Recomended low CPU impact VST instruments?

[optofonik]

Diva, Ace, even Zebra and Tyrell to an extent; for sure Synth Squad, some Reaktor stuff, sometimes even Circle. It seems like everything I've recently purchased or demoed wants to run my CPU into the ground.

I've got Win64 and J-Bridge so I'm not terribly concerned about x64 exclusivity in this thread but, perhaps, it would be nice. I don't want to limit myself to it though. As long as it works with J-Bridge or Cubase's included bridger I'm good.

I'm also not terribly concerned about indie vs large companies à la any u-he vs NI type vibe as long as QC is relatively strong and customer service is relatively responsive (I've had good experiences with both u-he and NI).

Any thoughts?

[V0RT3X]

Im looking into purchasing Tone2 software. It says right on their product info pages that they use very little CPU.


Other plugins that are good are these, that I know of.


- Korg Legacy Edition plugins

- Aujdoo Helix

"19 voices, 1.6% CPU hit (@3GHz), This is not a joke." - Taken from their Product info page.


- Rewiring Reason into a project

- Sylenth1 ( no major updates in a while )

[V0RT3X]

Here are a few others


Fabfilter Twin 2

Gforce Oddity

[BDeep]

Here are a few others


Fabfilter Twin 2

Gforce Oddity

I was more or less in the same boat, even Massive and Circle can be too consuming if too many instances are used, I got Twin2 to compensate, it's really low on CPU. Btw, on both Circle and Massive it helps to turn the maximum number of voices down.
But yeah, I'd like to run Aalto, DIVA and the likes, but they're a bit much for my ancient laptop... So I see the problem

[BDeep]

FM8 is another one that's easy on the CPU, albeit not in the same vain as the synths you mentioned.

[U-o]

Sytrus
Bass Station
V-Station
Zebralette (free)

[Peter999]

OP-X PRO-II is relatively light on CPU for today's standards.

This is a session using 21 instances of OP-X PRO-II in Reaper x64 which gives about 10% of CPU load (read from the task manager) in an i7 920 machine:



Here are some further tests using the same session including other sequencers and a low power core 2 duo machine:



The used session can be downloaded
here.

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[Lotuzia]

NI FM8, Imposcar, Korg analog and digital editioncome to my mind.

[EvilDragon]

Synth1, Fuzzpilz Oatmeal, Elektrostudio synths.

[george]

Phantom (FM) incredibly CPU efficient,
Corona (VA+WAVE),
Discovery (VA) or
Discovery Pro (VA+WAVE) (the latter using less than 16 voices).

[AstralExistence]

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=330954

[gamecat666]

Phantom (FM) incredibly CPU efficient,
Corona (VA+WAVE),
Discovery (VA) or
Discovery Pro (VA+WAVE) (the latter using less than 16 voices).

[do_androids_dream]

synth1
linplug alpha
audjoo helix
vaz plus

these are the ones that spring to mind as being outstandingly low cpu even when the polyphony is ramped up.

[Bronto Scorpio]

U-He Filterscape VA uses almost no CPU even on my ancient system
I only got it yesterday but Synthmaster also seem to be very CPU friendly

Cheers
Dennis

[BDeep]

... Synthmaster also seem to be very CPU friendly

Cheers
Dennis

That's weird, when I demoed Synthmaster I actually found it to be a bit too CPU heavy to be my goto synth (which I was after). Could very well be a Mac/PC thing though, I believe some synths run smoother on one platform, others on the next.