KVR Audio

Greg Houston · Post by **Greg Houston** » Sat Oct 11, 2014 9:29 pm

The purity of Serum can make my body hum. When I'm not zoning out on body humming pure tones, I pretty much use the French LP filter exclusively now for the character it adds. Compared to the other filters it is very easy to push. Push it even harder and it starts to feedback in a very musical way.

fmr · Post by **fmr** » Sat Oct 11, 2014 10:57 pm

EvilDragon wrote:Question for Steve: will you allow subfolders for the LFO Shapes, Noises, Tables and Presets folders? This would be very much appreciated, especially for Presets and Tables...

+1

cranium · Post by **cranium** » Sat Oct 11, 2014 11:24 pm

4damind wrote:Has somebody seen a difference for the CPU usage for the latest Beta 5?

I'd like to know this as well. So far I'm still able to resist buying it and using the demo 1.0 version.

Greg Houston · Post by **Greg Houston** » Sat Oct 11, 2014 11:49 pm

I noticed a significant performance improvement with the first beta when Steve reduced the memory footprint considerably. Also, with the original release I was crashing about once every 15-20 minutes in Cubase 7.5 (Serum's most problematic DAW). With the current beta I've crashed once in ~14 hours of knob tweaking; so things are getting ironed out. Once Serum is fairly stable on the various DAWs I believe Steve has an idea for reducing preset load time, though I'm not sure about further CPU optimization.

djanthonyw · Post by **djanthonyw** » Sun Oct 12, 2014 1:08 am

V0RT3X wrote:
djanthonyw wrote:Sorry, Frank. That still sounds sterile to me. Z3TA is a perfect example of a synth that sounds digital, but does not sound sterile. Dune 2 is another. With Serum, it just sounds like a typical synth that comes with a DAW... actually I still think even the ES2 sounds better.
This is great though, it actually allows a person to "color" the sound with other plugins.

I like the "warm" sound that is often associated with added harmonic content via saturation just like the next guy, but sometimes its nice to have a synthesizer in your arsenal like Serum.

It's the same idea as something like picking the correct piano samples. You never pick one that you have to process a lot to get the desired sound. You pick what is closest from the start so that you use as little processing as possible.

billcarroll wrote:
djanthonyw wrote:Sorry, Frank. That still sounds sterile to me. Z3TA is a perfect example of a synth that sounds digital, but does not sound sterile. Dune 2 is another. With Serum, it just sounds like a typical synth that comes with a DAW... actually I still think even the ES2 sounds better.
I'd love to hear what you are talking about. Maybe post some sound examples you think sound not sterile and you feel Serum can't acheive, and see if people can match them with Serum.

No specific sound example, just the overall sound.

billcarroll · Post by **billcarroll** » Sun Oct 12, 2014 1:58 am

djanthonyw wrote:
V0RT3X wrote:
djanthonyw wrote:Sorry, Frank. That still sounds sterile to me. Z3TA is a perfect example of a synth that sounds digital, but does not sound sterile. Dune 2 is another. With Serum, it just sounds like a typical synth that comes with a DAW... actually I still think even the ES2 sounds better.
This is great though, it actually allows a person to "color" the sound with other plugins.

I like the "warm" sound that is often associated with added harmonic content via saturation just like the next guy, but sometimes its nice to have a synthesizer in your arsenal like Serum.
It's the same idea as something like picking the correct piano samples. You never pick one that you have to process a lot to get the desired sound. You pick what is closest from the start so that you use as little processing as possible.

billcarroll wrote:
djanthonyw wrote:Sorry, Frank. That still sounds sterile to me. Z3TA is a perfect example of a synth that sounds digital, but does not sound sterile. Dune 2 is another. With Serum, it just sounds like a typical synth that comes with a DAW... actually I still think even the ES2 sounds better.
I'd love to hear what you are talking about. Maybe post some sound examples you think sound not sterile and you feel Serum can't acheive, and see if people can match them with Serum.
No specific sound example, just the overall sound.

All hat and no cattle?

djanthonyw · Post by **djanthonyw** » Sun Oct 12, 2014 2:11 am

Well, I did take the time to demo it. If I was just going by a specific sound example I'd have someone criticizing me for that, now wouldn't I...

fceramic · Post by **fceramic** » Sun Oct 12, 2014 2:41 am

There's been quite a few people who think it sounds a bit clinical including me. I bought it because it was a lot of fun to program, but I'm yet to get a usable sound out of it (for me that is). I would suggest some new analog-style filters with nice saturation or a pre-filter shaper to soften the sound and bring down the clipping volume. It's not about making it sound analog, I love plenty of fm, additive and wavetable synths - I just want it to be more usable as a "dream synthesizer". Currently there's very few type of sounds I can see myself using this for.

PatchAdamz · Post by **PatchAdamz** » Sun Oct 12, 2014 3:52 am

Greg Houston wrote:The purity of Serum can make my body hum.

I think thats the company slogan for serum actually.......

goatgirl · Post by **goatgirl** » Sun Oct 12, 2014 4:05 am

PatchAdamz wrote:
Greg Houston wrote:The purity of Serum can make my body hum.
I think thats the company slogan for serum actually.......

I hope they reconsider.

arkmabat · Post by **arkmabat** » Sun Oct 12, 2014 5:03 am

fceramic wrote:There's been quite a few people who think it sounds a bit clinical including me. I bought it because it was a lot of fun to program, but I'm yet to get a usable sound out of it (for me that is). I would suggest some new analog-style filters with nice saturation or a pre-filter shaper to soften the sound and bring down the clipping volume. It's not about making it sound analog, I love plenty of fm, additive and wavetable synths - I just want it to be more usable as a "dream synthesizer". Currently there's very few type of sounds I can see myself using this for.

Hate to say I'm not super fond of the sound actually. Some big name artists have demoed it and made lots of hype but yeah... idk. The arpeggiator plugin looks very interesting though.

bitcrusher · Post by **bitcrusher** » Sun Oct 12, 2014 1:11 pm

Well, none of those big artists were paid

Being a proudly digital synth (as WT synths should be IMO) it may not be for every sound or person, but it will cut through mixes without being brash (unless you want that). A lot of presets were made by people who make aggressive styles of music, but ultimately Serum is a "patch programmer's" synth. Obviously there are ways to make warm sounds as well, which the sound designers in this thread have demonstrated quite well!

Here's the first formal review to appear:
http://askaudiomag.com/articles/review- ... erum-synth

Steve
Serum | Xfer Records

c-wave · Post by **c-wave** » Sun Oct 12, 2014 6:53 pm

djanthonyw wrote:Well, I did take the time to demo it. If I was just going by a specific sound example I'd have someone criticizing me for that, now wouldn't I...

Are you kidding me ? So you rather be general.. (i.e. vague) so that you can avoid criticism ???!!! what do you think you've been doing so far ?
Guys, is there a preference on this forum I can remove posts if owner is less than 15 ?

havran · Post by **havran** » Sun Oct 12, 2014 9:45 pm

Buncha Goldilockses on this forum, baintee? "Ooh that Quasar Synth -- it fair hogs the spectrum and don't sit well in a mix."

havran · Post by **havran** » Sun Oct 12, 2014 9:51 pm

Sampleconstruct wrote:Demo No. 1001

Nice!

It was the speed and variety of presets coming out that confirmed my impression that Serum was a sound lab that even I could play around with, with more fun than stress.

Official Serum thread!