Your Favourite CPU-Friendly VST's....?

[Maomoondog]

I forgot to also list Plex 2 by Wofgang Palm. Low CPU and a vast sound palette too

[DuX]

Pretty much everything Sonimus does is CPU friendly.

[urlwolf]

+1 abfilter Twin2

[yessongs]

Prodigious, Tube ohm freebies, Voyager, Oatmeal, PG8X, Nabla, Deputy, Messiah, Memory moon, Minimogue. Tal synths, Dune be, Z3ta, Rapture, Synthmaster, OBXD, Pentagon, Poly 2106, Uhe freebies, Mausynth, Abstractor, Enzyme, Scanned synth pro, Charlatan, Monofury, M theory, Formant advanced, Hydi, Rez, Dimension pro, Sampletank

[cryophonik]

+1 abfilter Twin2

I wish I had an abfilter. It would save me all that time /money I spend on my gym membership.

Tone2 synths seem pretty CPU-friendly, as does Z3TA2.

[skunkhaze]

DIVA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

lol

[arkmabat]

Mausynth isn't the most cpu friendly synth I've used, depends on which preset I guess.

[animehaus]

...Enzyme

Dude, sorry, but to call Enzyme a CPU-friendly VST is more than a stretch. It really sounds awesome, but it's probably the biggest CPU-hog I have used so far.

[idfpower]

First of all, it should have been said from the get go that how "CPU friendly" a synth is depends on your COMPUTER SPECS. If you have a modern machine, then most synths (if not all will have a moderate impact in CPU) - but if you're working on a 10 years old computer (like me) than most likely you will see things from a very different perspective So maybe providing your comp's specs would be a good idea Mine is an Intel Pentium 4 Dualcore @ 3 GHz / 3072 MB RAM running Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit.

That being said, IMO Enzyme is...sorry, there's no nice way of saying this: the biggest CPU hog I've ever tested. 1 instance drives FL Studio into CPU overload. Even Spire in its beta days was not that brutal - except for the pads that did the same thing. So the ppl that think Enzyme is ok CPU-wise are prolly working with new machines...

On the other hand, there are a number of synths that I can safely consider to be CPU friendly even on my archaic system:
- Feldspar (Contralogic)
- Retronix (AMVST)
- Voyager (Arguru Software)
- Sytrus (I-L)
- Sylenth1 (Lennar Digital)
- Gladiator (Tone2)
- Dune & Junglist (Synapse Audio)
- Podolski (U-He)
- Tunefish 3 (Brain Control)
- Ultrasonique (EVM Synths)
- Toxic 2 (Maxx Claster)
- Valo (Signaldust)

And some were VERY CPU demanding:
- Diva & A.C.E.
- Spire
- Synthix
- Abstractor
- Arc 5
- Cycle
- Scanned Synth Pro
- Largo
- Crisalys
- OBXD
- Tyrell N6
- Renegade

[bailees7irish]

+1 abfilter Twin2

I wish I had an abfilter. It would save me all that time /money I spend on my gym membership.

You beat me to it.

[fluffy_little_something]

Unlike years ago, most SynthEdit synths are rather CPU-friendly by modern standards, probably because they have not really evolved, unlike hardware

[EnGee]

Korg Synths
NI Absynth
FM8 (I might buy it again)

Little bit more cpu:
Retrologue and Padshop


Reason is the king for me, but it is not a VST/VSTi.

[zyguli]

Synth1 of course!

[Vectorman]

Omnisphere isn't that terribly CPU demanding to me relative to some other things I use - it's more RAM-hungry than CPU-hungry (which is no longer an issue since I went 64-bit). So I'd put Omnisphere on my lower-CPU list, along with the Wavestation and Sylenth. And Zebra, I suppose, at least with patches that don't use the XMF or Diva filters.