Soft Synth With The Best Workflow?

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ariston wrote:Autogun. Workflow = press one button. How can you beat that?
Almost perfect, second only to Reaktor.

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One thing that really enhances Serum's workflow hasn't been mentioned yet. That you can see the waveforms or wavetables animating each time you press a key, and so you can also see what effect your warp modes have. You can also see indicators of which part of the envelope is currently in effect all the way through, and precisely where in the LFO cycle you are. It makes envelope shaping and LFO designing really simple. Add in the response curves and scaling factor for each of the 32 (currently) modulation slots, and, IMO, it's unbeatable.

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Last edited by egbert101 on Mon Feb 19, 2018 9:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
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garryknight wrote:One thing that really enhances Serum's workflow hasn't been mentioned yet. That you can see the waveforms or wavetables animating each time you press a key, and so you can also see what effect your warp modes have. You can also see indicators of which part of the envelope is currently in effect all the way through, and precisely where in the LFO cycle you are. It makes envelope shaping and LFO designing really simple. Add in the response curves and scaling factor for each of the 32 (currently) modulation slots, and, IMO, it's unbeatable.
I would happily trade the waveform displays to not have to switch between tabs to edit Env's/LFO's. I hate tabbing...

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egbert101 wrote:
One test of a good workflow imo, is how quickly you can make typical preset sounds when first demoing a synth.
That would not be my criteria... for me it would be, how quickly I can make whatever sound I want, typical or not, once I know the synth well.

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pdxindy wrote: I would happily trade the waveform displays to not have to switch between tabs to edit Env's/LFO's. I hate tabbing...
If the four envelopes and eight LFOs were all laid out on the front GUI you'd need two or three monitors. Or you'd have to switch front pages. Are there other alternatives?
pdxindy wrote:for me it would be, how quickly I can make whatever sound I want, typical or not, once I know the synth well.
It takes me a couple of minutes to make a pluck, a pad, or a bass. Complex sounds a little longer. The Bladerunner synth and Gary Numan's Cars/Airlane synth each took about 10 minutes of fiddling to get as close as possible. But for me, workflow isn't just about time; it's more about ease of use. I can find a wavetable, put a filter on it, modulate the filter, the warping, the wavetable position, the detuning and blend, tweak the envelopes and LFOs, all within seconds, yes, but because of the layout and ease of use of drag and drop. Coming up with new sounds is quick and easy.

And that's because Serum suits me. Other people will find that Massive is so much easier to use. And others are likely to claim that Sylenth1 has an unbeatable workflow. Or whichever synth. Not their favourite synth, their favourite to work with.

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garryknight wrote:One thing that really enhances Serum's workflow hasn't been mentioned yet. That you can see the waveforms or wavetables animating each time you press a key, and so you can also see what effect your warp modes have. You can also see indicators of which part of the envelope is currently in effect all the way through, and precisely where in the LFO cycle you are. It makes envelope shaping and LFO designing really simple. Add in the response curves and scaling factor for each of the 32 (currently) modulation slots, and, IMO, it's unbeatable.
Quite true. There are a lot of very clever and thoughtful elements to Serum's interface.
pdxindy wrote:
garryknight wrote:One thing that really enhances Serum's workflow hasn't been mentioned yet. That you can see the waveforms or wavetables animating each time you press a key, and so you can also see what effect your warp modes have. You can also see indicators of which part of the envelope is currently in effect all the way through, and precisely where in the LFO cycle you are. It makes envelope shaping and LFO designing really simple. Add in the response curves and scaling factor for each of the 32 (currently) modulation slots, and, IMO, it's unbeatable.
I would happily trade the waveform displays to not have to switch between tabs to edit Env's/LFO's. I hate tabbing...
I totally get that. But I think the ability to see the shape of other Envelopes in the background is a nice compromise -- it would be nice if that could be added to the LFO panel as well.

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The thing i like in Mitosynth (yeah, it´s a tiny iOS synth) above most desktop plug-ins about workflow is that the modulation works with dials.
Means i have always a min. and max. setting from 0.00-100.00% for each parameter.
I can set the shape of the LFO (or other kind of modulation source) and set an exact min. and max. value for it. Then i can open another dial for the min. and/or max. value and modulate that too with a min. and max. value. You can do this of course with other synths too via offset etc. but it´s terrible to fine tune for me compared to this.
I also like that i have a visual feedback then how the shape of the LFO change when i modulate the LFO with another LFO.
Oh, and otherwise i think the Equator synth (comes with a Seaboard) has the fastest and easy way to assign a ton of modulations with good visual feedback without killing CPU/GPU as well.

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Last edited by egbert101 on Mon Feb 19, 2018 9:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Indeed. The most recent synth i saw this on was VPS Avenger.

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chk071 wrote:Indeed. The most recent synth i saw this on was VPS Avenger.
But it was not usable on my system (sold it).
Too much tabbing too.

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The best workflow is the one that matches how you like to work.

A DAW analogy: people love Logic, I frickin hate its workflow. Then again, I use REAPER so probably shouldn't talk :hihi:. To each their own

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nineofkings wrote:The best workflow is the one that matches how you like to work.

A DAW analogy: people love Logic, I frickin hate its workflow. Then again, I use REAPER so probably shouldn't talk :hihi:. To each their own
Indeed, all that is small talk! :P

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Michael L wrote:IZotope Iris 1 and 2 - you draw on the spectrograms, see all the layers at once, map them to your keyboard, modulate with a click, visually clear and quite unique, just like every synth.
Gotta say Iris is near the top of my short list.

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nineofkings wrote:The best workflow is the one that matches how you like to work.

A DAW analogy: people love Logic, I frickin hate its workflow. Then again, I use REAPER so probably shouldn't talk :hihi:. To each their own
I totally feel you on this. Although I was joking about Reaktor, it does trigger my engineering POV. I often find that the fastest way to a sound is to just quickly throw together the synth that has just the features that I need.

This may seem silly unless you understand what is actually being minimized here, it's not the work to create the sound initially, it's the surface area for dealing with that sound and its close cousins. I have about 100 special purpose synths including those that I've modified from existing ensembles. I create patches much faster through this hierarchical perspective. First I select the group, e.g., pads, then the style, e.g., soft slow pads, and then choose the synth that has the features that I want to work with. Now, I can create many patches in a short period of time because there are very few controls. If I start to go in a direction that I need a new feature, I can just add that feature and all of my existing patches will simply not change the settings of that new feature. I can then save this synth as a new special purpose synth in my collection.

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