Codex vs Serum

[4damind]

- 8 types of filters + FM Filter in Codex. ~100 filter types in Codex

You mean ~100 filter types in Serum
8 types could be enough, how is the quality? Are this analog emulations or typical digital filters?

[fluffy_little_something]

What was childish about my statement? You know, it is like with Element and Diva. Many people just don't need Diva, even though it is more powerful, of course. But for many it is too much, overkill, while Element sounds good and gets the job done fast and without squashing your computer.

What we have here is, .

I wasn't saying you were childish at all, I was saying that when you said I was childish that I was overly offended.
We're all good here fluffy

Back to Codex: The demo is still installed but may not be for much longer.

Well, it reminded me of little boys bragging what cars their dads have and how one has a few horse powers more than the other, like 300 vs 250 I don't think I said YOU were childish Maybe I should have made it clearer...

The only two things that keep me from buying Waves stuff are that 1. it doesn't run in any DAW, and 2. they have those update plans.

One of the videos posted is pretty good, he explains well how the oscillators work, including the formant stuff towards the end of the video...

[powermat]

Has anyone looked at CPU usage (with latest releases of each)?

[4damind]

VST load is high (near 20% with Unison and playing a chord with longer release times), CPU not so much (about 3% per instance with Unison on my i7 3770). The overall sound is good, the presets are good (I like them a bit more than from Serum) but the preset browser is crap (it's not really a browser it's only a dropdown menu).
The Wavetables are very usable and good assembled. The envelopes are snappy, the "punch" switch for the amp envelope is a great feature. Codex cannot create this very thick sounds like Supersaw stuff because of the very limited Unison.
The faders of the envelops are not very smooth to use and bit clumsy, I don't like it.

The overall synth.. hmm.. I think I have it uninstalled long time before the demo period ends

[fluffy_little_something]

Couldn't one simply import a supersaw output from another synth? Even from the demo version of Diva in best quality

[lachrimae]

Has anyone looked at CPU usage (with latest releases of each)?

This isn't scientific but here's what the CPU utilization showed in Live x64:

Init patch saw wave:
Codex 16%
Serum 12%

Add distortion/delay/verb/chorus:
Codex 16%
Serum 13%

Add LPF and modulate via Env:
Codex 16%
Serum: 13%

Add Sub & Noise Osc. Add Basic Shapes WT which came with Serum to Osc A & B of both Synths and modulate with LFO:
Codex: 17%
Serum: 15%

I don't think it would be fair to judge against Codex in this case because they have different feature sets. I skipped through several presets and saw Codex jump to as high as 45% CPU utilization when using the arp (which Serum doesn't have), and Serum had similar utilization with some patches that were modulating a bunch of objects including warp modes (which Codex doesn't have)...

Codex does change presets almost instantly though so hopefully Steven will be able to address that issue (which he as already acknowledged).

Edit: Unfortunately Codex doesn't show in Reaper or I would have tested there instead.

btw, when I import wave tables into Codex they sound low-passed when compared to the same WT in Serum. Maybe I'm doing something wrong...

[4damind]

16%? Which CPU?
The preset Ana Pad while playing a chord, needs here about 3% CPU

For Serum, a very heavy pad with 9x Unison and 2 oscillators like "Beating Pad" needs about 10%. But this is not comparable to Codex.
A comparable patch with 2x Unison like PD Broken Bows, needs about 6%.
I would say Serum needs a bit more CPU compared to Codex.

[lachrimae]

I'm on an ancient (compared to yours) i7-920. Not to mention Live which is a hog... Wish I was able to use Codex in Reaper before uninstalling it. Not worth the hassle though.

Btw, I must be doing something wrong with importing tables because I have the Basic Shapes WT from Serum in Codex sitting on the sine wave and am getting all kinds of harmonics.

Maybe someone can point out my error: http://i.imgur.com/lik7YvN.png

Edit: Those numbers I provided are from Live's CPU meter which may not be particularly useful except in reference to other VSTs. My actual CPU use in the Win Resource Monitor is more like 3% with Serum & 7% with Codex (Init patch). Bazille is more like 10% with Init .
All of these numbers are at 64 samples, 48KHz

[hibidy]

No, cpu load is kinda high on codex.

[phdsg vn chfhn]

...
Btw, I must be doing something wrong with importing tables because I have the Basic Shapes WT from Serum in Codex sitting on the sine wave and am getting all kinds of harmonics.

Maybe someone can point out my error: http://i.imgur.com/lik7YvN.png

...

unison?!

[lachrimae]

Unison is off so I don't think it's related to that.

I created a sine only WT in serum and imported it into Codex and still get about 6 harmonics up through 20Khz. Perhaps it's a conversion issue related to the morphing tables...

Edit: I get the same harmonics using Codex's built in Sine WT. Must be user error...

[Aiynzahev]

No, cpu load is kinda high on codex.

Oops that's kind of lame!

[ATS]

Does Serum still take a long time to load patches or was this fixed?

[paulbreeze]

It will be... It's because the precalculations...

[zerocrossing]

So, yeah. The Formant control is fairly fun to play with but no Virus killer, that's for sure. Presets are good and interesting. WT import works well. Mod Matrix is paltry. (I WANT AN OOMPA LOOMPA NOW DADDY! ) Effects control is paltry but I must say their reverb sounds a lot better than the one that comes with Serum. Unison is meek, but to me, I don't care about that for this type of synth. Overall sound is good and like someone else said, "interesting when someone wants something not as feature heavy as Serum. [ or Massive, Synthmaster, etc.]"

For $50? Sold. Worth that for it's patches. For $100... maybe. $200? Not a chance.