KVR Audio

Compyfox · Post by **Compyfox** » Thu Nov 08, 2012 5:16 pm

Oooo-kay. Might be post due to me being a bit depressive. But it's definitely worrying me. Maybe some of you as well.

I love synths, at some point, I even collected them. Since I come from hardware days, I'm also used to "one synth for one patch". Unless I have a multi-channel synth, but the obvious negative sideeffect is to record each channel separately.

Anyway...

I have more than a handful of synths on my HDD:
rgc:audio Z3TA, Novation V-Station, Prodyon Agonyx (not in use anymore), U-HE Tyrell Nexus 6, Ichiro Toda Synths 1, S.Kullmann's SQ8L, E-MU Proteus VX (since I also sport two hardware modules by EMU), several free stuff from mags like DUNE BE, the updated Waldorf stuff (though I do have the Steinberg Waldorf Edition as well), DiscoDSP Discovery and Phantom, Oatmeal, Atlantis, refx QuadraSID, videogame chip emulations (like Magic8bit and that Amstrad one), Steinberg's Halion Sonic SE,... and probably a lot more that I forgot.

I also have "real instrument" type VSTi like RealGuitar, Kontakt (I lost count of sample packs) and Jamstix - and I really wouldn't ditch them at all. They're definitely bread and butter stuff. I also love my E-MU XL-1 and my Yamaha MU-15, though they are rarely in use these days.

I have to admit, I'm a preset junkie, since I'm too stupid to create my own stuff and are rather an FX wizard. But comparing all these VSTi, all these synths... they all sound the same to me.

Almost all of them offer the same Bass, Lead and Pad sounds (OMG, blasphemy!), and most presets I find are usually aimed at the Trance genre only. Or Dubstep.

I was actually recently eyeing Omnisphere, maybe even XILS Lab Oxyum, Sugar Bytes Symplant. But... even here, I hear similar presets.

I had a longer ongoing discussion at a music fair with Urs Heckmann (U-HE) and company regarding "synths sounding similar", and he offered me to take a closer look at ZEBRA. I didn't, because - as mentioned earlier - I'm stupid in terms of programming. And preset browsing was all like "meh, again the same sounds". Same happened for me with Tyrell Nexus-6

I really don#t want to purge my folders. I love Synths 1, I recently updated V-Station to v2 (since it was free, so I can probably not sell it anymore), I love Z3TA's DnB presets (Dogs on Acid). I like QuadraSID for it's lofi bass and leads, I love the sound of SQ8L since I'm also a fan of Chris Huelsbeck's work (and the sound of the 80/90ies in general).

But... I don't see any light.

Especially with more and more interesting synths coming up - but I can not appreciate them.

Maybe I have the wrong presets, or I don't know what to do with the default ones. But I always catch myself going back to Synth 1, and if this doesn't help, I ditch everything and rather mess with Stylus RMX, some glitch tools and then some Kontakt based add-ons.

Am I alone with this?
How do you get out of this vicious cycle?

vurt · Post by **vurt** » Thu Nov 08, 2012 5:21 pm

how many sound designers have been involved in all the synths?
lots of different people or the same few names popping up a lot?
maybe search out new sound designers rather than new synths?

Ghostwave · Post by **Ghostwave** » Thu Nov 08, 2012 5:25 pm

I can recommend my newly-released bank for DUNE.
You can get DUNE LE Beat edition for free, which can import my bank, with few limitations.
See here for more info.

Mushy Mushy · Post by **Mushy Mushy** » Thu Nov 08, 2012 5:32 pm

Exactly. Big +1.
Pick a synth and learn it inside out.

Kriminal · Post by **Kriminal** » Thu Nov 08, 2012 5:36 pm

vurt wrote:how many sound designers have been involved in all the synths?
lots of different people or the same few names popping up a lot?
maybe search out new sound designers rather than new synths?

+1

Most ppl make the same stuff over and over, its quite tedious.

tehlord · Post by **tehlord** » Thu Nov 08, 2012 5:40 pm

vurt wrote:how many sound designers have been involved in all the synths?
lots of different people or the same few names popping up a lot?
maybe search out new sound designers rather than new synths?

Yup

But

There's also a lot of people supporting that model of operation by desperately hoovering up bank A that sounds like artist B

The people that genuinely want to hear something new are arguably the ones that sit down and make it happen.

jensa · Post by **jensa** » Thu Nov 08, 2012 5:41 pm

Compyfox wrote:XILS Lab Oxium, Sonic Charge's Synplant

Fix'd those for ya.

I dunno. I feel the same sometimes but for me, the devil is in the details AND the GUI, and if you don't feel to go down and get your hands dirty you have to rely on those soundsets pitched for the masses I guess.

But, give it some time, find out what you miss in terms of sounds and go hunting. I just love Madrona Labs' Aalto for it's quirky sounds and easy to grasp but powerful interface. I've added two soundpacks, one from Soundsdivine and one from Voltage Disciple. Both highly recommended. Then the sample and VA based CrX4 by Linplug. I got it in the KVR auction and really inspires me to tweak the presets. Just bought Curve 2 mostly for the waveform tweakability and the massive amount of presets online. Many are duds but there's a rating system for our pleasure. And finally, I loooove Phonec by Psychic Modulation. So easy to get these degraded Boards of Canada 70's trashed videotape sound. Oh la la.

Aiynzahev · Post by **Aiynzahev** » Thu Nov 08, 2012 5:41 pm

Maybe you should get into something else a little, creative sampling, granular effects, filter boxes

Sometimes it's easy to forget that synths and their presets are just the beginning of a sound, you can take it much further yourself and personalize it. I'd never make a full production myself with just raw synth sounds, I'd always modify them with different kinds distortion or some kind of sampling or processing. A synth can sound totally different with a nice high quality reverb for example, many synths have poor reverbs built in. Diva is a good exception.

Now, of those synths your mentioned:

V-station is somewhat limited and is a huge favourate with trance producers so no surprises there at the number of trance presets.

Z3ta+ is also a big trance synth, but I know there are a lot of non trance presets for that. It is probably capable of just about anything, and then some. Why not have a look at Xenos' soundsets for it?

Tyrell is free so I don't know how many good presets are out there for it.

If I wanted a synth with a lot of non-trance presets available I'd look into Zebra2. Just go on u-he patch library there are loads of interesting sets available for it.

Diva has a lot of non-trance soundbanks out for it too. Largo is another one worth checking out. Luftrum just made a new bank for it with a lot of interesting sounds, Arksun has another really good sounding bank for it. Mostly non-trance by the sounds of it.

Ultra Analog might float your boat. Check out the soundsets on their own site.

I kind of feel the opposite about soundbanks, there is so much available now, it's really great. But I agree there could be more diversity. I do what I feel I am best at, but I often try to mix in somewhat non-trancy sounds in even my trance banks, just to encourage people to spice it up a little.

do_androids_dream · Post by **do_androids_dream** » Thu Nov 08, 2012 5:45 pm

Mushy Mushy wrote:Exactly. Big +1.
Pick a synth and learn it inside out.

This. I think a synth only really reveals itself properly when you start to play with it and make your own sounds. This is also highly rewarding and fun! Pick one that you particularly like the sound of and just learn it inside out.

robogone · Post by **robogone** » Thu Nov 08, 2012 5:48 pm

Don't know that I think that way as I don't always use just soft synths. Last instrument I played was banjo and before that trumpet. Don't know I've really fired up my DAW for a few weeks as the room is a mess.

If I did only use soft synths, I don't think I'd find them all sounding the same, as there are things that really inspire me about the workflow, so that tends to create different sounding output when I use different ones. Sometimes I'm playing them on the keyboard, sometimes tweaking things, and sometimes just using a preset as is because that works for me.

Variety is there if you look for it.

V0RT3X · Post by **V0RT3X** » Thu Nov 08, 2012 5:53 pm

Compyfox wrote:
Am I alone with this?
How do you get out of this vicious cycle?

Easy force yourself how to program your own stuff.

When i started out with synthesis, i became a bit obsessive so I started doing a bunch of research about how synthesis works.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_synthesis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_filters

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subtractive_synthesis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FM_synthesis

I would highly recommend you check some of these free downloads.

http://www.synthschool.com/downloads.html

If anything grab the oscilloscope!

Good luck and have fun

jensa · Post by **jensa** » Thu Nov 08, 2012 6:04 pm

Regarding learning different synthesis Simon Cann's books are quite nice:

http://noisesculpture.com/how-to-make-a-noise

I bought Analog, FM and Sample for my Kindle app, even though I know most of it already, except for FM. Just to get some inspiration and maybe one or two eye openers.

tapper mike · Post by **tapper mike** » Thu Nov 08, 2012 6:46 pm

It's not your synths it's your playing. If you are constantly playing the same thing on different instruments they'll all sound the same.

Numanoid · Post by **Numanoid** » Thu Nov 08, 2012 7:59 pm

I'm not too good at programming presets myself.

But I find that just running synths through effects will always add drama and shine.

Taking a regular boring synth sound and putting it through an arpeggiator or even better through dblue glitch opens up a whole new picture

Nielzie · Post by **Nielzie** » Thu Nov 08, 2012 8:15 pm

If you are an FX wizard then go with that! Go and make any synth (preferable the ones you're most comfortable with) sound unique! The key is to have fun during the process

All synths sound the same to me now...