Tone2 Saurus - Best of its price range?

[fluffy_little_something]

But I can relate to this topic as I am also kind of looking for a very good and solid bread-and-butter synth I can standardize on. So this thread is interesting...

Do Tone2 - like Tal - update their stuff regularly or is the current version of Saurus the same as the one months ago?

[Ingonator]

External, well, if an eq is necessary, it would be nice to be able to save eq settings along with the patch. Element and Dune 2 have effective built-in equalizers. I know the tone controls in Saurus, but they did not really convince me. Reminded me a bit of old cheap stereos when you only had one tone knob for both bass and treble - at each other's expense.

Saurus has an EQ with the psycoacoustic feature that is activated with the "Boost" button but this does not work properly for each sound.
As i already mentioned i alreayd talked with Bastiaan to implement a simple EQ or Bass boost feature in a future version.
Anyway there uis nothing bad about using an external EQ (which BTW has been done for ages) and if you got a good external EQ in many cases this could be superior compared to a built-in one.
I am also using external Chorus or Phaser FXs if they do sound better than built-in ones (e.g. the Big Rock Phaser from arts Acoustic that emulates the famous Small Stone Phaser or the free TAL Chorus-LX).

Tone 2 also has their own Multi-FX plugin called Warmverb which could ork nicely with Saurus.


Ingo

[Ingonator]

But I can relate to this topic as I am also kind of looking for a very good and solid bread-and-butter synth I can standardize on. So this thread is interesting...

Do Tone2 - like Tal - update their stuff regularly or is the current version of Saurus the same as the one months ago?

They don't do updates very often but if they do they usually add new features. In v1.1 they added the import/export feature for Arp files (which save all Arp parameters). The Saurus Arp files are compatible with those from Rayblaster.

BTW having updates every month is not always a sign of quality.

Of course they will do an update when there are serious bugs but since the last update Saurus seems to be rock solid and is already available as 64-bit for both Windows and Mac.

Nemesis is still at v1.0 but so far no serious bugs seem to be reported. I could also not notice problems myself and i already did quite a few sound design work including creating audio demos.

From time to time Tone2 also does threads like this to mention that certain synths seem to be stable in all configurations:
http://www.tone2.org/forum/index.php?topic=1415.0
As a customer you are free to enter the Tone 2 forum and post bugs there if you find some or add feature requests.


Ingo

[fluffy_little_something]

I guess I will give it another try now, if the demo version still works, don't remember their demo limitations...

[fluffy_little_something]

It really does sound very nice, perfect for old-fashioned people like me, for whom all that layering and zillions of oscillators in Dune 2 are too much

What is striking is that it seems to hate my browser running in the background. Whenever there are banners or scripts on a site, there is terrible noise. Never noticed it to that extent with other synths. At first I thought maybe my computer was too weak for Saurus, like with Diva But without the browser it sounds very clean.

What might be improved is that one cannot look up the selected value of a modulation in the matrix without changing the value. At least I don't know how to. And the displays still suck in terms of contrast...
How does one set up the pitch bender to bend by exactly one or two notes when there are no .3 and .6 values in the matrix?

Saurus does use quite some CPU under certain conditions, like with the Padmorpher pad, where it seems mostly because of the long release time.

But the bass is pretty decent when turning all effects off. The tone knob seems to be a HP filter or treble control as setting it to min does not seem to boost the bass afaict. But for serious bass one can always turn from the main to the sub-oscillators, they sound pretty meaty

First I thought there is quite some clicking, but it seems to be because of the snappy envelopes, so one has to turn the decay knob, at least to 12 o'clock in many cases. Then it sounds very clear and punchy. It is not unlike with Dune 2.

I guess I will buy it after all. It sounds very pleasant, and uses little CPU. Diva might sound a bit better (not necessarily to my ears, but pros keep saying so), but the much higher CPU load and the not overly ergonomic GUI are a very high price to pay for that little extra in my view. I could not work on Diva for an hour, with Saurus that seems no problem thanks to the big controls and labels.

[Lerian]

What an amazing synth! Re-discovered it in this lockdown after a while not having time to play and damn.. this thing really sounds awesome! I must say that to me its the most analog sounding synth i have, and i do have Diva too.. but even in divine mode Saurus just sounds better at a fraction of cpu. I can't believe i overlooked it so long.

Great job tone2!

[zvenx]

I am of course now curious to know what Analog Synths you have played with for a prolonged period of time.
rsp

[Lerian]

I am of course now curious to know what Analog Synths you have played with for a prolonged period of time.
rsp

Sorry, i meant the most analog sounding synth plugin. I haven't played around with many - just diva, tal-u-no-lx, and impOSCar 2, and i like saurus the most.

[zvenx]

No I got what you meant. But you didn't say your favourite sounding synth or your favourite sounding analog software synth, you said the most analog sounding synth, which to me would require that you have played hardware analog synth for awhile to know which software analog synth has the same vibe etc.

It would be like me buying a french recipe book and deciding to cook french cuisine everyday for one week straight. If at the end of the week I say, what I cooked Wednesday was the most french tasting meal, would only have validity if I have actually tasted traditional/professional authentic french cooking. Now if I said what i cooked on Wednesday was my favourite meal, I don't think I have to have had previous french cuisine eating experience to come to that conclusion.

Hope you follow me.

rsp

[LeVzi]

Glad to see Saurus getting some love, vastly under-rated synth imo.

Ironic people say it lacks bass, yet I tend to reach for it when I need a certain bass.

It can seem simplistic but it isn't, it is as complicated as you want it to be.

[Markus Krause]

The old versions indeed did lack some bass. But it has been fixed.

I constantly improved the sound over the versions. The current one is v2.6. The update is available for free.

[Roman Wisniak]

Saurus is great but unfortunately doesn't work correctly with Komplete Kontrol.

[Ingonator]

Saurus is one of the best analog softsynths and one of my all time favorite synths.

Along analog synths (both hard- and software) Saurus and the upcoming Synapse Audio OBsession (currently in Beta) are those where i made the biggest amount of my of my patches (while currently Saurus is stil ahead concerning the amount...).

[Markus Krause]

Saurus is great but unfortunately doesn't work correctly with Komplete Kontrol.

Make sure that you downloaded the latest version (v2.6). There was a bug with recording the automation

[Roman Wisniak]

Saurus is great but unfortunately doesn't work correctly with Komplete Kontrol.

Make sure that you downloaded the latest version (v2.6). There was a bug with recording the automation

I've tried with v2.6. Presets can't be saved.