Sonic Academy ANA V1.5 OUT NOW!

[xamido]

Bought it. I need something to replace sylenth. I get rid of sylenth since i already gave up with the development.

Have to add, i like the idea of the preview midi file.

How well does it hold up against sylenth ?

Gonna tweak it some more tonight. But from what i'm hearing now, it's actually quite close to sylenth (only tried the preset for now).

My main concern right now is only can they make the GUI a bit bigger, now everything looks a bit too small for me. I like big gui.

[Cyforce]

Finally bought it, and well after half hour playing around with it, hmm i'm pretty unsure what i should think about ANA.

On the one hand, "cute", easy to use, very focused on edm styled sounds. Normal osc + wav combination gives a little bit more flexibility.

On the other hand, the basic sound is kind of thin, the typical "ball effect" is missing, compared to Virus or even the small Blofeld, far away from them. And also a very cold basic sound.

And 1 or 2 bugs(i guess) making the current judgement from good to "hm just ok"
For example normal 4 pole filter, if filter type is off, and frequency set to 20khz its sounds normal like unfiltered - just as it should be.
But by just choicing 4 pole lp it sounds with a cutoff frequency of 20khz like a lp setted on 6khz or something, kind of strange...

So far for me as sounddesigner atm a little wrong-buy...

[GJK]

Finally bought it, and well after half hour playing around with it, hmm i'm pretty unsure what i should think about ANA.

On the one hand, "cute", easy to use, very focused on edm styled sounds. Normal osc + wav combination gives a little bit more flexibility.

On the other hand, the basic sound is kind of thin, the typical "ball effect" is missing, compared to Virus or even the small Blofeld, far away from them. And also a very cold basic sound.

And 1 or 2 bugs(i guess) making the current judgement from good to "hm just ok"
For example normal 4 pole filter, if filter type is off, and frequency set to 20khz its sounds normal like unfiltered - just as it should be.
But by just choicing 4 pole lp it sounds with a cutoff frequency of 20khz like a lp setted on 6khz or something, kind of strange...

So far for me as sounddesigner atm a little wrong-buy...

disappointing news.. maybe i should go with the zt3a upgrade to 2.0 that i have been putting off instead of waiting for this..

[Cyforce]

Finally bought it, and well after half hour playing around with it, hmm i'm pretty unsure what i should think about ANA.

On the one hand, "cute", easy to use, very focused on edm styled sounds. Normal osc + wav combination gives a little bit more flexibility.

On the other hand, the basic sound is kind of thin, the typical "ball effect" is missing, compared to Virus or even the small Blofeld, far away from them. And also a very cold basic sound.

And 1 or 2 bugs(i guess) making the current judgement from good to "hm just ok"
For example normal 4 pole filter, if filter type is off, and frequency set to 20khz its sounds normal like unfiltered - just as it should be.
But by just choicing 4 pole lp it sounds with a cutoff frequency of 20khz like a lp setted on 6khz or something, kind of strange...

So far for me as sounddesigner atm a little wrong-buy...

disappointing news.. maybe i should go with the zt3a upgrade to 2.0 that i have been putting off instead of waiting for this..

I would recommend get a Computer Music Mag or german BEAT issue, than you have Z3ta for free

Personally i'm now really kind of disapointing, at first i thinked "well i could make 1 or 2 soundsets for this box" but now i thinking "hm whats next on the soundset build list, z3ta or dune"

[juffi]

Is there actually a step-sequencer or arpeggiator included?

[HiEnergy]

Is there actually a step-sequencer or arpeggiator included?

No

[djanthonyw]

Finally bought it, and well after half hour playing around with it, hmm i'm pretty unsure what i should think about ANA.

On the one hand, "cute", easy to use, very focused on edm styled sounds. Normal osc + wav combination gives a little bit more flexibility.

On the other hand, the basic sound is kind of thin, the typical "ball effect" is missing, compared to Virus or even the small Blofeld, far away from them. And also a very cold basic sound.

And 1 or 2 bugs(i guess) making the current judgement from good to "hm just ok"
For example normal 4 pole filter, if filter type is off, and frequency set to 20khz its sounds normal like unfiltered - just as it should be.
But by just choicing 4 pole lp it sounds with a cutoff frequency of 20khz like a lp setted on 6khz or something, kind of strange...

So far for me as sounddesigner atm a little wrong-buy...

disappointing news.. maybe i should go with the zt3a upgrade to 2.0 that i have been putting off instead of waiting for this..

Disappointing news, how? I don't agree with Cyforce's opinion on the sound of ANA at all. Definitely not 'thin' as far as I'm concerned. I think it sounds like one of the best synths for drum programming.

Even the ANA generated kick on the audio demo is nice and full. A lot of people didn't think Sylenth sounds thin, but I would say it does compared to ANA because Sylenth isn't particularly beefy in the low mids.

As for the other synths mentioned... z3ta does sound great, but sorry, Dune is lacking high frequencies. It sounds muffled.

[Cyforce]

Well i can only say for myself, i'm a little bit disapointing on the sound.

Also if there are pcm's as additional soundsource, they didn't sounding soo good on low or high notes, maybe to short waves. You can hear the stretching too intense.

And the comparising to other synths, next to my desk stands a virus ti and blofeld. And on the harddrive are also the other named like dune or z3ta.
It's defintive far away from virus... very far.

How said, cute easy to use synth. But it's pretty clear, ANA can't mess with the big boys like zebra and massive, and specially not with the really big boys like virus.

[djanthonyw]

I definitely disagree, I've never like the sound of Zebra and never understood how people could even compare Zebra to something like a Virus... feature-wise, maybe, but Zebra sounds nothing like a Virus. Zebra's sound is very flat and sterile.

Anyway, I definitely think ANA's core sound (not the sample based section) compares to the Virus' sound quality, obviously not features, but I couldn't care less about features because sound is what's important.

http://soundcloud.com/philterino-1/soni ... -bladus-ex

^^^ download that demo (don't play it with soundcloud's crappy compression). It sounds amazing. Totally comparable sound quality wise to a Virus.

Also, don't forget that most digital hardware synths most likely run at 96k. Nords do and I'm pretty sure Virus do as well.

[Cyforce]

Short question - have you a virus on your desk?

Because if the is one softsynth out which can be seen as virus replacement it's zebra! Not because the quality sound, also because the flexibility.

And i bet my blofeld that ANA can't sound like a virus, for example like some sounds of this sequences:

http://soundcloud.com/cfa-sound/cfa-sou ... gy-virusti
For example the cold pad on 1:45, or the pluck on 2:45.

http://soundcloud.com/cfa-sound/demo-th ... 1-virus-ti
on 6:20

Just because a very simple reason the ANA can't do what Virus can do and sound...

[djanthonyw]

I do not have a virus anymore, I sold both the classic & powercore version, and my nord lead after I realized that certain soft synths sounded better and more usable.

Of course ANA can sound like a Virus, even the ES2 can:

http://soundcloud.com/klemsmusik/the-pr ... rogressive

http://soundcloud.com/p41music/es2-soundset-demo


At the end of the day someone can us ANA and make a song. They can say they used a Virus and no one will question it.

http://soundcloud.com/philterino-1/soni ... nth-trance

[Cyforce]

Hmm well, maybe (!!!) some programmed sounds are do-able on several synths the same. That would be true.

But see the big fact:
Virus has more options for sound-shaping as ANA. Alone the distortions inside, fm+ring more etc etc etc
And ES2 is with no doubt an all-time classic and a pure workhorse, but even the ES2 is "smaller" as ANA in cases of the final sound-output because there are no real fx included.

So as written above, you can program with different synths some sounds, which you can to with virus, blofeld, ana and some others. But this alone didn't mean that you can generally say "ANA is like a VirusTI" because you can make an both synths a benassi bass for example.

[djanthonyw]

Yes, well, I'm not debating features. I'm only saying that sound quality wise even ANA is comparable to a Virus (don't forget to run soft synths at 88.2 or 96k if they don't have oversampling).

I've never cared much for a bunch of extra features because most of the time sounds made with a bunch of obscure features aren't even really usable in a song context.

If someone does want both sound quality and features of a virus then I would say massive, rapture and z3ta can all pretty much get them there, but I really do think ANA has a great core sound quality that is easily comparable.

[4damind]

I heard a lot of sounds from Massive, Zebra, Sylenth where I would say only while listening "could be a Virus".
I also recreated some sounds from my Virus XL with Sylenth,Zebra, Dune, Massive and the difference was small. In a complete track nobody could tell the difference and yes, that's why so many using this days Zebra, Massive, Sylenth,...
And to be honest, rarely guys using all of the features of all synth. I think that 90% of the sounds are standard stuff so they can be easy recreated with a lot of plug-ins with similar features.

"Ana" can sound close but it remembers me more to the Novation V-Station when only using 2 oscillators. A bit more "round" sound (you can name it "more analog") instead of the rough sound of the Virus. The additional features giving enough options ("attack" and "noise" oscillator) to make "Ana" sounding completely different. Soundwise and from the features and easy handling it's IMO the best VA synth plug-in this time with the focus to a more clean "Virus like" sound. Trance and EDM guys will love it.

Btw. hopefully they fixing this mono legato thing (which is not working as expected) but this is after my testings the only thing I don't like.

[Phil Sonic Academy]

Virus £1000
ANA £30