additive synths ??

[DzAH]

Hey, got 2 questions for you:

1. What are the most advanced/("best") additive synths on the market? I dont care about if the synths got extra effects like distortions, echo, flangers etc, or if it has other methods of sound synthesis.. I just care about how well/precisely it allows you sculpture (preferably, the exact) harmonic content/envelopes you want in your sounds.

2. Where are all the additive synths?? Do developers/customers lightly regard additive?

Idk, maybe there are a lot of them, but I havnt found them yet...but, I have been searching around, and though I have found some, it seems to me that other methods are soooo much more prevalent. Why is that? ..I just find it very strange. I understand there are pros and cons regarding different methods, the subtractive might be more productive etc., but still, the additive makes so much more sense to me.

[Ingonator]

A few additive synths are:

- Camel Audio Alchemy
- Audio Damage Phosphor
- Image Line Morphine
- Disco DSP Vertigo
- Image Line Harmless
- Image Line Harmor

Alchemy and Morphine maybe have the most advanced or complex additive engines with lots of partials while Phosphor got "only" 16 partials.

One of my personal favorites is Camel Audio Cameleon 5000, the predecessor of Alchemy. Maybe you could find a license at the Market place.

Except Phosphor which is the only vintage synth emulation (inspired by the AlphaSyntauri) all of those should be able to import samples by resynthesis.


Ingo

[ariston]

It is easy to make a subtractive synth sound good. It's easy to make an additive synth sound bad. There you have the main reason for why subtractive is more popular (imo).

Ingo named a few of the good ones. I would just add NI Razor and Rob Papen Blade. These two, much like Harmless/Harmor, aim to take the pain out of additive synthesis by providing intelligent shortcuts in sound design. I.e., they apply specific techniques that enable you to edit groups of partials to achieve usable sounds, without having to adjust every single partial by hand. The advantage is usability, the disadvantage is the sacrifice of freedom.

That said, Alchemy is probably the one to go to if you prefer getting your hands dirty and building additive patches by hand.

[pdxindy]

There is also Poseidon and Cube from Virsyn

Metasynth on Mac

[ksandvik]

NI's Razor is a fun additive synth.

[Resonator63]

Blade is nice too and offers a different take on additive.
http://www.kvraudio.com/product/blade-by-rob-papen

[chk071]

ZynAddSubFx can do additive synthesis too.

[Lotuzia]

It is easy to make a subtractive synth sound good. It's easy to make an additive synth sound bad. There you have the main reason for why subtractive is more popular (imo).

Ingo named a few of the good ones. I would just add NI Razor and Rob Papen Blade. These two, much like Harmless/Harmor, aim to take the pain out of additive synthesis by providing intelligent shortcuts in sound design. I.e., they apply specific techniques that enable you to edit groups of partials to achieve usable sounds, without having to adjust every single partial by hand. The advantage is usability, the disadvantage is the sacrifice of freedom.

That said, Alchemy is probably the one to go to if you prefer getting your hands dirty and building additive patches by hand.

Yes the workflow is very important in additive synthesis. Eventually more than with other synthesis types, as you have a lot of parameters to handle.

IL Morphine happily mixes very clever specific tools AND total freedom.

This said the resynth engine is sometimes a bit weird, but for pure from scratch additive synthesis, its a real joy.

Alchemy is nice also. The resynth engine is more accurate for certain categories of signals.

LtZ

[ChamomileShark]

One of my personal favorites is Camel Audio Cameleon 5000, the predecessor of Alchemy. Maybe you could find a license at the Market place.

Ingo

Ingo, can you say a little more? I too have both Alchemy and Camel 5000 and I find there is something different about them I can't quite put my finger on with regard to additive synthesis

[Ingonator]

One of my personal favorites is Camel Audio Cameleon 5000, the predecessor of Alchemy. Maybe you could find a license at the Market place.

Ingo

Ingo, can you say a little more? I too have both Alchemy and Camel 5000 and I find there is something different about them I can't quite put my finger on with regard to additive synthesis

I guess the biggest difference is that in Cameleon you got the additive engine immediately while in Alchemy it is a bit "hidden" within the Osc section and "Edit" button. Besides that there are tons of great presets for Cameleon 5000.


Ingo

[wikter]

Maybe the problem is always the massive amounts of controls needed to tune. I think, as Arguru did some years ago, that there's a point of rupture between the first additives like organs and the later Kawais and it relies on the fact that we can't control each harmonic.
discoDSP Vertigo is a very interesting proposition, altough is funny to play with additives that let you tweak parameters with ease, like the previous Arguru plugins for Jeskola Buzz, KSynth or KAway.
Why do we need to imitate samplers with a synthesizer to say it's ADDITIVE?
I think there's a way between the hammonds and the spectral synths... a gap to fill.

Something like this would be great.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/744 ... /addit.rar

[kuzami]

Linplug Spectral
Image Line Harmor
Image Line Harmless
Camel Audio Alchemy
Audio Damage Phosphor

[mridlen]

Synthmaster
Oatmeal (you can perform additive synthesis in the oscillator draw screen (right click -> Edit/Display Spectrum), but it is not able to be automated)
Drawbar Organs are also additive, but in a fairly limited way.

[cryophonik]

Loom (Air Music Tech)

[Nokenoku]

Sytrus has additive OSCs, which then can be used to do FM.