It's worth checking this out for the bank of presets alone. With over 4,000 to audition you might find yourself spending hours (like I did) auditioning every one of them. These presets really show off the sheer power of this instrument.
If you flip to the back of the rack, you will find three audio inputs that allow users to route external audio into Predator's filters, vocoder and internal effects. This is a huge feature as Predator has a total of 27 different filter types and 15 built in effects.
However there is a downside which may be considered a deal-breaker for some; it's a bit of a CPU hog, aparantly this is down to the oscillators using x32 oversampling. This CPU drain is evident on some of the patches which use the chord hold function. So don't be expecting to be able to load too many of these into your Reason projects without your computer struggling.
That being said, this is only the first commercial build of the Predator RE and the good folks behind Rob Papen have assured us that they are working on a few tweaks (including an oversampling menu) that will help with the high CPU usage. So we can be sure that future updates to this beast of a synth will greatly improve the performance and usability of the synth.
Obviously, I haven't gone into a whole lot of detail about the Predator RE (because that would take all day) but it's definitely worth checking out. Like all of the other REs in the Propellerhead shop it's available as a fully functional thirty day free trail. But be aware, trial licences don't get updates. So if the synth is updated during your trial period you won't get any of the CPU fixes or any other updates (until you decide to purchase the full licence).
At €99 it's currently the most expensive instrument in the Propellerhead shop but still, it's fairly cheaper than the VST version (€149). Think of that €99 euros as an investment because I can assure you that once you have this in your Reason rack you won't make another piece of music without it. Rob has really upped the game for Rack Extension developers with this one.
