It's the best - ever!

[x_bruce]

Maybe it's me, but here are some of my "love to hate" phrases for topics:

"What's the best" - here, I'll answer that right now - nothing is the best. Best is what has the features you need combined with the ability to get them to work in a style you find intuitive

" 'X' vs 'Z' " - hey, I have a great idea, why not get some petroleum and a blow torch and see if we can have fun?

"I need a great, free Trance synth"....continued, that can do phat basses, screaming leads and mesmerizing pads, but I don't want to buy it. So where can I find some SE guy's synth? He's charging for it? Bastard!

I was once a teenager trying to record. Trust me, in 1972 recording was not a cheap hobby. Nor 1982, though Portastudios started cropping up which traded quality for accessability and price. The 90s were mostly a waste unless you waited till '95 or later and went DAW, but it wasn't cheap. Finally the '00s are here, you can buy a 8 track digital Portastudio for $400, you can put a DAW together for the cost of a decent sound card, $200 or so and some cheap to free music software.

But that doesn't make people happy. Now there has to be monster synths that do tremendous things, but heaven help the developer for charging $50. Still, some people create true greatness, Glenn's Crystal synth, UGO's Motion (and others), Rene's Triangle 1 and 2, Synth 1, polyibitblit, GalactiX and hundreds more. All free, all good.

There's even a sub-culture of, "you'll never get me to buy from the evil companies" of which all are evil as they have a profit motive.

While it may be fun to some, I'm starting to sense these discussions often go nowhere other than lame "my setup is better than you setup" whilest both are free setups.

Here's the awful truth. Native Instruments makes a FM synth that uses 3% CPU playing a triad on both my old Athlon XP1700 and current XP2400 processors. So does Pro-53 and B4. Waldorf (may they rise like a Phoenix) made Attack and PPG Wave 2.v bullet proof and also in the 3% CPU club.

G-Media's M-Tron, Oddity and impOSCar have slightly larger loads, 4%, 8% and 6%, still way below most synths today, and lots of people think impOSCar is one of the fattest, satisfying synths on the market, myself included.

Why should these synths be free or undervalued?

Here's the deal. If you hate buying software synths at a 1/10 the street price - don't, but shut up about their not being 100% what the originals are. I don't think anyone could replicate synths from the past, and the ones mentioned are at the pinnicle of development.

Anyone else care to contribute to the debate?

Btw, we can disagree on this, but let's do it in a civil way.

Next up!

[JackDark]

It is amazing what you can get for free these days. And the software we have now is nothing short of phenomenal. The setup I have now if it were in hardware would cost multiple thousands of dollars, and that's in today's market, I shudder to think what it would of cost 10 years ago. So yes, we should all be more thankful and less bitchy about things, especially in the freeware realm. I'm working now on a post for my forum which will describe how to set up a badass DAW (including the CPU) for less than $50. There's no excuse as to why anyone can't be making music these days, other than a lack of motivation and talent.

[jones-y]

There's even a sub-culture of, "you'll never get me to buy from the evil companies" of which all are evil as they have a profit motive.

Welll..... I'll put it this way. A corporation that puts profits ahead of all other concerns, tends to be very profitable, but very damaging to its surrounding world. Hence the classification as 'evil'.

Kinda like the treatment that the early union organizers got from the big corps. Or the paper industry's propensity to keep chopping trees down, even though hemp makes better paper and replentishes the soil, just because some rich old fart owns a lot of forest land, which would become worthless. Or the establishment of huge environmentally disastrous oil plants, simple because environmentally responsible plants are more expensive.

Money is not the root of all evil. Greed is.

I think its the loss of humanity of the organization. The ass who makes the decisions is isolated from those who experience the consequences of those decisions. He is only answerable to the bean counters. And they don't care that the low-level employee can't provide for their own needs, much less those of his/her family. They don't give a shit about oil-soaked Nigerian land, and its cancer wracked inhabitants. They don't give to shits about the decreasing regenerative capabilities of our atmosphere.

That's where the "Big Evil Corporation" comes from.

I agree with everything else you said.

[Kriminal]

Kids, they dont know they're born...

[projectdan]

Just tell me whats the best ever? is it a Virus or 303? I need to know. Also can I get it free or is it pay for? prefer free.

thanks, Dan



P.S people dont appreciate what they got, it applies to so much more than music set ups though.

[hyperborea]

I totally agree with you x-bruce

Started to make electronic music in the early 70 and keeping it up until midi arrived (kinda lost interest because of the programming aspect of it) being an old knob tweaker

Sold all my hardware synth's and got some of my HUGE investments back Just four years ago I bought my first computer. Two years ago I started making music with it and discovered the wealth of VST instruments. I was blown away

Found some GREAT free synths and bought others. Got lost in finding a host program that I could understand and dumped all of them for Traction.

Now I am an 'old' happy camper who's creating beautiful sounds at a fraction of the costs from those hardware days

In short; the DAW returned me to making music and I am grateful for that


P.S. I don't want to go back to the times that I had to tune my mono analog synth's with a hairblower every 30 minutes

[hello1234]

What would be the best thing we could do about it?

Oh yes I did!

Just remember DON'T BUY DONGLES! but do support all the cool little startup compainies working there ass's off to provide fair prices/good product. We know who they are

[vurt]

There's no excuse as to why anyone can't be making music these days, other than a lack of motivation and talent.

some of us get by on motivation alone

altho i do agree with bruces post
many years ago i dreamt of being able to do what i can now,for years i could never afford hardware synths(still cant really)but the sounds where within me wanting to get out
for years i got by with guitar and fx and a tape recorder
now today i can sit here in my bedroom and do all those things i dreamt of as a teen no not them bits.

and yes bruce the best issue hmmm,the best is as you say whatever works for the individual (which at this second in time is absynth layered with the impOSCar here )

[3*s]

" 'X' vs 'Z' " - hey, I have a great idea, why not get some petroleum and a blow torch and see if we can have fun?

Yeah!! *stares mischievously at nearby flock of pigeons*

[pannewb]

Just started working with midi and have got a dialup connection.
Got Cubase SX 3
(eXT would have been just fine for me but I listened to my friends who said "Get a piece of software that is going to fulfill all your needs." So I spent the better part of $600 on SX 3. Some people have grown so spoiled with their software that they think anything under $200 can't possibly be any good at all. And yet $50 was all I needed. )
Downloaded Synth1 and the excellent banks by Teksonic and Audiowhore.
Holy Sons Of Jehovah!! $50 was all I need to make kickarse music! Do people not realize how much good FREE and lowcost stuff is out there?

[smp]

...
I was once a teenager trying to record...

I'm sorry, but what? You were a teenager, Bruce?



Actually, once again I find myself agreeing with you completely, Bruce. I seem to do that a lot.

One thing though...I've never been into the hardware side of things so I don't have an appreciation of "how lucky we all are". I do get bugged sometimes when people harp on about how lucky people are starting out today, "in my day we spent $20,000 for a Fairlight and felt privileged to do so".

To use a phrase I hate (but hear all the time), it's a paradigm shift. I can't judge luck based on what used to be available. I can only judge products based upon what I know and have experienced - software and software prices. I don't believe I should feel luck because 5 or 10 years ago what I have now would have cost tens of thousands in hardware. If I want to feel lucky it's because I can indulge in a hobby for a reasonable price and have fun. If today's software didn't exist, I wouldn't be doing this - I'd probably just be sitting around playing my guitar and be happy with that. It's all relative.

-s
(I had a point in there somewhere. Could someone please help me find it? )

[envoy]

Bruce,

It would be hard to agree any *more* than I do. I'll just add one or two things...

1. The VST world has brought me instruments that, with only a couple of rare exceptions, never existed in hardware. I happen to create music that uses tunings outside of the traditional Western 12-equal-tones-to-the-octave. And because it is software, it is a lot easier to implement these kind of niche items, even after a synth/instrument has been born (i.e. wonderful advances can show up in 2.0)

2. The wonderful synergy between user base and developer. This *never* happened before in the way it does now. Boy, the devs I like, the ones that are so responsive to their active users, it really is an amazing experience.

A fantastic time for music-making. I hope, some day, that the people posting threads as you mentioned will realize just what a garden of delights we live in.

And that occasionally paying living, breathing, humans for creating software that realizes their dreams isn't a drag, it's well worth it.

envoy

[FaX]

What the .

I always trust what X_bruce has to say.
I've done like 500 google and a squillion dev site searches and I cannot for the love of God find IT vst anywhere.

You told me IT's the BEST where can I download ummmmm........... IT ?

[vista]

a good song is a good song equally in
midi-stage, demo-stage or cheapsynth-stage.

men tend to be interested in technical details.
(best car, best synth, ...) and then
forget about making music.

this has been the same prob in 1980 with hardware
and today with software.

there are 3 groups:

1. the wannahavefornothing
2. the wannahaveforego
3. the wannahaveformusic

... and the hybrids

[x_bruce]

"It's in the air, it's in the trees, it's in the smokestack causing juniors disease." - slightly modified verse snippet from an old song I wrote...

Thanks to those with nice things to say, I'm nearly blushing, or would be but for my planet sized ego.

It's funny, on the Latest Posts site what do I see but:
"SynthEdit vs SynthMaker"
"The Best free notiation editor/printer"

The day there is a "best" anything, I might have to shuffle of this mortal coil. I had a discussion with my doctor about a medication I take for M.S. He told me it was the front-line drug for slowing down progression of the disease and even reducing it. So I took it, hated the 36 hour super flu side effects it gave me, you inject it once a week. Finally I begged to be put on another drug someone in my building told me about. It means daily shots but, lo and behold, minimal side effects and much less major exacerbations, or getting sicker if you will.

If I lived in a world of using the best it would be the worst of all possible worlds. I liked Cakewalk from the moment I used it in 1990, and I had access to a Mac lab and the keys to it, where I was told that the best sequencers were on. A better description would have been, the nicest looking sequencers are on a Mac. At the time Vision was the shit, everyone used it. We also had Performer, a much more linear, more industrial strength program, even back then. Every student given the choice went for the prettier Vision, because it was a more attractive program and also because it was somwhat pattern based. I even got suckered into buying it for Windows when it came out. Of course it was 2 versions behind as all Mac programs used to be when ported to Windows...and a reason it was hard to like companies based in the Mac world a decade ago.

But the point is, pretty programs get more use than useful and Cakewalk Pro was as industrial strength as anything I used on the Mac. Still, I could fly working in Cakewalk Pro, and now Sonar. For a year I switched over to Cubase VST 5.1 and got the band to do so too because it supported VST instruments. Sonar 1 came out at a time that none of us in the band had a computer that could run DXi synths. But it was one of the worst decisions I ever made. It took forever to do things in Cubase, and worse: for the things that matter to me Cubase SE is a better sequencer. WTF!! Thankfully I was able to upgrade to Sonar around 2.2 and haven't looked back. It too was a major learning curve from Cakewalk Pro 9, but that learning curve took about a day's work to learn, and it was fast to work in.

So difference is good too.

The number one reason why people are so defensive about their software is because they bought into it's mystique and there is nothing come hell or high water that will get them to admit they were duped and don't have the best thing ever.

I do have one thing to thank Steinberg for regarding Cubase. It made me look for anything else that might work with the VST instruments I had and enjoyed. I found Orion Pro and though I don't really like working in patterns it was still so freaking simple that it became the sequencer the band used as we all tried and liked it, the others didn't even use Cubase. One guy didn't use it more than three times. So the other thing I have to thank Cubase for was getting my ass in gear trying to get a computer that could run Sonar.

So there's no way I trust anyone saying "this or that" is the best. It's the best for them. Using my favorite synths TERA 2, Absynth 3, Rhino 2 and Symptohm:Melohman there is a thread between all of them, they are supremely unique synths, none of which sound like the other, and hardly at all like everything else. I can't lie though, I'm a big ChronoX and Albino 2 fan, but they are more what I would call excellent digilog and more mainstream for my tastes. My big 4 can do simple sounds all the way through, "what the hell was that?" sounds. I'm a big fan of what the hell was that sounds, so to me, I love working with these synths. They are the best to fit my use and of synth manufacturers VirSyn has the best solutions for my creative uses though N.I. has a more rounded and even more wild side. It also has the extremely fantastic Guitar Rig which crushes my prior favorite, Behringer V-Amp Pro. Except for it needing a computer to run, I'd probably use it extant if it were hardware, it's that good and it can do some of the strangest, most beautiful guitar tones.

The point here is, you can't live with, "this is the best" because you limit yourself to new discoveries.

I can argue why my favorite synths are better than the vast majority of other synths available, but even so, I still consider others perceptions and their needs although I often wonder why I bother as they can't accord me the same courtesy. You are either dealing with a zealot or developer of another software synth that thinks they've got a pretty damn great synth.

Lastly, for the, "you don't know how good you have it" crowd. envoy makes a reasonable point, some people weren't interested in music prior to inexpensive solutions. So let me give you a image or two to give you a better idea.

I am 13 years old and just got the Fender Guitar catalog. It's got candy apple red Stratocasters, really cool Telecasters, even on that is semi-hollow and has these big pickups on them (now called humbucking pickups, although at the time, that was a trademark name by Gibson) and I have a Gibson catalog in front of me. It has two Les Paul guitars, Gold colored with really small humbucking pickups and a Black Les Paul with regular sized Gibson humbuckers. There's this other really cool guitar called a Firebird which has a wild looking body and tuning pegs that are horizontal rather than vertical like every other guitar I've seen. I recognize it as Johnny Winters uses it and he's one of my favorite guitarists. But those kind of guitars are at least $600, and that's for the Stratocaster. The Les Paul is close to $1000. I want one so bad it literally hurts. My parents buy me a Tiesco Del Ray guitar. It's a piece of shit but it's electric and I start learning. I'm happy.

Now I'm 15. I'm working in the summer and going to school. My favorite guitarists are Andy Powell and Leslie West, and they both have a guitar shaped like a V. Both have really great sound although they're both different. Decision; I must have a Flying V. And after half a year I wear my parents down with "I'll get a job!" and "I promise to do well in school!!".
My dad relents, he's the money guy, but I can't find a Flying V!!! They don't make 'em anymore. Suddenly, like the heavens say, "give the kid a break" Gibson announces they'll be selling a limited series of Flying Vs. I have to put 50% down just to wait for it. I get it, I'm happy. Oh no! It plays like a pig. I have an Epiphone, when they were made in the U.S., guitar. It's better and I'm f**ked, 'cause I have a $800 Flying V that has a baseball bat sized neck and weighs a ton. I learn to play it and eventually find another guy with a older Flying V that wants my Flying V because it's a collector's edition. His is several years older and plays like I thought a Flying V should play like. I trade mine for it.

The other guy thinks, "what a moron, he sells a brand new collectable for this piece of shit!" and I think, "that stupid idiot, he gets rid of a really great guitar just to get a shitty playing collector's edition.

Now I'm 19. I'm imprinted, I only play that "V" and a 1957 Les Paul Standard I bought at a pawn shop after a few gigs. They sold it for $100 because it is 20 years old and the tuners have yellowed. I also have a yellow Les Paul Jr. which plays great but the pickup is so noisy I don't use it.

We play a gig and my "V" and 57' Les Paul are stolen when our roadie decides to aquire pussy. I'm a sensible 19 year old, I have insurance on my gear. So I go and look at what could possibly replace my favorite guitars. I learn to like the yellow Les Paul Jr. since it's the only guitar I now have. Finally, I find out they are making Flying Vs again. I order with an opportunity to back out as long as I buy another guitar. The new one is only available in a brown woodgrain finish but it's good, in fact, I like the sound better than the 60's "V" that was stolen. However, I come to learn, most people hate the 1978 Flying V reissues. Not me though, I love it, it's louder and larger sounding. And I have more money left and they have a Firebird guitar with a tremolo. Hot damn, I'm almost thankful for the theft. I'm back in business.

The point being that had I gone by other's opinions I'd have bought guitars I didn't like playing, but they'd have been "great" guitars. Instead I ended up with my favorite guitars - ever. They were long since sold to pay doctors and once again, I had a choice 2 years ago, buy a "real" Gibson Les Paul or get a Variax guitar, built like the mutant son of an un-holy alliance between a Les Paul Jr and a Stratocaster. But the Variax was actually a synth in that it modeled it's guitar sounds which read like a best of guitars made catalog.

The guitar was of acceptable build, but the sound? Hmm. Every human told me, bad choice, but when I got it I heard sounds I hadn't heard since having to sell some of my favorite guitars. Not only that, but some of the other guitar models are as I remember them sounding, which is a good thing too. The problem though is, no matter how good a solid body guitar is, can you ever get used to it sounding like a Jumbo acoustic 12 string? Can you really learn to play this Stratocaster-like guitar while getting a Les Paul tone or any number of much different, vastly different to play guitars?

There's some culture shock as I knew how nice these guitars were. They cost more than the Variax in 1970. They were all classic American guitar sounds that had thinner necks, bodies that were semi-acoustic and made of harder wood and denser bodies. The answer is, I'd learn to get used to it, and damned if I didn't. So it was a happy ending after all, which is why I decided to start musicFAQ which will have a review of the Variax guitar. After all, it's probaby the best specialty modeler available today. It's really a trip to hear the Les Paul Jr. with noisy pickups, aka P90 pickups, now considered a nice find on a vintage guitar these days, and hearing no noise! Or playing a screamingly loud acoustic guitar that doesn't feed back nor make your ears want to bleed.

And the reason it's a great guitar is because I learned to adapt over years, to work with what I had and appreciate it. But until the last decade you couldn't buy a good guitar for under $1000. Today you can get a ass kicking guitar for $500 and an acceptable one for $300. And synths, as we established, those are free to computer users with decent sound cards, and almost any computer has a decent sound card these days.

Hopefully I gave a more personal face on the "good old days". If not, trust me, we are living at the apex of technical information being given away. These are historical times.