Which synths have the best presets?

[Ridan]

All the mention of Alchemy here rubs salt in the wound. As most of you likely know it (and Camel Audio) was recently bought by Apple. So ... All users not using Logic, such as myself, who paid for it (and soundsets too) are basically out = screwed. No 2 for You!

Why does this (behemoths crushing my favorite synths) keep happening to me!?

I'm still using Alchemy (windows) after several years. Still works fine. I think we'll be ok for a while.

[kevvvvv]

what's your favourite Alchemy bank?

[Ridan]

Personally it's hard to choose just one.. All of the Luftrum sounds. Which actually got me interested in soft synth sound design in the first place. Then there were the "Cinematic Atmosphere's lib. Think when I bought Alchemy we had a choice of 1 or 2 third party sound sets that we could include in the full version.
At the time it took me quite a while to save up for Alchemy, but looking back now it was one of the best investments i ever made.

[synzh]

Consider Alchemy a great investment, same here - I'm still looking forward to doing more things with the PC version of Alchemy (and exploring/playing with all those great presets, both factory and extra sound banks.)

[Michael L]

WusikStation comes with a huge number of legacy sample-based presets. Among its commercial libraries, those by ArtVera are really distinctive (but still need some tweaking in WS8).

[Numanoid]

Rhino2 ships with some amazing presets

[MogwaiBoy]

Man, the default Sunrizer preset - which is a pad - is amazing.

[Kinh]

The best synth outside of Omnisphere is Massive for two reasons.

1. More 3rd party presets in more genres than any synth out there.
2. It has more of a diverse range in sound than the other synths which tend to be strong in one or two areas...eg, Some have great leads but disappointing plucks like Synthmaster and Hive. Massive has edgy, brittle basses, yet smooth deep sub basses, hard, punchy plucks and its leads - squares, sines, saws, all as strong as the other. Whereas something like Nexus tends to have slightly weaker squares and better saws.

Its one area of weakness is its difficult to get enough edge on its default, raw sound (which you dont tend to hear a lot on the radio now..Zedd- Breakfree, Beast-Beautiful Night). You can spend hours trying out waves and end up at square one again. Razor is good for that though. Massive aint a real additive, to my knowledge.

[ObsoleteAcc99]

While Apple Alchemy appears to include the same content plus more, it is one of the worst things ever made by anybody in the history of things being made and i cannot in good conscience recommend it for anything.

Why? I am a Mac/Alchemy/non-Logic user so am curious; never heard this before.

for me alchemy plugin had one of the overall "worst" set of factory patches out (and still not that great), you had to really get into the third party stuff (himalaya, bigtone, and others) to get good, usable presets,

As i am reading all the different opinions here it occurs to me, since quite a few love alchemy's presets, it just means whatever we recommend to Kev, he may not like anyway. We all have such different taste. now I am reading Dune 2 is not suited to EDM by someone. WTF? and so on..

As far as not recommending alchemy in good conscience, it is not for sale *as a plugin*, neither are the official 3rd party *banks*, in any legal capacity anymore.. so unless Kev already owns it already, or is planning on switching to a mac and Logic lol, it's a pointless recommendation for this topic.

That said, it will stay in Logic till the end of apple basically, so probably forever, and it's perfectly safe to invest in logic and alchemy for sound design, if one really wants alchemy. That's the only way to do it now. Simple as that. Or keep using one you already have.

[SuitcaseOfLizards]

I'll be completely different, because I *am* totally different (dark ambient dronator here):

Absynth 5 - Out of the box, plenty of variety, more than enough to get started. Some EXCELLENT third-party banks from Simon Stockhausen. There's a lot of Absynth in my works.

Reaktor 6 - Haven,t bought any third-party stuff for it because, erm, haven't even gotten halfway through it all!

ZebraHZ - Used the factory bank for 3 months before buying add-ons. Love it! With a few VERY reasonably priced 3rd party banks, my Zebra can shine like a unicorn or burn like a nightmare!

Everything else I own was bought to play specific third-party banks (Kontakt mainly). Engine was free and exists ONLY to play Eduardo Tarilonte soundsets.

[JPQ]

I say Rob Papen synths like Blue II and Tone2 synths. I must test someday Dune 2 becouse i like CM version old dune i dont use it becouse is only 32bit whih is problem to me.

[jdoo]

...
As far as not recommending alchemy in good conscience, it is not for sale *as a plugin*, neither are the official 3rd party *banks*, in any legal capacity anymore.. so unless Kev already owns it already, or is planning on switching to a mac and Logic lol, it's a pointless recommendation for this topic.

That said, it will stay in Logic till the end of apple basically, so probably forever, and it's perfectly safe to invest in logic and alchemy for sound design, if one really wants alchemy. That's the only way to do it now. Simple as that. Or keep using one you already have.

It isn't pointed out enough ... but for Mac users - you don't need to purchase the full Logic Pro in order to get the plug-ins (including Alchemy). They are also bundled in MainStage, which sells for $29.00. It's one of the best deals available for Mac users imo. So unless you need a full DAW - you can get the Logic synths, plug-ins, etc ( 27 of them) in MainStage. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mainsta ... 9523?mt=12

[twal]

Any synth with my presets.

All kidding aside, my favorite synths as far as presets that it came with are Synthmaster, Blue II, Dune 2 and Electra 2. Diva also comes with a mega collection of presets which are excellent and numerous.

Truth is, there are a lot of synths out there that come with excellent presets. It only makes sense to do this in order to show the synth off in its best light. Anybody who doesn't do this is seriously hurting their chances of having a top selling VST. That's why many hire some of the best sound designers around to work on their presets.

It's just good business sense.

Wow, I was sure if anyone would've recommended Zebra, it would've been you. Guess I was wrong.

Zebra, first of all, comes with very few presets. Yes, it has a download area where you can get more, but as far as the actual presets that come with the synth, they are very few and, quite honestly, not the best representation of what the synth is capable of which, to me, was very disappointing. It's one of the reasons I made my own library for Zebra because I saw what that synth was capable of. The synth itself is still on my list of top 10 synths that I own. That list is getting very hard to rank because there are a lot of great synths out there. Right now, if I had to choose, and in no special order, these would be in my top 10.

Zebra 2
Falcon
Synthmaster
Dune 2
MUX
Bazille
Omnisphere 2
MS 20 (Scary close to the real thing)
Sonigen Modular (And free no less)
Harmor

And a number of synths knocking on the door of the top 10.

Truth is, there are very few synths that I have paid my hard earned money for that I was disappointed in, which is why I'll be designing sound libraries for a very long time.

Which synths are knocking on the door? I remember you used to love Blue 2, why did it slide off?

[DJ Warmonger]

And the vote goes to... Dune 2. Instant satisfaction, hundreds of presets for all things EDM + new ambient banks.

[Echoes in the Attic]

I'm always impressed by the presets in Oddity 2, which is surprising given that it's a VA. But there are many amazing patches in there and quite some versitility as well. Not a great way of browsing them unfortunately but oh well.