Soft Synth With The Best Workflow?

[Kalamata Kid]

My favourite work flow is with NI Massive. It has the best design IMO and the signal flow/modulations are very clear.

Other great synths with their workflow are:
- Absynth 5 (although it is seems complex, but the workflow is great).
- FM8 (the best FM Matrix)
- Sylenth1 (easy to work with. Nice workflow)
- Retrologue 2
- Razor

Absynth?
I love Absynth. Still trying to learn it. It is huge and difficult to make it simple.
I do however really like that it has two ways to make adjustments, gross and fine.
Also has a Visual routeing scheme.
Also has a great graphical randomizer.
So yes I agree with you.

[EnGee]

Well, Absynth has a very nice patches page. The routing is very clear.

The envelopes are the best I have seen, very flexible. However, Absynth needs update badly! The GUI and the sound (filters, anti aliasing oscillators, ... etc).

[Ridan]

As the title suggests: Which soft synth has the best workflow?

If by "best workflow" you're referring to a synth that's the quickest/easiest to get around in general i'd go with Hive. Possibly Serum.

Anything with drag and drop capabilities will take you to where you want to go a lot faster than "right click, assign, new window, adjust, rinse, and repeat." Nothing wrong with that system imo (kind of prefer that actually), but if you have a certain sound in your head that you want to lay down ASAP for whatever reason, drag and drop is one of the fastest ways for making that idea actualized and being able to move on to the next.

[3Side]

For workflow ? Its all about how much time you put on your synth.

If you ask me, the easiest to understand ? Sylenth1/Serum/Massive, only because you have million of tutorial on youtube

To answer your question: I think Massive is still the #1 for workflow, just because of the color codes/number/macro wich make it easy to see what kind of modulation is going on without looking at the "matrix". Almost everything is in your face and this is really important for sound design from preset patch

or maybe its just because I use massive alot and I know the synth Inside/out like I do with Ableton

Avenger is really great too but a little much more complex because of the endless possibilities. (im still learning it)

SynthMaster One is great but it lack of color codes (still learning it)

Final answer: NI Massive

I have big big HUGE respect for Steve Duda (Serum), Bulent Biyikoglu (SynthMaster) and Manuel Schleis (Vengeance) and also David from plogue.com because this guy is a Genius too

[Daru925]

Massive, drag and dropping enveloppes instead of having to open a combo box, can experiment on several ideas and switch beetween them in notime. The performer with morphing...
Massive isn't my favourite synth by the way.

[kv331]

SynthMaster One is great but it lack of color codes (still learning it)

hi there, how would you like the color codes to be in SM One ?

[xalama qo]

Must agree, MASSIVE is a pleasure to work with. You can see a whole lot of what's going on at a glance. I don't know why more devs haven't adopted the "color-coded mod source with corresponding color ring around the destination knob" approach, it's incredibly intuitive.
I'd love to see this implemented in other synths. Hopefully KV331 will go for it in SynthMaster One and 3

[Rcl]

Helm has a fantastic workflow for lots of modulations and Tals Juno emulation is superior for standard synth stuff.

[W23]

FxPansion Strobe 2 has a surprisingly simple workflow. The graphic screen and transmod indicators make it really easy to follow what's happening in a patch

[3Side]

SynthMaster One is great but it lack of color codes (still learning it)

hi there, how would you like the color codes to be in SM One ?

I think modulation ring color need to be right in your face when you switch preset. Let's say LFO 1 in yellow, MOD ENV 1 in orange, AMP ENV 1 in red, AMP ENV 2 in pink, MOD ENV 2 in purple, LFO 2 in blue...

If the modulation on the preset is already active to X amount, I should be able to see the ring color around let's say the Filter knob without having to click on MOD ENV 1 to see it when it is set for amount of 20% for exemple. Every modulation ring knob color should be right in your face without having to select the Enveloppe to see the modulation amount on the knob. (like in NI Massive ) Let's say you have LFO1 and MOD ENV1 on Filter Cutoff set to 30% each, you should see two ring around the CutoffFilter knob, one in yellow wich represent LFO1 and the other ring in Orange wich represent MOD ENV1. The synth will maybe look a little more ugly, but will be really great for workflow, and with the right skin It can look great

I think this feature will be hard to implement on SM one because you will have to redesign the knob size to let each knob have 6 color rings around it Unless you max it out to 3 modulations by knob

My English is terrible

[3Side]

Must agree, MASSIVE is a pleasure to work with. You can see a whole lot of what's going on at a glance. I don't know why more devs haven't adopted the "color-coded mod source with corresponding color ring around the destination knob" approach, it's incredibly intuitive.
I'd love to see this implemented in other synths. Hopefully KV331 will go for it in SynthMaster One and 3

100% agree with you

[urlwolf]

Diversion.

[Jax Pok]

That one from Fabfilter has an interesting workflow and Zebra with the modular massive reskin is great.

[3Side]

I aint no kidding with color code, color code = best thing for workflow

[asi4]

I think NI Massive and FM8 has best workflow.
About Massive there is already much written and I agree with everything.
As for FM8 I think FM-synthesis has never been easier than with FM8.
I also like DiscoDSP Discovery workflow - it's just simple, there is nothing extraneous. Then I need to make a quick patch I use it.