Favorite Synth to Program

[fluffy_little_something]

I just don't hear anything that you could not have done with Synth1 as well. It would not have made any difference musically...

[wagtunes]

I just don't hear anything that you could not have done with Synth1 as well. It would not have made any difference musically...

LMAO. See, now you're just trolling. Synth1????

OMFG. You can't be serious.

Man, you crack me up with some of the shit that comes out of your mouth.

[toonertik]

Back on topic with fav synths to program..
This is just Zebralette... Was fun to program.. and the wee Zebra also had fun )))
and for sure, I don't think I could have got these sounds out of Synth1 or many other synths.
https://soundcloud.com/toonertik/zebralethasfun

[stimresp]

I'm really getting a kick out of exploring OP-x Pro II with the new bigger rack GUI....

[foosnark]

I've been working on an album this year, and though it's mostly modular synth, I found used Aalto in 6 out of 15 tracks. Buchla Easel V and LuSH-101 were each in 3.

(For comparison, my most used Eurorack oscillators were E370 and Double Helix, at 8 and 7 respectively, so Aalto held its own quite well.)

I'd frankly love to have Aalto in hardware form (provided it had more patch points!) as well as a real Easel. And I just traded my 0-Coast for an SH-01A

"Most used" isn't exactly the same as "favorite to program" but I'd say it holds relatively true anyway.

[_al_]

Surge
those wave morphing sliders can be so unpredictable

zebras comb filters were scaring the crap out of me for a long time, but modulating surges waveshaping sliders still gets top spot

[BONES]

You must be sooooo busy to be bitching about a few clicks. Yes, a FEW.

Yes, a few extra clicks dozens of times per session, hundreds of times during the course of completing a song.

Maybe take a few weeks off so you can explore something other than a distorted bass sound. Does clicking to add the distortion annoy you?

We don't really use a lot of distortion and I can't think of a single song where we've used it on the bass line. Anyway, most of the instruments we use have it built in and my project template has distortion set up in Send 3 anyway so it is always there when we need it.

That must be quite a few clicks. Add fx, select fx, insert, find a preset, tweak preset to suit..

Who would need to look for a preset for distortion? The good ones only have three or four controls, at most, and the built in ones are usually a single knob. Plus, of course, the one in my template is already set up, it just needs to be fed a signal.

You seem to be using the rationale that because we already have to do a lot of knob twiddling that a little bit more shouldn't matter but the fact that we already do so much is precisely why it does matter, particularly in the context of "favourite synth to program". If I could press one button and turn the idea in my head into a finished song, then that's what I'd do because the production process is tedious and boring.

[aMUSEd]

I've been working on an album this year, and though it's mostly modular synth, I found used Aalto in 6 out of 15 tracks. Buchla Easel V and LuSH-101 were each in 3.

(For comparison, my most used Eurorack oscillators were E370 and Double Helix, at 8 and 7 respectively, so Aalto held its own quite well.)

I'd frankly love to have Aalto in hardware form (provided it had more patch points!) as well as a real Easel. And I just traded my 0-Coast for an SH-01A

"Most used" isn't exactly the same as "favorite to program" but I'd say it holds relatively true anyway.

Aalto is just amazing

[BONES]

Bones seems to like Legend, which is even more basic than Sylenth1, though.

I like The Legend precisely because it is comparatively basic. The perfect synth has every control I need and not one that I don't. That's the synth that will get me what I need with the least effort. And it's achievable because I can have as many different ones as I like, which makes the whole idea of a synth that can do anything ridiculous. It makes sense in hardware, because hardware is expensive and takes up lots of physical space. Software removes those restrictions but people mostly haven't adapted and still chase that one synth they can use for everything.

Sylenth1 has waveforms beyond saw as well and also filters other than LP, so your comment makes no sense.

What? The Legend has 7 different waveforms per oscillator and four different filter types - 12dB or 24dB per octave Low Pass and the same for Band Pass. So who's comment makes no sense?

And while 4-voice polyphony, unison, BP filter and 12 db filters have been considered huge additions to Legend, Sylenth1 has had all that from the start...

So has The Legend. After all, it's still Version 1, so the additions so far have been extremely minor and it's had polyphony and all those filter types since the very first beta. Here's the release announcement from 2016 - https://www.kvraudio.com/news/synapse-a ... izer-34668

If you need wavetables and such things in order to make music, fine with me. Just don't assume people using good old subtractive analog synths are in any way outdated...

It's actually that thinking that I find stupid. I use whatever works, I couldn't care less what synthesis method is employed. Each has it's strengths and weaknesses, so I use whatever is going to give me the best result for any given situation. I recently got rid of two of my analogue synths but I still have 2.5 more, 5.5 is you want to count my Analog Keys as 4 separate synths. (Rocket has a digital oscillator and analogue filter, so it only half counts.) My other hardware synth is also a V/A. I gravitate towards them because I know how they work, which makes them easier to work with. With ROMplers and wavetables, it's much more hit and miss and you end up relying on presets, which quickly sucks up all your time, so I tend not to use them much.

And there is a giant audience out there that likes the good old sounds that never grow old, you know, babyboomers etc.

Technically, that includes me although I personally identify as Gen X, having had zero interest in music until Punk in 1976/77. But the first thing with that is that you're allowing others to dictate what you do or how you do it, rather than following your own path.

The other thing is that the way those synths were used back in the day is completely different to the way they get used now so it's unlikely anyone from the 1970s would recognise a Model D if they heard it in a track today. Modern mixers make them much easier to tame and fit into a mix than they were back in the day, so you do so much more with them now than you could back then.

What we do is art. If it finds an audience, that's great but we aren't going to go around chasing one or do something just because we think other people might like it. Being true to ourselves is way more important. As with any art, we seek to provoke a reaction and, believe me, the number of people who are actually disturbed by our music is considerable and we're good with that.

That's the problem with KVR and this forum in particular. Many people here are so lost in synths that they don't see the forest for the trees.

That's kind of the point of KVR and you are actually one of the worst offenders. You're defending a synth just because someone else doesn't like it. If that isn't "lost in synths", I don't know what is.

[BONES]

I've been working on an album this year, and though it's mostly modular synth, I found used Aalto in 6 out of 15 tracks. Buchla Easel V and LuSH-101 were each in 3.

I downloaded the Easel demo over Xmas, having been impressed by some of the patches for it inside Analog Lab, but I spent five minutes staring at the GUI and thought "screw this". I'm sure I could have worked through it but when I have the much easier to tweak version in Analog Lab I couldn't see the point.

To be fair, ARP Odyssey can be a bit like that, too. e.g. You change the oscillator waveform in the Mixer section, not the Oscillator section and the coarse oscillator detune is in Hz, not semitones.

Anyway, if I was looking at most used, it would be Orion's Wasp by a country mile. I doubt we have a single song on four albums that doesn't have more than one instance of it. In terms of effort vs reward, nothing else comes close. That said, if we were just looking at our last two albums, then it's like Nitrous PD would be ahead of it. Obviously when you build your own synth, you build it to work the way you like and when you combine that with SynthEdit's great Phase Distortion Oscillator, you get something pretty useful in a lot of situations. Now that we are moving to 64 bit, it's that synth that is going to be the hardest to replace.

[foosnark]

Easel is definitely a weird design. Even to someone used to modular synths and enough exposure to West Coast stuff not to stare at it and go "WTF is a pulser?" it just does everything completely differently. True to the original, for better or for worse. A few hours in, it seemed almost intuitive.

But then they added the extra pages for more modulation and effects, and those designs are inconsistent with the main panel and with everything else out there, for no reason I can fathom. And that part still annoys me and seems to make basic modulation tasks difficult.

I can still get some sounds out of it that I can't with anything else. But it's kind of more valuable to me for making me realize some the limits I've been accidentally putting on myself when patching my modular.

[EnGee]

Aalto is just amazing

I remembered that I already have a CM (Computer Music) dvd contents in my external drive, so I installed some synths and between them was Aalto. Yes, it is really a very nice synth. I don't know what exactly the limitations of the CM version, but I'm looking to use it.

Other synths that I begin to value a lot are: Curve 2, Bazille CM, Dune CM and Zebra CM. I really like the layouts a lot. I still prefer Dune 1 layout than version 2. It also comes without effects, so this is an advantage actually because I fed up with the added delay/reverb in some other synths presets, because adding these effects is my job that I don't want anyone to do it for me

Bazille CM is a wonderful synth. I think the size and scope is perfect for me. It sounds great All those I installed sound great and I'm mentioning them just to remind some that this CM bundle (I haven't looked at the effects yet!) is a great bundle and it might be better than many commercial bundles! I'm looking to use those synths a lot as programming them seems easy and interesting

[toonertik]

Aalto is just amazing

I remembered that I already have a CM (Computer Music) dvd contents in my external drive, so I installed some synths and between them was Aalto. Yes, it is really a very nice synth. I don't know what exactly the limitations of the CM version, but I'm looking to use it.

CM version is mono only and no unison...
CM have done a good job with their synth and fx collection>> saved me a lot of money as I have only needed to buy a few extra things that I consider essential ...
I have been reading the thread>> synths or VSTs I regret buying... I have nothing to contribute in that thread...

[pdxindy]

Except some of us who grew up decades ago have gone beyond sawtooth and low pass filter, thank you.

There's nothing wrong with growing as an artist. You can still do the old things and do new things too.

Not EVERY one of us old folks is stuck in the 70s and 80s.

Bones seems to like Legend, which is even more basic than Sylenth1, though. Sylenth1 has waveforms beyond saw as well and also filters other than LP, so your comment makes no sense.
And while 4-voice polyphony, unison, BP filter and 12 db filters have been considered huge additions to Legend, Sylenth1 has had all that from the start...

If you need wavetables and such things in order to make music, fine with me. Just don't assume people using good old subtractive analog synths are in any way outdated, you have not grown just because you use wavetables and stuff. And there is a giant audience out there that likes the good old sounds that never grow old, you know, babyboomers etc.

Sylenth does not have unison... it only has voice stacking in the Osc's... that is not real unison.

Also, Legend actually sounds like an analog synth. Sylenth sounds nothing like real analog and is missing features one often has with an analog synth such as ring mod, cross modulation, filter FM and such. The sorts of features that give a wide tonal character. The main feature of sylenth when it came out, the supersaw, is a digital creation, not analog.

Sylenth is a low cpu synth that sounds like a decade old low cpu synth. It cannot begin to compete with the current crop of analog emulations... not in features and especially not in sound.

[EnGee]

CM version is mono only and no unison...
CM have done a good job with their synth and fx collection>> saved me a lot of money as I have only needed to buy a few extra things that I consider essential ...
I have been reading the thread>> synths or VSTs I regret buying... I have nothing to contribute in that thread...

Yes, I noticed that when I spotted the polyphony/unison section. It is still a very good mono synth for experimental sequences IMO. It reminds me actually of how some musicians/synthesists imagined the future (spcace/sci-fi) in the 70's. They used such sounds and sequences. I think I'm fine with the limitations