When I first heard of Reaktor,it was related to praise for the sampler in Reaktor, its called Transformator. At first I only bought the sampler part, "what the fuck do I need another synthesizer for?" Please understand my house is a vintage synthesizer graveyard, they're everywhere. So I got Transformator, which is Reaktor with samples only. I soon realized I needed the FULL Reaktor, and I started upgrading.

Have you ever had your life MODULATED by a synthesizer? I'm talking about TIME as well as MONEY is no object, just caught up in a flow of noise that is totalistic. So much so that you don't come out, except to eat and shit, and the rest of the time you're wrapped up in hundreds of knobs and noises and echoes... FULL TIME. No time to even make songs or listenable demos, just pure rhythmic noise gyrating and flowing and never stopping, just changing endlessly as you twiddle the knobs. Its totally addictive.

Now I'm over $1000 deep into this monster. Its my life. Its all I want to fuck with. I've been doing it for over 3 years, but now its accelerating. I just bought a whole new system just so I can stay up with the latest Reaktor versions.

Most people use it as a VST plug-in in an audio-midi recording program, like an effect. Not me, I use it STAND ALONE. That means Reaktor IS the song, as opposed to IN the song. The peculiar percolation is the band, and I am the game show host from hell.

When I got Transformator 2.0, the minimum was 120mhz 32RAM. Now its at least 10 times that. I am not an upgrade person, I like my Win98SE setups just fine. But Reaktor expanded into XP, they have no choice really. I got an XP rig to run the new Reaktor on, the thing is, now the old Reaktor runs better, too.

If you're thinking having your life swallowed up by a synthesizer means you know anything about it, you're wrong... real wrong. I haven't got a clue what this machine is doing half the time. I've only scratched the surface. Reaktor gives one the option of building a synthesizer, module by module, and wiring it up totally customized. I've never done that yet, I'm not even close to being able to handle what they've created, much less wire up my own. But I also was the one who said, "what the fuck do I need another synthesizer for?"

well, I guess this is the end of the line for my career as a keyboard guy playing for people...

it looks like I'll just be tweaking knobs and editing audio from now on... I can't really think in terms of entertainment anymore... now the machine is the infommercial and I'm the slave technician...