwidth controls. Simple and precise EQ to further shape your sound.
• Instrument Browser:
  • Easy to access instrument browser, Accessible from any page of the main screen. The Instruments are sorted by expansion packs and categories.
  • Instrument Categories and Presets can be created by the User.
• Built in Gater:
  • Create your custom gated sounds with the built in gater and get the best out of it with features like smooth, steps and speed.
• Built in Effects:
  • Overdrive, distortion, ring modulation, stereo enhancer, phaser, tremolo.
  • The Ignite "Stereo shaker" makes your sound jump from the left speaker to the right speaker every a key gets triggered.
• Atmosphere Layers:
  • Layer your Instrument with FX-Layers like Vinyl, Chimes, Tape-Sound, Wind, Rain & more to give Instruments a unique Character. Let your Pads or Strings sound more Athmospheric or give your Instruments a Vintage touch with this unique feature.
• Unique Customization: The look of Heat Up 2 can be customized with one of the 28 included skins, the LCD screen colour can be customized seamlessly by the user.
  • The user can switch between the Vector keyboard or 3D keyboard. The Vector keyboard gives much greater visual feedback.
  • In-Engine routing for the modulation wheel to control the filter cutoff, filter depth, volume, distortion, overdrive, reverb, delay, chorus & tremolo.
  • Factory Library:
    • 300 Instruments: Arp & Sequences, bass, bells, brass, choirs, drum kits, gated instruments, hits, keys, leads, organs, pads, plucks, strings, synths, guitars, harps, vinyl sound, chimes atmospheric pads & many more.

Price: $149.00.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6WtVjKWvZA

Larry, you know, I will never, ever, ever buy another compressor or EQ or reverb. Or synth for that matter.

That said, the walk-through on this is very inspiring. It looks like about the easiest synth to use to get pretty hip, contemporary sounds.

I wouldn't put this anywhere near what can be done with Omnisphere, or have the breadth of landscape of sounds like Kontakt.

But for a quick "grab a sound you're potentially imagining in your head", this might be a great synth to have in the arsenal.

Definitely contemplating this one. I thought I was saturated with synths. This one has enticed me.

This group has done a great job of putting the options in logical, understandable controls. Very nice.

Looks a lot like Nexus

gustabo
Looks a lot like Nexus

Agreed. It does indeed look like Nexus 2. I just checked that out. Very cool sounds in Nexus 2. That one is on the pricey side, but obviously great.

For $149 this Heat Up 2 has my keen interest - especially with the way they've designed the controls to be understandable. I agree there are quite a few parallels with the Nexus design.

Someday I can dream about acquiring a complete $3,500 Nexus 2. Jeez that's expensive! For me, Nexus 2 would be way after I win the lottery.

Mulling Heat Up 2.