Why is ACE so much less popular than others?

[coincidental]

ACE is tops. I like the extra bells and whistles that Bazille brought in, but ACE just sounds plain good with almost no work at all. There's loads you can do with almost no patching at all. It's the perfect synth for just quickly dialling in what you need - very much in the same way one might have done with a MiniMoog or similar. You don't even need to stack voices (although you can ) and there's plenty of seasoning you can add (crosstalk, slop, low levels of chorus) to get a detailed, "present" tone. Yes, more filter options would be welcome, but Urs is gradually adding nifty features too. Maybe another envelope? Another multiple or two? A CV slot?

Stay away from voice stacking and loooong envelopes and you can get good polyphony/CPU use on modest machines, and still enjoy the tone

[Dasheesh]

I don't know if I agree with you on LUSH101.

Well, you start with a timbre, animoog style. A sampled waveform. It has that hi frequency ultra sheen. It could be a compounded situation in which a wave form is blended into the sampled waveform like spire, but it would probably be some kind of saw if that is the case.

[chk071]

Still don't get that sampled waveform thing. There are synth plugins which are said to be sample based (Rapture e.g.), and there are synth plugins which are said to generate the waveform. And Z3TA for example gives you the wave shaping even, so something has to be calculated, also if you morph between waveforms. From all i gathered, yes, there are plugins which are sample based, but the majority of synth plugins as far as i always read is not. Well, maybe a dev can shed a bit of light on this. I'm pretty confused that you say everything is sample based.

Edit: Note also that there had been a huge discussion about the Roland Gaia SH-01 synthesizer, because it was sample based, and people complained about it as it gave you no control about unison spread due to it being sample based.

[aMUSEd]

ACE is ACE

[ThomasHelzle]

It's silly really, but what puts me off most with ACE is the internal pre-routing.
If I use a modular, I want to use a modular.
Would be great to have a button to toggle that off.

Cheers,

Tom

[moscom_electronics]

It's silly really, but what puts me off most with ACE is the internal pre-routing.
If I use a modular, I want to use a modular.
Would be great to have a button to toggle that off.

Cheers,

Tom

I share a similar feeling and I am waiting for this too, I guess that this is the highly-expected Berlin Modular of which ACE and Bazille are apetizers...

And if I had a completely crazy dream to express, it would be that not only U-He releases Berlin Modular, but that they do it à la Nord Modular, i.e. a modular bearing the U-He stamp in terms of quality with a DSP module on which you can load the patches you have designed on the computer. That would be fantastic! But... I know it is only a dream...

[hyperscientist]

Thank you everyone - these are fantastic answers!

ACE was pretty much my first synth and I did some quite extensive courses (about synthesis) and so I've spent a lot of time with it and somehow ACE is pretty obvious to me now.

I myself also find pre-routing to be more annoying than useful - it takes away pleasure of building the sound from the scratch, it makes interface more confusing (it is not as obvious as proper modular is), but most of all it made learning the synth so much harder for me.

While pre-routing is obviously useful on ARP 2600 (because routing with cables takes significant amount of time, and cables) it makes little sense in digital domain.

Proper "init" button (possibly with dropdown for template selection) would be so much better in every aspect I can think of.

In the same way I would argue that "effects" section isn't really necessary in a plugin and it takes some precious space, but hey - some surely find this one useful

And a choice of new filters and maybe oscillators would be fantastic - only other feature I could think of.

I will stick to ACE then, thanks!

[2ZrgE]

It's silly really, but what puts me off most with ACE is the internal pre-routing.
If I use a modular, I want to use a modular.
Would be great to have a button to toggle that off.

Cheers,

Tom

I found it to be a good compromise to get sounds going without too much knowledge about modular synths (though basic template presests like in the Arturia Moog Modular would be a solution to that).

A 'pro' button would be a good idea either, but maybe too much code would have to be changed for that. It's a great synth, especially for that price.

[Apostate]

As I mentioned, Ace is an excellent synth with a killer sound and a friendly price. The only thing I can see possibly being wrong with it is if it's keeping you from really digging into Bazille. I personally ended up happy that I saved up for Bazille, and that feeling was reinforced when (directly due to this article) I once again demo'd ACE. Of course, nothing wrong with owning both...

but I hesitate to reccomend owning ACE without Bazille. That idea just doesn't sit well with me. Ace is far from a good substitution for Bazille, at least in my basically worthless opinion.

I'd be interested and welcoming toward any countering opinions on this.

[Gonga]

Bazille is an amazing synth.

When I discovered ACE a few years ago, I discovered the first softsynth I ever played that sounded almost as good as my old analog (and better in many ways). It was a watershed moment for me, and I began to shift completely over to software synths at that time. The only thing missing for me was a blasting attack. I still feel that's ACE's main point lacking as compared with other synths is the lack of a ballsy attack. However, I'm not sure what the reason might be - it could be the oscillators or filters as much as the envelopes - I don't know. And this is just my bias - toward old school. ACE offers so much more, and I'm always leaning toward just a simple feature set with awesome sound...hmm. That's a idea for another U-He synth. Super-simple version of DIVA with one screen?

ACE is different. ACE is the closest thing to my old Roland analog I've ever played (well, besides DIVA?). It has that sweet, "can't do anything wrong" tone. When I need an old-school analog sound and I want it to sound absolutely sweet and perfect, with no aliasing or nasty distortion, ACE is ace. And, of course, with audio-rate modulation, you can do so much more than the old synth!

That sweet sound is a blessing and a curse. With only two oscillators, ACE can't compete with the likes of DIVA or Massive when it comes to ballsy sounds. Specifically, the oscillators are pure-sounding, and there are only two, whereas with DIVA there are three and even one can sound much meatier. For me, ACE can't be used for screaming sync-swept, distorted lead sounds. So perhaps adding one osc, particularly one modeled off DIVA's "Moogish" osc, could help it's flexibility a lot. Not that there's anything wrong with a synth having it's own character. But I recall Urs talking about a Berlin Modular with an expanded ACE being a part of that. If so, my 2 cents would be to add that third osc with a more ballsy character (and a second osc to sync!). But please, don't take my sweet ACE oscillators away!

[Apostate]

Interesting post. I guess if one wants a seriously ballsy, mean tone then the FM8 or Z3ta might be a better option; you can get pretty darn ugly and in your face with those. When it comes to modular though, I'm not positive how down and dirty you can get in that realm besides Bazille at its most "FM"-y.

Amusedly awaiting criticisms of my descriptions.

[thetechnobear]

I really like ACE, its simple to use, and has a great sound...

It's silly really, but what puts me off most with ACE is the internal pre-routing.
If I use a modular, I want to use a modular.
Would be great to have a button to toggle that off.

+1
I don't mind the pre-routing, but find it confusing, I prefer explicit and complete(you cant route ADSR) routing.

Id love to see a new version of ACE, that perhaps took these things from Bazille... but kept the ACE sound

[Stollmeister]

It's silly really, but what puts me off most with ACE is the internal pre-routing.
If I use a modular, I want to use a modular.
Would be great to have a button to toggle that off.

Cheers,

Tom

I agree with this as well!
The normalized connections actually makes the synth harder to use for me.

[ThomasHelzle]

Interesting that I'm not the only one with this problem.
I know that u-he was trying to make modular easier with the pre-routing and reduce the number of cables needed for "normal" stuff, but IMO, it has actually the opposite effect. I guess it would be quite hard to somehow show what's going on and which background connections are currently active in the GUI, therefore I personally would go for a simple switch between pre-routing and no pre-routing as default in global preferences (Presets need to be able to overwrite it so that old presets still work).
I would imagine that it is not too hard to do, since the switches should be already there - they are already disconnected when cables are used on the related inputs, but I of course have no real clue how the structure looks and works and "not hard to do" is a very relative term when it comes to code...

I personally think ACE would be twice as good and usable with such a switch.

Soundwise it definitely is ACE

Cheers,

Tom

[Stollmeister]

For me, not only is the normalized CV connections making the synth harder, but all these modular soft synths (and this bothers me with Bazille as well) have a tendency to avoid cables for gates. I would want the soft synth modular to be just as modular as my hardware Eurorack modular. This opens up more possibilities, but it also makes the synth easier to understand. No connections, gate or CV, are made behind the scenes.