I own both, rev2 16voice keyboard since release (twice, first one had really bad pots), and the AK (sold A4mk1) and A4mk2 (sold one then bought it again).
A4 can’t do RETRIG. There, I said it. It can do decent pads when you use the chorus and reverb… but on that, I yawn in its general direction
Rev2 filter is weird and throws a lot of people off quickly. But it behaves exactly as it should when you know the secret handshake and tear apart a chook and read its entrails.
It’s pads, string machines, morphing layers… genius level. And if you are a keyboard player, you will immediately love the keybed.
To those who think it’s not “analog” sounding, well I also have the Nord lead A1, and had the L4 too. The Nords sound amazing, the Rev2 sounds far superior. But you might want to check out the Nord LA1, since it’s 4 layers (like the A4) and cheaper than the Rev2.
I found the Rev2’s bi-timbral features annoying. It’s great for splits and layers, but fiddly as hell for letting a sequencer drive two sounds.
Quirks like:
you can’t use MIDI channels 14-16 for bi-timbral mode due to a bug in how it assigns sounds to MIDI channels
If you have audio cables in the 2nd-ary output it will always send the upper half of the voices out of those outputs even if you don’t want that for a particular patch (so sometimes you can lose half a chord)
Bi-timbrality is a feature of a single patch, not two independent patches, so you have to configure all your combinations as individual patches (thankfully you get a lot of memory slots)
local off blocks the knobs from controlking the stnth unless you loop the MIDI back to the synth.
Also, for me, the screen was too hard to read.
I sold mine because these kept on frustrating me. I really miss its sound, depth, and keyboard. I often daydream of getting another.
In contrast, the A4mkkii I got to sorta-replace the Rev2 has been a joy as the core synth in my collection. It’s very different tonally and has different strengths and weaknesses feature-wise, but for me it’s more usedul.
If you’re wanting bass, btw, REV2 can do bass. You can do unison voices (that’s stacking them), add a bit of slop, detune the oscillators, and apply the 4 LFO’s to various things to give it motion. Then you do that in voice B, and layer them.
Here’s my attempt at a Reese bass. It also has a melody in there that is using filters for sound generation (as opposed to oscillators). There’s just a whole lot of hacks you can do with it that can make it fun if you’re into sound design.
OTOH Behringer has quite a few mono or bitimbral synths that sound REALLY good, including Model 15, K2 and Proton. I have the Model 15 and it’s a lot of fun. You can get 4 mono synths for the price of an A4 or a Rev2
I think it can do pretty much anything an analog synth can do. Its engine is so feature packed that there’s little stopping you. But I’m also more of a simpleton when it comes to these things. A4 is probably the same, but you have to work with the four voice limit and it takes longer to make a patch sound “fat” or impressive imo.
