Is it worth getting Serum if I already have Synthmaster?

[KingTuck]

When people talk about "weight in the low end" from one synth to the next, is this the sort of thing that mystifyingly defies measurement? Or is it a legitimate claim? Not personal, just a whole lot of subjective stuff thrown about on this forum. I'd like to know how/why this would differ and how one would measure the particulars.

I would use my ears. But seriously, you don't think that synths differ in regard of bottom end? I think they differ massively. Also regarding "snap" which has been discussed in another thread here, and which is IMO also an important thing for many bassy synth sounds. Largo e.g. has a bass boost option, which has a massive influence on low end weight. You might wanna check it out for an example.

Bass boost would just be an EQ running on the signal before output. Before that point the amplitude of the different harmonics should be relatively comparable from one synth to the next, with the fundamental being the loudest. "Snap" normally refers to envelope curves exclusively. Synths normally differ in sound for me in filter characteristics, envelope characteristics, general design. I have a tough time conceding to "just use my ears" when something like this should be an easily measured phenomenon.

How exactly would the analog waveforms sound more "sweet"? Despite slight differences in phase (usually they'd be free running) a sawtooth is a sawtooth is a sawtooth. At least on any competent modern synth. There's room for some playing around but not a massive amount of room and that usually doesn't exist in the realm of something that people ever measure and prove on KVR in regards to the lower frequencies/low end weight. It's a fact that people have expectations that skew their perception, this can come from anything including GUI design and forum talk. I'm curious if this is one of those cases for why people don't want to measure this kind of thing.

[Robmobius]

How exactly would the analog waveforms sound more "sweet"? .

With a sprinkling of magical fairy dust of course...

[chk071]

When people talk about "weight in the low end" from one synth to the next, is this the sort of thing that mystifyingly defies measurement? Or is it a legitimate claim? Not personal, just a whole lot of subjective stuff thrown about on this forum. I'd like to know how/why this would differ and how one would measure the particulars.

I would use my ears. But seriously, you don't think that synths differ in regard of bottom end? I think they differ massively. Also regarding "snap" which has been discussed in another thread here, and which is IMO also an important thing for many bassy synth sounds. Largo e.g. has a bass boost option, which has a massive influence on low end weight. You might wanna check it out for an example.

Bass boost would just be an EQ running on the signal before output. Before that point the amplitude of the different harmonics should be relatively comparable from one synth to the next, with the fundamental being the loudest. "Snap" normally refers to envelope curves exclusively. Synths normally differ in sound for me in filter characteristics, envelope characteristics, general design. I have a tough time conceding to "just use my ears" when something like this should be an easily measured phenomenon.

How exactly would the analog waveforms sound more "sweet"? Despite slight differences in phase (usually they'd be free running) a sawtooth is a sawtooth is a sawtooth. At least on any competent modern synth. There's room for some playing around but not a massive amount of room and that usually doesn't exist in the realm of something that people ever measure and prove on KVR in regards to the lower frequencies/low end weight. It's a fact that people have expectations that skew their perception, this can come from anything including GUI design and forum talk. I'm curious if this is one of those cases for why people don't want to measure this kind of thing.

I think you're entering DSP territory here, and devs should be able to tell. A sawtooth isn't a sawtooth though. Just drop your favorite oscilloscope on a synth track, and see how different they are. Dune 1 and Sylenth1 have almost perfect sawtooths, Z3TA, Spire and the Virus have a sine wave like touch to the sawtooth, which already gives the wave itself a lot of beef. So it's not all about "EQ", there's also other stuff which gives low end. Square waves are very different too. E.g. the one in Monark is incredibly beefy. In the end, it's a matter of the synth engine itself also i guess, apart from the difference in waveforms, and the envelope and filter characteristics.

[Dasheesh]

You guys predictably and reliably always filter out the low end anyway so wtf.

[Robmobius]

You guys predictably and reliably always filter out the low end anyway so wtf.

Another gem...

Yeah, personally I like to take out all the low end, and just leave a nice distorted sheen at around 200000000000k - for a really 'sweeeeet' and thick as fek bass.

[stillshaded]

I prefer the sound of Synthmaster to Serum. Serum sounds very vanilla and digital to me. Not a bad synth by any stretch, just not my favorite.

[Synthetic Wav]

I don't know Synthmaster but serum is excellent, you can easly create usefull wavetable with it ,i don't know wich vesion is the demo but their is lot of great features added from beta to beta , if the demo is a old version there is lot of cool stuff missing , like resampling to create wavetable, text to speech to wavetable ect... the oversall sound can be digital in a good way, with some warmth and polished.

[KingTuck]

The Serum sound is a tricky pickle. There's nothing overtly unusual about it except it's oscillators aliasing as little as they do. After that the character of it is primarily it's filters. People differ on this, I kind of......I don't know...almost really hate the MG Low 24 filter in Serum. Similarly unimpressed by the French and German LP. I just don't like the tone. It's a taste thing, so really demoing it is the easiest way to figure out what you're into.

The clarity of it's sound is an ambiguous combination of those things. It's why people say it's a kind of "razor sharp" sounding synth.

[deastman]

As I've mentioned before, I think what people negatively react to with Serum is the brightness of the oscillators. With additive synthesis, it is very easy to add a ton of upper harmonic content. That is what people usually associate with bright or brittle. Basic waveforms emphasize the fundamental, and quickly fall off from there. Try starting with a saw, square, or triangle waveform, and begin subtly tweaking the partials from there. Then roll off the filter a bit (I prefer 12db filters myself) and you might be much happier with the results.

[excessional]

This is such an odd topic.
I wouldn't usually seek to compare these two synths. To me they operate in different sectors of the market.

Synthmaster is the established budget power synth. In and around the $50 price point it has little competition. Perhaps only zeta+2 which you can sometimes pick up on sale at around that price. It has shedloads of diverse and useable patches and lots of internet how to vids (including Sadowick's) to use as a resource. Its engine might be a little long in the tooth but it's still supported and undergoes ongoing development, that continually increase its capabilities. Really as a general use budget softsynth it has no serious rivals.

Whereas Serum is a brand new full price Sylenth killer with a snazzy 3d waveform display. It's firmly targetted at Sylenth's EDM market. If you had to compare it to the 'sound' of any older budget synth, you'd probably look at Hybrid 3, which is apprently $30 at the moment.

Just a weird weird thread really
..

[Synthetic Wav]

it's closer to massive but i get what you mean with serum targeted at edm market,the strenght of some wavetable synth and specially serum as you can create your own one is that it's easy to make unic sound, many producers try to push things forwards in edm and naturally they will enjoy tools like serum ,the programing experience make it really quick and easy to produce unusual sounds , the sound is also good to sit in edm modern production without hassle ,the source sound you get is easy to work with, it sort of thin with no mudd and polished, a intresting caractere (but can be brittle).. soundwise it's a bit similar to diversion and largo but overall maybe not as cold as largo.

[yessongs]

Synthmaster effen rocks. It is far more powerful and can do more than most all other synths. The Nori sounds that he developed from famous classic tunes and famous artists is enough to make it a must have synth for those of us who want that nostalgic sound of our keyboard heros. The overall library of sounds available in synthmaster makes it a must have and one of the top synths of all time. The polls show that synthmaster is extremely popular and if someone was not here on KVR sharing how great it was I probably would not have investigated it and been shocked by how good it turned out to be. There are soundcloud demos to listen to it for hours and if you are not convinced after that then I think you need to listen to them again. They are extremely useful presets and I can limit my usage to just synthmasters library of presets and be very happy, of course I got all the banks.

[Ingonator]

For me Serum is one of the most uniinspiring synths ever (I have checked the demo version multiple times so at least i tried to like it...) and compared to it i would go with Synthmaster anytime.
I really do not like the basic sound of Serum (especially compared to the Waldorf and PPG softsynths) and teh CPU use is just insane IMO. Just having close to zero aliasing does not make a graet sound. The old PPG Wave synths and the correpsonding plugins had lots of alising but they had tons more character than Serum has. Besides that the filters in Serum are not really great too IMO.

Compared to this e.g. Waldorf Nave sounds great IMO and is uses a very low amount of CPU, even with Unison used. Besides taht it also has the "Überwave" feature for creating "Supersaw" like sounds. Of course Synthmaster could do such sounds quite nicely too (either with the Unison or using the additive oscillator with some detuning added).

AFAIK Synthmaster was one of the first softsynths (besides Zebra) where you could create a custom wavetable inside the plugin (without an external tool). you could only use up to 16 waveforms for a wavetable but usually this is enough and the interpolation seems to work nicely.
Besides many other features that are not included with Serum Synthmaster could also do vector synthesis including 2D envelopes (comparable to a Korg Wavestation and the Ptophet VS).

Synthmaster also has a proper sample playback engine including the use of multisamples. In Serum AFAIK samples could be only used with a "trick" when replacing the Npise sample with another one.

Last but not least i got enough other wavetable synths that there is no need for Serum at all here (e.g from Waldorf, PPG and Synapse Audio).

[MillerSam]

@ Ingonator: Also Serum doesn't have a Arpeggiator / Sequencer but Synthmaster has and much more

[Pyrotek45]

@ Ingonator: Also Serum doesn't have a Arpeggiator / Sequencer but Synthmaster has and much more

Actually Serum does. It uses the lfo to pitch as an arp.