Datsounds

If you want a similar tool to what Van Halen, Rush, and a bunch of other 80s gems were played on, it's near impossible to beat this plugin. The sale price right now is insane. The full version comes with the aax plugin so you can use with pro tools. Comes with over 10 banks of lots and lots of presets. Very happy with it.

What's not to love? Perfect 80s synthesizer for all your synthwave needs and it supports Linux natively. As long as this company keeps making Linux products they keep getting my business.

I'm getting their Yamaha OP next.

A severely under-rated freebie.

I'm not going to say it sounds exactly like the Oberheims it is emulating, but the spacey, metallic shimmer is there. It's rare for a basic subtractive synth to be able to set itself apart and sound different from others while still being useful.

My go-to for retrofuturistic spacey pads, it has a classic sci-fi sound. It doesn't require much post-processing - just a touch of the clearest reverb you have and scoop out a bit of low-mids and you're there.

The only drawback that it has is the unison-detune being limited to monophony, which is a shame because the unison sounds remarkable in pads.

Obxd sounds great, there are a ton of good patches and banks on KRV and the GUI is large enough to see and use. It's a very usable synth. I love the S&H. Thanks to the developer and all those that contributed patches.

I'm running Windows-7, 64-bit with REAPER 64-bit. I'll try it on the Mac soon.

joel in Dallas.

This synthesizer is amazing; it's a very good, useful emulation of the OB8, from what I can tell, and it has the features I want an emulation of the Oberheim synths to have: clear, lush sounds, easy interface, unison, sample and hold.

The sound is incredible. It doesn't have a sub oscillator, but I haven't been able to tell if it really needs one; you can get the synth to grind low without much of a problem, especially with the unison mode.

There's not much that can be said about the user interface and features; it has a set of filters, the SEM's resonance and cutoff features that seem to be clear enough. (I don't have an actual SEM to compare against, nor am I really concerned about an exact match, personally; I just want the thing to sound good.)

All in all, a very worthwhile synthesizer; I use it with Cubase 7.6, 64-bit windows version, and it works very well for me.