I am new to the synth scene. I have Fruity Loops and it is the only sequencer I have used. I am not familiar with all of the classic synths. Fruity Loops seems to have software versions of many of them. So someone please help me find the synth that I have in mind.

I love the way "airy" synths sound. Such as at the beginning of "Crazy" by Seal, and "A Warm Place" by NIN, and many other track on The Downward Spiral.

How can I achieve these sounds in Fruity Loop with what it came with, or any other sof t synths that I could use.

Thanks

Do you mean like strings?

If so, try Cheezemachine or the like.
Lotsa synths can do strings.
Search the KVR database for strings.

Hi,

I think that 'Crazy' has a lot of Roland Juno synths on it. If this is the case, maybe try Linplug Alpha Free (or Free Alpha - whatever it's called).

For NIN type stuff, I think Crystal is good. I think a lot of the sounds on that are from a Sequential Prophet VS. This was a digital synth that one could cross-fade between four different oscillator waveforms. Crystal can do something like this (actually, it's slightly different) to get some of the sounds. (I'm assuming the sounds you're talking about feature heavily in both 'A Warm Place' and 'Hurt'.)

For "breathy" check out BigTick's Angelina or NuSoftIng's newly-released Astrobelt. Both are worth the money (though Astrobelt moreso than Angelina, IMHO).

Angelina does the airy vocal pad thing very well

Angelina and/or Ethereal.

Doug

Angelina can do the 'airy' thing well, the factory patches don't show it off but some of the free banks here and on Ticks site are more along those lines.

You might want to check out the MHC SpaceSynth, it can do airy-trippy as well.

Crystal is a good all-rounder for interesting sounds, some of which have a good high end. Rhino can do it as well but Crystal is free (I use them both - A LOT).

Also worth checking out is GalactiX, which is free and can get a pseudo D-50-ish sound with a little tweaking:

http://www.smartelectronix.com/~alex/

Thanks, you guys seem to have nailed what I wanted, and yes ianscott111, I meant the synths on "A Warm Place" and "Hurt"

Hi sumpm,

synths with two filters are useful, so one can process traditional oscillators (start with a triangle waveform or something not so rich in harmonics) and the other - I suggest a HP - will take care of only noise, if you have such waveforms at your disposal

then you can control the filters separately
for instance some modulation on the HP filter (the one that processes the noise) like a tremolo or a envelope for the cutoff could be a good start


I've done a lot of similar sounds in z3ta+, but I think you have a broad choice here, also in the freeware scenario

"A Warm Place" is a great track!
By the way, it seems that soon we'll have a new NIN record...

ciao
Francesco

Huh, I thought NIN was done.

great topic sumpm, thanks to your question i now have some cool vsts.

btw i think "a warm place" (one of my fave songs, such a lovely feeling to it).. i think it is all done with guitar and filtering, plus some other stuff of course. man i wish i could watch reznor work.

The closest I every got to that sound was using FL Studio. I used a parametric eq to make a highly resonant bandpass filter on some white noise. Then pumped that through a big reverb with a very slow phasor. Smart Electronix' "Supaphaser" works well for this. Layer that mess with a thick, detuned stack of 3xOsc sawtooths. Download 'Celeste' in LoopTalk's dashboard contest thread if you want to hear it.

Two suggestions here from someone who used to make NIN style music, first:
http://www.ele4music.com/synthedit/synthedit.html
There are quite a few here, but the ones that spring to mind are the OB-80, and the Alpha. The OC-ll is also very nice.
Second:
http://www.sinte-virtual.com/evmsynths/
This line is 20 euros for all of them, plus updates and future developments in the line. I just ordered mine on the strength of Isis, the one that I recommend to you for your purposes. Some of these are great, and others are so-so, but I would have payed 20 e for Isis alone, and the new Prolog-R which is loverly!
And then of course there is Superwave P8 .... this one is loved by so many that people are probably sick of hearing about it, but seriously; it is really good. You can get it here for free: http://home.btconnect.com/christopherg/main.htm
I would also highly recommend FreeAlpha by LinPlug, and if you like it, then go for the Shareware version, or better yet get DeltaIII or Albino. Two of the best synths in the world.
Chrrz,dood. Hope that this is not too much info too soon.

Quote:

Smart Electronix' "Supaphaser" works well for this.

It seems that you'd take advantage with a phaser featuring a sync fonction on LFO (remember the intro of "crazy"...)

"mobilohm" except ...

Quote:

Huh, I thought NIN was done.

http://www.theninhotline.net

sumpm wrote:

Huh, I thought NIN was done.

Nope

In the news section of this week's Kerrang, they say a new album should be out early in the new year (I'll believe that when I see it) with a more stripped down sound.

woolyloach wrote:

... You might want to check out the MHC SpaceSynth, it can do airy-trippy as well. ....

While I like the sound of Space Synth and Voxynth by MHC I don't use them any more. After having my ears blasted a couple of times by the "loud noise" bug I am a bit gun shy. I wonder if this problem was ever solved? If so, these are a great buy.

Robert

My SpaceSynth has been stable and well-behaved as of V1.5, but I still have a limiter on the channel just in case.. I should try removing it and seeing if I get blasted. That used to be an issue, yeah.

with mhc synths i get some clicking that seems to run off into time-based delay when i first load up a project and no other anomalies. it's not loud enough to be painful, course deafness runs in my family.

and with angelina -- because it has the multi-stage enevelope and the noise/breath osc, I sometimes use it to set up rhythm sort of variations on the Lorie Anderson 'hey superman' track from years ago -- though that was delay-based and this is envelope based but similar.