Well there was a slight branch out with the Z3ta competition. The idea was as KVR is about both free and payware synths to do a bit of either. 18 submissions was more than expected and proved payware comps work fine so no reason not to have another, or?

Shame about Beat's websales, but still a lot of nice in CM. Will the updated Genesis be magware too, anyone know?

Another idea is just to have an Any One Synth challenge maybe? Go nuts with the absolute favorite?

Speaking of favorites, it would be fun to hear what you would go for if that was the case, should if nothing else give an idea what free synths to look for in the future.

I just traded someone for DCAM Synth Squad today and am having so much fun with it. Really love the modulation system it uses. So that would definitely be my choice right now for a Any One Synth challenge - but I would want to use the whole suite!

I think it makes sense to pay attention to the various demo restrictions placed on pay synths. If there is one with a system that doesn't have noise bursts or anything else particularly difficult to overcome, they could be good choices for contests. For example, the DCAM demo lasts for 28 days, and the only restriction is that you can't load saved presets. If I didn't have the full version I would definitely enter a contest using that demo version, and just render after each session, or take a screenshot of my presets to try and restore.

Rendering in one session will be tricky and maybe too much for some? Although I can see how it could force one into potentially good habits with having to print after 2 tweaks, should save time on a song.

Olga was the latest commercial and had unbeatable demo restrictions (0), but was maybe a bit difficult to tame.

Still waiting for Cakewalk to realize what's up and set Pentagon free as it would be a good and reliable candidate, although PC only.

If it takes X amount of time, there could be a 'CM (month - X) issue' challenge, which may be sorta quick to get (not for me, who lives in the middle of nowhere).

There are also probably a lot like me that *have* some commercial software synths, so the 'any synth' challenge would be nice (but wasn't there one of these already? maybe it could be a yearly thing) and even those who own none would be able to pick from a wide variety of great freeware synths.

Or, there could be a Wusikstation challenge (to support the donator!).

I enjoy this competition mostly because I have limited time for music and I'm forced to finish something in the allotted time frame. Also, I would selfishly like to be forced to learn one of my synths (e.g. Alchemy or Massive) to the potential they deserve...

Or even some of my hardware synths!

Agree, a yearly free choice of synth competition is for the reasons you say much better than a picked commercial one (recently started with Z3ta last year), so let's have it like that from now on. Only issue with that is that people will know it will come at some point during the year and might work more than the month it would have been for everybody had it been a surprise synth announced at the last minute like it is now. On the other hand, it will be the same for everyone, so..

Wusikstation would be great to honor William's long time 'sponsorship', but it loads samples unfortunately.

Hey guys,
What do you think, Arturia has its VST stuff - Free 15-Day Trial. No function limitation.

I have checked Jupiter V8 but rest is in the same way http://www.arturia.com/evolution/en/products/jupiter-8v/reso urces.html

It would be nice to play with Moog, Prophet, Jupiter, Oberheim... what do you think?

Cool idea. I think an Arturia month could be pretty awesome. Maybe instead of choosing just one of their synths that everyone must use the entrants could pick whichever one they like, with the possibility to enter multiple times using different synths. Also that way if someone has already demoed one of them they could just pick a different one.

Then voting would be broken down by type of synth, resulting in one winning track for each synth: a Moog champion, A Jupiter champion, etc...

Then a bonus week of voting at the end between the entries from each of the top champions to choose the ultimate champion of champions!

It would be great to have those synths on and no demo limitation is great, but 14 days is maybe a bit too little time compared to the 30 days we have now. Maybe have a vote on it though..

No no no, gemntelmen, I have 3 unfinished tunes with 30 days period in OSC. I thought about to get 2 licenses for each Arturia VST. One for me and one for my uncle... somethink like that.

Of course it is not quite fair but I think Arturia stuff will not suffer a lot. They will get free promotion instead

Now that you mention it, it seems unfair for those who own a licence and can spend the entire month on the song compared to those using 14-day demos so I think it can't be done on sporting grounds..

I'm still generally opposed to doing pay synths, but an any synth would be a good way to do it. It would also give some of us who weren't here for the earlier comps a chance to do a track with one of the early round synths (for instance, I'd really love to do a Chimera track).

Entirely off-topic... does anyone know where to find a VST plugin that also is also a VST instrument host and offers key splitting and mixing the plugins that it hosts? I've searched around for both free and commercial without much success to this point. (I realize I can do this with Reaper, but if I hypothetically was not using Reaper.)

EnergyXT, surely.

But maybe DDMF's Metaplugin can do what you want too. There's a similar one for free: VSTForx. To mix those you would need a mixer plugin, but there are free ones to be found.

One way to do an "any synth" but keep it a surprise (so someone's not spending 3 months prepping) would be to put some constraints on it - sort-of an "almost any synth".

For example, it could be "Any Additive Synth", "Any Mono Synth", "Any Synth Released in 2012", etc. There'll always be some rule-fuzz - "that synth isn't really additive but a hybrid", etc. - but that's what our illustrious moderators are for