KVR Audio

zerocrossing · Post by **zerocrossing** » Sun Jun 18, 2017 7:15 pm

ZaBong69 wrote:
BlackWinny wrote:Currently there is an excellent wavetable synth which is brand new (two months old) and certainly way better than Serum in terms of audio quality : Synthmaster One.
If audio quality can be related to having less (digital) artifacts, Serum is better than SM One. I just loaded a Serum wavetable into SM One, and there is a sharp and unnatural drop off at higher frequencies visible in the Spectrometer - something that can, sadly, also found at some other WT synths, but not in the current top of the line synths such as Serum, Dune 2 or Zebra 2.

I get it that some people find Serum sounding "sterile" as it simply sounds brighter than many others that cut off higher frequencies (sometimes to prevent aliasing). But expensive studio monitors with linear frequency response also often sound worse as they are more revealing than your typical living room HiFi-Beauties - and nobody says that these monitors lack quality.

Serum can be a bit unforgiving and may sound cold when programmed wrongly, but I would not call this lack of quality, quite the contrary. If some people are not into really digital clean synths, there is always Diva or The Legend for diving into that warm sea of harmonic distortion

Best,

K

Agreed. People who think Serum sounds cold probably haven't gone beyond the presets or bothered to learn it. I've said it 1000x, but the French and German filters can sound really warm with a bit of gain and saturate nicely

Fotizimo · Post by **Fotizimo** » Wed Jun 21, 2017 1:12 pm

ZaBong69 wrote:
If audio quality can be related to having less (digital) artifacts, Serum is better than SM One. I just loaded a Serum wavetable into SM One, and there is a sharp and unnatural drop off at higher frequencies visible in the Spectrometer - something that can, sadly, also found at some other WT synths, but not in the current top of the line synths such as Serum, Dune 2 or Zebra 2.

I am wondering how Waldorf Nave would fare in the same test you performed? I am having a hard time finding exactly this type of answers when it comes to a quality wave soft-synth. I have trialed Serum, Nave, Synthmaster One, and get the features and functions they offer, but am finding hard data regarding the sound quality hard to come by.

I absolutely love the sound of Nave, but am holding off buying while they sort out some issues with saving presets. I do not seem to be able to make Serum do exactly what I want, but I can see the power behind it's logic. I think Nave is more my style, plus the added benefit of being able to work on patches while mobile on my iPad is just hugely beneficial to me. As well, Nave isn't anywhere near as power hungry on my system as Nave. I had 11 Nave complex Pad patches running the other day, and Reason was barely working hard. I have yet to find a single patch in Nave that adversely affects Reason to this point, while Serum is.... rather intensive. Let's just say the only reason I haven't bought Serum yet is because almost every complex pad patch brings my Daw to a crawl.

I would love to hear if someone who owns Nave knew how it performs in comparison to Serum's audio qualities?

pdxindy · Post by **pdxindy** » Wed Jun 21, 2017 6:16 pm

Fotizimo wrote: I absolutely love the sound of Nave...

Fotizimo wrote:I would love to hear if someone who owns Nave knew how it performs in comparison to Serum's audio qualities?

If you absolutely love the sound of Nave, then it just does not matter how it compares to Serum.

Fotizimo · Post by **Fotizimo** » Wed Jun 21, 2017 7:01 pm

pdxindy wrote:
Fotizimo wrote: I absolutely love the sound of Nave...

Fotizimo wrote:I would love to hear if someone who owns Nave knew how it performs in comparison to Serum's audio qualities?
If you absolutely love the sound of Nave, then it just does not matter how it compares to Serum.

I am actually holding off of the purchase for the time being as there is an identified bug in which it is not possible to save any presets without crashing the VST and the host DAW. I have written to Waldorf and they let me know that they will fix this some time in the future, but with no know time-frame. So I am going to look to buy the product once they have fixed something so critical. For now, I am just using the IOS version of Nave, which works very well.

I was just thinking it would be nice to see how Nave compared to Serum using the above testing methodologies.

zerocrossing · Post by **zerocrossing** » Wed Jun 21, 2017 8:56 pm

I finally just had a go with Icarus. Very nice! I'll tell you, Tone2 does itself a major disservice with their EDM-O-RAMA presets, but after you hit init, I must admit... it's damn good.

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Wed Jun 21, 2017 9:16 pm

Fotizimo wrote: I absolutely love the sound of Nave, but am holding off buying while they sort out some issues with saving presets.

Frankly, i always felt like Nave was a bit compromised due to CPU constraint considerations, to make it work on the iPad/iPhone. It neither sounds as detailled/organic than Largo, nor does it have the beef IMO. Largo, or also Komplexer can be wall shaking in the bottom end too. I don't find Nave's filter quite as good either. It's surely one of the best CPU/sound quality compromise you can get, but, i don't find it quite as pleasing, sonically, as other Waldorf synths. It also features the weakest VA section of the modern Waldorf synths too. Of course, it also does some things the other can't too, like, speech synthesis, and the ability to import and edit wavetables. So, if that's your thing, i guess it's a better option than the others.

pdxindy · Post by **pdxindy** » Wed Jun 21, 2017 10:45 pm

zerocrossing wrote:I finally just had a go with Icarus. Very nice! I'll tell you, Tone2 does itself a major disservice with their EDM-O-RAMA presets, but after you hit init, I must admit... it's damn good.

I find Icarus enjoyably musical. The morph options (same function as warp in Serum) are more diverse and interesting than Serum. Plus it has 2 filters and with such a diverse range of filter types, having 2 dramatically increases the sonic diversity.

I also find Icarus distinctly more satisfying to create/import wavetables and do resynthesis than Serum. Maybe there are some tricks I need to learn using Serum, but I'm not happy with my results in that area. Icarus I always seem to get pleasing results when playing around with resynthesis and creating wavetables from audio.

Oh, and yeah... I always ignore the audio demos and presets from Tone2. It's like our musical aesthetic could not be farther apart

Aiynzahev · Post by **Aiynzahev** » Thu Jun 22, 2017 3:04 pm

Lots of great options these days. My favourite is still Largo but I'd only recommend it if you're quite experienced with programming synths as it's less immediately accessible than other options.

zerocrossing · Post by **zerocrossing** » Thu Jun 22, 2017 6:16 pm

Aiynzahev wrote:Lots of great options these days. My favourite is still Largo but I'd only recommend it if you're quite experienced with programming synths as it's less immediately accessible than other options.

What? I don't understand that statement at all. Maybe I'm too deep into the "quiet experienced" camp, but it seems super clear to me. It could use a UI pass, that much is true. (who signed off on having waveforms draw on top of text boxes?

) But once you sort of get the lay of the land, it's a decent UX. I don't think I've ever felt the need to crack a manual on it. It's just all there.

The one wavetable synth that I'd recommend only to the experienced or those willing to put the RTFM time in is Zebra. That one still sometimes stumps me and sends me to the manual. Things like having modulation information embedded in wavetable presets isn't the most intuitive work flow.

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Thu Jun 22, 2017 6:21 pm

zerocrossing wrote:
Aiynzahev wrote:Lots of great options these days. My favourite is still Largo but I'd only recommend it if you're quite experienced with programming synths as it's less immediately accessible than other options.
What? I don't understand that statement at all. Maybe I'm too deep into the "quiet experienced" camp, but it seems super clear to me. It could use a UI pass, that much is true. (who signed off on having waveforms draw on top of text boxes? ) But once you sort of get the lay of the land, it's a decent UX. I don't think I've ever felt the need to crack a manual on it. It's just all there.

I agree. I really like the GUI, and it's perfectly clear to me too.

T-CM11 · Post by **T-CM11** » Thu Jun 22, 2017 6:52 pm

chk071 wrote:
Fotizimo wrote: I absolutely love the sound of Nave, but am holding off buying while they sort out some issues with saving presets.
Frankly, i always felt like Nave was a bit compromised due to CPU constraint considerations, to make it work on the iPad/iPhone. It neither sounds as detailled/organic than Largo, nor does it have the beef IMO. Largo, or also Komplexer can be wall shaking in the bottom end too. I don't find Nave's filter quite as good either. It's surely one of the best CPU/sound quality compromise you can get, but, i don't find it quite as pleasing, sonically, as other Waldorf synths. It also features the weakest VA section of the modern Waldorf synths too. Of course, it also does some things the other can't too, like, speech synthesis, and the ability to import and edit wavetables. So, if that's your thing, i guess it's a better option than the others.

Here's something I made with Nave (iPad):
https://soundcloud.com/tt_cc/just-naving-around
I think it has a nice "bottom end"

ZaBong69 · Post by **ZaBong69** » Thu Jun 22, 2017 6:59 pm

Fotizimo wrote:I am wondering how Waldorf Nave would fare in the same test you performed? I am having a hard time finding exactly this type of answers when it comes to a quality wave soft-synth. I have trialed Serum, Nave, Synthmaster One, and get the features and functions they offer, but am finding hard data regarding the sound quality hard to come by.

I absolutely love the sound of Nave, but am holding off buying while they sort out some issues with saving presets. I do not seem to be able to make Serum do exactly what I want, but I can see the power behind it's logic. I think Nave is more my style, plus the added benefit of being able to work on patches while mobile on my iPad is just hugely beneficial to me. As well, Nave isn't anywhere near as power hungry on my system as Nave. I had 11 Nave complex Pad patches running the other day, and Reason was barely working hard. I have yet to find a single patch in Nave that adversely affects Reason to this point, while Serum is.... rather intensive. Let's just say the only reason I haven't bought Serum yet is because almost every complex pad patch brings my Daw to a crawl.

I would love to hear if someone who owns Nave knew how it performs in comparison to Serum's audio qualities?

I would like to tell you, but I dont have Nave on my PC as I do not but synths with intrusive copy protection. But I have it on my iPad and love its sound. It does not really matter that some synths do some tradeoffs on waveforms, if it Sounds good to you, it sounds good. Likewise, i do not think that SM one is Bad sounding - I just dont think that it beats Serums' audio quality. Have fun with Nave, it is a very nice instrument.

T-CM11 · Post by **T-CM11** » Thu Jun 22, 2017 7:01 pm

ZaBong69 wrote:[
I would like to tell you, but I dont have Nave on my PC as I do not but synths with intrusive copy protection.

Waldorf recently changed their CP to a simple serial number (no C/R).

I haven't bought the VSTi version yet because it isn't exactly cheap and I already have the iPad version (it misses the advantages of a plugin, but the nice touch interface makes up for it a bit

)

ZaBong69 · Post by **ZaBong69** » Fri Jun 23, 2017 8:32 am

T-CM11 wrote:
ZaBong69 wrote:[
I would like to tell you, but I dont have Nave on my PC as I do not but synths with intrusive copy protection.
Waldorf recently changed their CP to a simple serial number (no C/R).
I haven't bought the VSTi version yet because it isn't exactly cheap and I already have the iPad version (it misses the advantages of a plugin, but the nice touch interface makes up for it a bit )

Thanks. Following that information, I downloaded it. I must say that the user experience on Windows is... weird. I have tons of VSTs, but this seems to be the first where I don't get the idea of how I am supposed to work. Plus, mouse movement is super slow on my system, it feels like a workout when moving one of the knobs. It is a pitty, it would have been nice to have a synth on both PC and IOS to do sound design on the move...

With Zebra 2.8 around the corner, Serum now having a zoomable GUI and Avenger going to get granular synthesis, I think I will have my hands full the next months with wavetable synths even without Nave. Your song/demo for Nave sounds great btw.

Best,

K

Soarer · Post by **Soarer** » Mon Jul 03, 2017 3:52 pm

Just bought Icarus last week and I am amazed and very exited about it! There's so much to explore and it sounds great. It really is a sound designers tool since you have a huge amount of wavetable waveforms as sound sources and an impressive amount of sound shaping options.
I can recommend searching google for free wavetables since it will give you a lot of extra material to work with.

Actually I have used Nave a lot and it has been my favorite synth for wavetable stuff - I even prefer it to Omnisphere which has pretty boring WT synthesis but does sound better overall. But Waldorf don't care much for providing customers with regular updates to ensure a stable product - Nave seriously need an overhaul.

But Icarus is infinitely more capable and it sounds way better so it has actually become my favorite synth now.

Wavetable synths