# ANA2 - hidden gem



## Sid Francis (Nov 20, 2021)

Hi folks

It somehow flew below my radar for a while but since Dune 3 is my new favorite I cast an eye on its competitors and this one really deserves attention. It is on black friday sale at the moment and perhaps you´d also like to complete your palette. No, it does NOT reinvent the wheel...but it rolls quite nicely.... 









ANA 2


Completely redesigned from the ground up, ANA returns to the scene stronger than ever Our highly anticipated launch is finally here! We have spent many thousands of hours rebuilding and redesign...




www.sonicacademy.com





Joshua Caspers turn on it: listen to the sound at 4.48: snappy snappy snappy 




And to show that it´s not only for the "I took pills and dance for 3 days now" faction:


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## Pier (Nov 21, 2021)

Sid Francis said:


> it´s not only for the "I took pills and dance for 3 days now" faction


LOL I feel attacked

(admittedly I haven't done that in almost 20 years)


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## GregSilver (Nov 21, 2021)

The Demo by Joshua is pretty nice, but i don't see any groundbreaking stuff that can't be achieved by my "arsenal" consisting of Synthmaster, Spire, Serum, Omni and Pigments (without any pills! )

The BF deal is indeed tempting....


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## Sid Francis (Nov 21, 2021)

That´s absolutely right. Therefore I said I does not invent anything new. BUT... I am the 
"wade-through-the presets-until you-are-inspired" type and here it does not last longer than 2 Minutes until I find something that I want to implement in my song. I found that this is by FAR the most important feature of a synth for me : not only 1200 presets (which a lot of them have) but 500 USABLE presets. And that highly depends on the taste of the developer. These are of my kind obviously.
But if you take a listen to the other expansions you might also think "where did I put that pill box again?"


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## Pier (Nov 21, 2021)

GregSilver said:


> The Demo by Joshua is pretty nice, but i don't see any groundbreaking stuff that can't be achieved by my "arsenal" consisting of Synthmaster, Spire, Serum, Omni and Pigments (without any pills! )
> 
> The BF deal is indeed tempting....


In terms of sound you're covered, but ANA2 has a very powerful sequencer if you're into that sort of thing.


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## GregSilver (Nov 21, 2021)

Sid Francis said:


> not only 1200 presets (which a lot of them have) but 500 USABLE presets


ok.... i'll check the Demo now. That's why I don't like Komplete Kontrol for example . Way too much uninspiring stuff to click through. 



Pier said:


> In terms of sound you're covered, but ANA2 has a very powerful sequencer if you're into that sort of thing.


I must confess I NEVER used a sequencer except for drums. I always programmed my sounds by midi.


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## Pier (Nov 21, 2021)

GregSilver said:


> I must confess I NEVER used a sequencer except for drums. I always programmed my sounds by midi.


Same... I only use sequencers of synths when making presets for my Mercury libraries.

With Bitwig's new probability stuff and creative/generative midi effects I have even less motivation to use anything inside a synth (eg: Pigment's sequencer).


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## Sid Francis (Nov 21, 2021)

That´s a point I forgot: I use arpeggiators quite often and ANA has got something special: you can set the scale of the steps so it won´t trigger wrong notes when you change chords. I missed that for long and will program some arpeggios myself i think.


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## Pier (Nov 21, 2021)

Sid Francis said:


> you can set the scale of the steps so it won´t trigger wrong notes when you change chords. I missed that for long and will program some arpeggios myself i think.


Yeah I've alway wondered why this isn't a universal feature found on all synths.


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## GregSilver (Nov 22, 2021)

Okay, I tried ANA2 and I am not convinced 100%. There are some nice presets in it, but for my taste it doesn't sound as good as the competitors. For WT i'll prefer Serum/Pigments and for VA Dune/Spire. The chord function is working nicely, same as the arp. 

But: Given the price during BF (50 EUR/ approx. 60 $) it's a pretty solid synth with tons of possibilities for sound design and worth consideration if you are just starting out and/or have a tight budget. For the regular price (160 EUR/ approx. 180 $) you'll get better alternatives.


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## Pier (Apr 12, 2022)

Pier said:


> Yeah I've alway wondered why this isn't a universal feature found on all synths.


Turns out Hive has this feature and I didn't know about it!

In the keyboard you can select a scale and a root note. Now all the sequences and arps will only fall into notes from the scale. You do this by right clicking on the little circles over the notes:






I never look at the keyboard view and completely missed that 😂


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## KEM (Apr 12, 2022)

ANA2 is awesome, my favorite band of all time Bring Me The Horizon used the preset “Slayer of Kings” for their track Kingslayer and it’s an absolute banger of a track, that alone got me to download the synth and I liked it instantly


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