Does any other VST sound as good as Sylenth?

[Rod Staples]

I have sylenth1 and Virus TI. I would certainly say that I would feel content to have Sylenth and not have the Virus TI, but I wouldn't say it sounded better. Sylenth1 can do the same job as a virus and do it well, but the Virus is one hell of a synth and Sylenth would need a lot of feature added to come close.

[outrage71]

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I have sylenth1 and Virus TI. I would certainly say that I would feel content to have Sylenth and not have the Virus TI, but I wouldn't say it sounded better. Sylenth1 can do the same job as a virus and do it well, but the Virus is one hell of a synth and Sylenth would need a lot of feature added to come close.

Hi my friend!
I recently had the pleasure to discover an amazing Vsti or actually 2. - completely free b t w. It's called Endorphin and has been designed by JS Synthese http://www.js-synthese.de/ (http://www.js-synthese.de/). Endorphin 2 is more or less an effort to copy abilities from the Virus Ti - as well as by providing samplewaves from TI and adding SF2 support with supplied soundfonts from amoung other syths the T1 - i o w - the SF2 is modifyable and almost funktion as an extra oscillator. Then there is Endorphin which is more like an soundbank-synth with additional drumkit-samples.

Both these instruments have SF2 support, fat sound, genious soundengine - which I offen miss with VSTi's so far - with exeptions like ImpOSCAR, Sylenth, Pro 53, Nexus, Korg Legacy Collection, Native Instruments Reaktor and a few others. You really can feel the "punch" in the sounds and responding dynamics.

Best Regards

[ProductBE]

So people are agreeing that Sylenth1 is better than a Virus?

Yes, and you have the added bonus of it being a native soft synth that's extremely CPU efficient so you can run many instances.

So it seems to me than there's no difference between digital hardware, DSP chips, and VSTs, it's all still 1s and 0s. If Sylenth1 can sound better than Virus, then all that hype coming from the new hardware digital synths like Blofeld, Virus Ti, Novation junk, Roland SH, etc... all of them talk about how amazing their analog modelling technology is.

Sylenth1 should prove it's all a buncha crap. Hardware means nothing. If Blofeld sounds great, if Novation stuff sounds great, it's not because they are hardware synths. The quality lies in the programming. If the quality lies in the programming, there's no point in developing or buying an expensive hardware digital synth. Digital hardware synths might as well be overpriced VSTs in a box.

This proves that if you're going to buy a hardware synth you better spend that money on true analog unless you are dieing to have the specific sound of an analog-modelling hardware.

Digital is digital, 1&0's. It is like when someone buys a £100 HDMI cable or a £15 USB cable, why, so the 1 + 0, are better quality

Are people really that stupid, don't they stop for a minute and say, hang on.

It is all in the code, these synths are usually made from off-the-shelf parts from china. Like a DVD player, look at the quailty of decoding when they first came out, look at it now. The differance between the £250 top spec DVD from years ago, whould be shot dead by a £30 DivX DVD today -technology is moving on. And code evolves to, we backward engineer on the shoulders of giants.

[Architeuthis]

every synth can sound good if you know what you're doing.

I think this statement is true for digital hardware synths just because of the skilled programmers behind them. However, a lot of people just haven't done enough comparison between synths to realize some VSTs just have a crappy sound. Yeah, you could add effects and EQing and all that jazz to make it sound better, but there's some things effects can never replace.

[beej]

Digital is digital, 1&0's.

Yes, and there's clearly no difference between a clueless newbie coder writing a filter algorithm, compared to a skilled DSP designer who has researched and modelled multiple filter designs, knows the electronics and the maths and optimisation tricks involved.

It's all just 0's and 1s - can't possibly be any difference. And all software synths obviously sound the same, after all, they're all using just 0s and 1s...



(Can't say Synlenth does much for me personally. It sounds Ok and there's some decent patches, but there's something about it I just don't like, can't put my finger on it...)

[DevonB]

This proves that if you're going to buy a hardware synth you better spend that money on true analog unless you are dieing to have the specific sound of an analog-modelling hardware.

Digital is digital, 1&0's. It is like when someone buys a £100 HDMI cable or a £15 USB cable, why, so the 1 + 0, are better quality

They are better quality if they don't introduce too much insertion loss and/or degrade the quality of the signal. Digital on copper or fiber optic can still suffer from signal strength loss and cause errors in the signal. I've seen it on fiber channel switches where the packet is corrupted from damaged cables, or cables that has broken down over time. For example, I remember one instance where a customer had the fiber cable up in the plenum, but it was hanging over a gap, swinging back and force because the AC was blowing on it. Over time, the stress broke down the cable, and the logs on the fiber channel switch showed millions of errors. Yes, it was just sending 0's and 1's, but the cable couldn't reliably transmit the light without too much dB signal strenght loss.

The faster the data rate, the less tollerance for signal loss. If I recall correctly, 1Gb/sec fiber can take up to 9-11dB loss, whereas 2Gb/sec can only tollerate 5-6dB loss. Add that every patch point "usually" introduces 0.5dB insertion loss of signal, and your light budget starts to decrease before becoming either marginal, or completely unusable.

The whole 0's and 1's theory sounds really good, but there is more to it with cabling.

Devon

[Architeuthis]

Yes, and there's clearly no difference between a clueless newbie coder writing a filter algorithm, compared to a skilled DSP designer who has researched and modelled multiple filter designs, knows the electronics and the maths and optimisation tricks involved.

It's all just 0's and 1s - can't possibly be any difference. And all software synths obviously sound the same, after all, they're all using just 0s and 1s...

Yes, and any developer of a hardware synth is magically better than any developer of a software synth.



My point is that it's all 1s and 0s. I'm not going to spend a pretty penny on a digital synth when I could get the real thing, true analog, and no software or hardware can replace that.

[DevonB]

(Can't say Synlenth does much for me personally. It sounds Ok and there'ssome decent patches, but there's something about it I just don't like, can't put my finger on it...)

If I had to guess, it's the fact that you have to stack so many oscillators together to get a 'huge' sound. While I like the sound personally, you might not like the impurity of so many detuning waveforms stacked together? Yes? No?

Devon

[ProductBE]

Digital is digital, 1&0's.

Yes, and there's clearly no difference between a clueless newbie coder writing a filter algorithm, compared to a skilled DSP designer who has researched and modelled multiple filter designs, knows the electronics and the maths and optimisation tricks involved.

It's all just 0's and 1s - can't possibly be any difference. And all software synths obviously sound the same, after all, they're all using just 0s and 1s...



(Can't say Synlenth does much for me personally. It sounds Ok and there's some decent patches, but there's something about it I just don't like, can't put my finger on it...)

I said that it's all in the code, see what you did there, took a couple of paragraphs and cut it down to a few words... just to make the same point.

But also good coders work in circle's, and for big companies, may be a few Genius sound designers working alone, but that is rare, collective knowledge is better - mostly that world is a bunch of stoned geeks cuttin-n-pastin each other - sound is simple - it ain't rocket science, and rocket science isn't even rocket science now a days - kids build rockets for hobbies. The truely skilled people are actually getting paid to do something of substance - shall I work on the first real quantum computer, or make a synth slightly better than that one. Maybe a few people at Cern spend some time working on a hobby of building a synth, but most of them have a life.

[DevonB]

Yes, and any developer of a hardware synth is magically better than any developer of a software synth.



My point is that it's all 1s and 0s. I'm not going to spend a pretty penny on a digital synth when I could get the real thing, true analog, and no software or hardware can replace that.

Not 'magically' no, but yes, they do seem to be better. I'm certainly not speaking all the developers, but the guys coding for Korg, Roland, Novation, etc. I'm assuming have years of more experience coding sound engines, and they have the code base they've been using, some for decades now, with engineers who've been doing this for decades. While I have heard amazing things out of some new developers, as with anything, experience does count.

Anyone can code a VST and release it to the world. Anyone is not going to get a job at the big name hardware synth makers, and they'll only be hiring the best of the best.

So I wouldn't say hardware is 'better', but the quality control of what is released, is likely to be better based on experienced, like minded people working together to make a product.

Devon

[Madrayken]

Back on the original question: I'm interested to know what makes Sylenth so good to your ears compared to - say - Vaz, Zebra, Rhino or even Toxic III. Are you actually saying 'I like Sylenth's default presets'? There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but I'd be interested to know.

[Architeuthis]

So I wouldn't say hardware is 'better', but the quality control of what is released, is likely to be better based on experienced, like minded people working together to make a product.

Devon

You've missed the main point of this thread and decided to restate it. Most people are mentioning Zebra, Surge, Sylenth1, Helix, Korg Legacy, and a few others. There are very few synths that can compete with hardware quality.

I personally own Surge and I don't know why it's getting mentioned though.

Back on the original question: I'm interested to know what makes Sylenth so good to your ears compared to - say - Vaz, Zebra, Rhino or even Toxic III. Are you actually saying 'I like Sylenth's default presets'? There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but I'd be interested to know.

Do what I did, start comparing supersaw ability. Helix is the best with Sylenth in second place in terms of supersaw (IIRC Helix has a thick hard sound which I prefer over Syleth's warm sound.). As for filters, effects, etc. I have no idea which is better.

But yeah, compare the supersaw of Sylenth with any other synth besides Helix and you will hear the first difference in quality. Supersaw isn't just about creating a nice trance lead, but supersaw is used for basses, leads, pads, etc. That's why I say it's one good benchmark test.

[beej]

(Can't say Synlenth does much for me personally. It sounds Ok and there'ssome decent patches, but there's something about it I just don't like, can't put my finger on it...)

If I had to guess, it's the fact that you have to stack so many oscillators together to get a 'huge' sound. While I like the sound personally, you might not like the impurity of so many detuning waveforms stacked together? Yes? No?

No, not every preset has stacked oscillators. Just something about the character didn't click with me, I'm not sure what...

No matter, different strokes, and all that...

[aMUSEd]

At the moment two of the best sounding VSTi's for me are Poseidon and Rhino 2. Rhino 2's sound quality is incredible - don't know why but it just sounds good. Poseidon can just do so much with a sound in terms of exploring what it's about. It's so deep.

Sylenth doesn't really do much for me tbh - seems pretty standard soundwise.

[pdxindy]

Does any other VST sound as good as Sylenth?


Yes