Which additive synth (on sale) to buy? Air Loom or Harmor?

[lectrixboogaloo]

Harmor, by your grandchildren, will be remembered as one of the great synths of history. Harmor is also the future of sampling. Harmor's preset banks are paltry because you, my dear synthesist, are not!

[cron]

I don't own Loom but was tempted. Haven't made the switch to 64 bit yet though (that demo of Reaper has been sitting winking at me for ages) and I don't believe there's a 32 bit version of Loom.

I do however own Harmor and it's an absolute beast that I can't recommend highly enough. One of the few synths I think deserves the 'visionary' tag. The GUI doesn't give a great deal away. The power and flexibility hidden under the hood once you get into the drop down menus and start tinkering is absolutely dazzling. My jaw dropped when I realised just how many parts of it can be arbitrarily defined, modified and controlled. Just within the filter (well, not really a 'filter' as it's just changing the parameters of the additive synthesis) you can freehand draw the filter shape, resonance shape, and 'self oscillation' independently from one another. You want a combined notch and lowpass filter with 3 resonant bumps an octave above the cutoff frequency and a self-oscillation hum 10 semitones below the cutoff frequency? No problem. That's just the start - really, that's basic stuff in Harmor. The power lurking in those right click/drop down menus is insane. I'm currently having loads of fun using the Prism module in conjunction with a customised response graph to do whammy style octave drops on individual harmonics in resynthesised audio. Madness.

[pdxindy]

I am very much looking forward to the OSX version of Harmor.

[arkmabat]

Buy Razor...from me for $40

You're really selling it that cheap?

[arkmabat]

I love Harmor. Very unique sounds.

[aMUSEd]

Also the above poster said you can't control every partial in harmor, but actually you can. Not only can you mess with the individual partials, you can also import your own single cycle waveforms and then adjust their partials. I wish harmor had a different UI. I think they wanted to make it seem too much like a subtractive synth and it makes it hard to understand/find the advanced additive features. Once you figure everything out you realize how powerful harmor is.

That's possible, tbh I barely got into Harmor when I switched to Mac and the Mac version is still in alpha so I haven't found where to edit individual partials, all I see is in the env section there are envelopes for 70 different things but nowhere can I see where to draw in and edit partials one by one like you can in say morphine. It is undeniably powerful but does seem to have a different workflow and approach to what I would consider more traditional additives like Morphine. As you say it appears IL wanted to make it more like a subtractive synth with resynthesis but there is a ridiculous amount hidden away so I find it a frustrating synth to work with - I don't like the interface at all, far too much functionality is hidden away (people complain about Ultra Analog 2 with its tabs - this is worse) and it's annoying that when you change a preset the whole view changes which makes it harder to compare presets and actually get to grips with how it all works.

I still think Loom sounds better though, Loom has an amazingly rich sound for an additive.

[c_voltage]

Well, if compare (harmor and loom) directly, then yes, harmor is more interesting and multifeature thing. I would even say it is not so much additive how many hybrid, with some special sections.

Loom still more like the additive, and management (partitions, envelopes etc) in it a lot easier, and he also has special features but strictly associated with additive. But also it should be noted that he eats much more CPU (even in eco mode).

Thus, if a person needs exactly this type of synthesis, difficult to make a choice (therefore it is better both).

[VariKusBrainZ]

Virsyn Cube

[Chandlerhimself]

That's possible, tbh I barely got into Harmor when I switched to Mac and the Mac version is still in alpha so I haven't found where to edit individual partials, all I see is in the env section there are envelopes for 70 different things but nowhere can I see where to draw in and edit partials one by one like you can in say morphine. It is undeniably powerful but does seem to have a different workflow and approach to what I would consider more traditional additives like Morphine. As you say it appears IL wanted to make it more like a subtractive synth with resynthesis but there is a ridiculous amount hidden away so I find it a frustrating synth to work with - I don't like the interface at all, far too much functionality is hidden away (people complain about Ultra Analog 2 with its tabs - this is worse) and it's annoying that when you change a preset the whole view changes which makes it harder to compare presets and actually get to grips with how it all works.

I still think Loom sounds better though, Loom has an amazingly rich sound for an additive.

You edit the partials like envelopes, which I personally don't like, but you do have direct control over all the partials. I agree about the UI, I'd prefer something closer to loom in terms of UI.

I don't think either sounds better than the other, but Loom has some really nice pad presets. I think harmor could do something similar, but I need more time with it to figure out how to do it.

[U-o]

I don't own Loom, so I can't recommend you this plugin, but Harmor rulez!

[Andurian]

I have, and love, Harmor. It's probably the most under-appreciated synth out there.

Seamless has an excellent series of tutorials on it, as well. It's not always the most obvious when it comes to UI, so that's a good thing. Once you "get it", though, the UI doesn't get in the way at all.

[aMUSEd]

That's possible, tbh I barely got into Harmor when I switched to Mac and the Mac version is still in alpha so I haven't found where to edit individual partials, all I see is in the env section there are envelopes for 70 different things but nowhere can I see where to draw in and edit partials one by one like you can in say morphine. It is undeniably powerful but does seem to have a different workflow and approach to what I would consider more traditional additives like Morphine. As you say it appears IL wanted to make it more like a subtractive synth with resynthesis but there is a ridiculous amount hidden away so I find it a frustrating synth to work with - I don't like the interface at all, far too much functionality is hidden away (people complain about Ultra Analog 2 with its tabs - this is worse) and it's annoying that when you change a preset the whole view changes which makes it harder to compare presets and actually get to grips with how it all works.

I still think Loom sounds better though, Loom has an amazingly rich sound for an additive.

You edit the partials like envelopes, which I personally don't like, but you do have direct control over all the partials.

Ah well that's what I thought was the case, so you are not editing partial by partial then, no wonder I couldn't find it, it's not there after all. It may (arguably) have the same end result or even be more powerful, but it's not the same as the approach and workflow in additive synths like Morphine or Alchemy where you can grab and modify every partial one at a time (which is much closer to drawbars in a Hammond) so my point stands.

[Tricky-Loops]

What I love about Harmor is that you can simply drag a wave file and drop it over the OSC section, and it's loaded. Every synth should have this feature, it's much easier than by opening a file window!

[cron]

That's possible, tbh I barely got into Harmor when I switched to Mac and the Mac version is still in alpha so I haven't found where to edit individual partials, all I see is in the env section there are envelopes for 70 different things but nowhere can I see where to draw in and edit partials one by one like you can in say morphine. It is undeniably powerful but does seem to have a different workflow and approach to what I would consider more traditional additives like Morphine. As you say it appears IL wanted to make it more like a subtractive synth with resynthesis but there is a ridiculous amount hidden away so I find it a frustrating synth to work with - I don't like the interface at all, far too much functionality is hidden away (people complain about Ultra Analog 2 with its tabs - this is worse) and it's annoying that when you change a preset the whole view changes which makes it harder to compare presets and actually get to grips with how it all works.

I still think Loom sounds better though, Loom has an amazingly rich sound for an additive.

You edit the partials like envelopes, which I personally don't like, but you do have direct control over all the partials.

Ah well that's what I thought was the case, so you are not editing partial by partial then, no wonder I couldn't find it, it's not there after all. It may (arguably) have the same end result or even be more powerful, but it's not the same as the approach and workflow in additive synths like Morphine or Alchemy where you can grab and modify every partial one at a time (which is much closer to drawbars in a Hammond) so my point stands.

You can 'theroretically' control the partials one by one, but only if you're willing to zoom right into the 'envelope' (envelopes and 'shapers' etc share the same set of grapher controls). This essentially means adding 3 envelope points per partial (two at zero, with one at your desired volume between them in an ultra-thin spike) and making sure the peak of the envelope is right at the point where the information for that partial is read from the graph (it can't be snapped AFAIK). So it is 'possible', but that method of editing is much more suited to a broad strokes approach where you load an 'oscillator' (i.e. saw, square, import your own etc) that contains rougly the partials you want and emphasise/de-emphasise regions of partials. Alternatively, building new sounds from scratch by starting with an empty grapher and drawing in regions of partials, maybe zooming right in to pick a few strong ones out, is a way of working that suits. Ultra-fine control is all possible, but I wouldn't call it practical.

Just to add one little flaw to my Harmor lovefest above, it frustrates me that Harmor always expects a C when you're resynthesising tonal content, and there's no way to tell Harmor's resynthesis engine otherwise. This is no problem if you're doing straight resynthesis as you can tune the entire synth engine to the correct note and play as normal, but there are some amazing manipulations just out of reach (particularly sliding the frequency scale knob from 0 to 100 to seamlessly morph between oscillator and resynthesised sound) when the pitched tone inside the resynth engine didn't start life as a C. Shame these can't be tuned independently. Ought to drop a feature request in the Image Line forum.

[dwozzle]

For the 50% offer add the coupon code: 50PLUGIN this should do the "trick"

I don't see this offer anywhere. Is it open to everyone, or only IL customers? Any idea how long it lasts?

Thanks.