Is it worth getting Serum if I already have Synthmaster?

[rob_lee]

Know what else Synthmaster is really good for?

House.

House House and more House, Synthmaster is great for this genre. It can do so much more than that BUT it's a House/Techno synth for my own personal use. You can get quality sounds out of this synth in a few minutes, it excels at pad sounds too. IMO it's a synth definitely worth investing in and taking the time to learn, developer is a really really good bloke too.

Your name looks familiar. Are you one of the Synthmaster factory sounds gurus?

Yes Iv'e programmed some sounds for the Synthmaster factory banks.

[Nokenoku]

The real question is:
Do you like/dislike the sound of Serum or the sound of its presets?

I haven't really had the time to dive into it, but to me the presets in Serum seemed a bit "not so impressive". I was especially dissapointed by the pads ... pretty sure, this synth can do better.

[BBFG#]

You might want to consider the absence of Xfer on this thread a factor in purchasing?
(Not saying the presence of KV331 on a thread where the OP already owns it makes them any better).
Both have a history of disappearing unless they're on a promo run.

[ObsoleteAcc99]

[DELETED]

[BBFG#]

You might want to consider the absence of Xfer on this thread a factor in purchasing?
(Not saying the presence of KV331 on a thread where the OP already owns it makes them any better).
Both have a history of disappearing unless they're on a promo run.

um, and what does that matter? As long as they provide customer support when needed? They have things to do, not stay at KVR all the time like us!

Do they? Or only when it coincides with a sales push?

[wagtunes]

I seriously doubt that Steve monitors every thread at KVR especially when he has his own forum to take care of over at Xfer Records.

[kv331]

You might want to consider the absence of Xfer on this thread a factor in purchasing?
(Not saying the presence of KV331 on a thread where the OP already owns it makes them any better).
Both have a history of disappearing unless they're on a promo run.

If I needed a "promo run" (whatever that means?) I would have advertised directly , and I do that already *heavily* I joined this thread because a user made a complaint and I replied back. Why are you constantly having a negative attitude towards our company?

[V0RT3X]

You might want to consider the absence of Xfer on this thread a factor in purchasing?
(Not saying the presence of KV331 on a thread where the OP already owns it makes them any better).
Both have a history of disappearing unless they're on a promo run.

X-fer has a dedicated support forum for registered users over at their website. Also Steve is very responsive and helpful over there, so i don't see the big deal here..

[BBFG#]

I think both synths are good, even potentially great. The cheap purchase price compared to the amount of time spent to get it and keep it working though has made it one of the most expensive synths I own though. And where that one has made me weary, it has also caused me to be very wary of the other. (Mine is for sale and has been for quite awhile). I like Bulent quite well and I like the synth, but I have others that don't take nearly the amount of non play time for me to keep working.

The little things really kill it for me with this one.
And it doesn't seem to be that way for everyone. So someone else in a different location could benefit from my loss greatly on this.

As far as Serum, I'll wait and watch a bit more.
And that means the developer as much as the customer base/forums.

[excessional]

I think both synths are good, even potentially great. The cheap purchase price compared to the amount of time spent to get it and keep it working though has made it one of the most expensive synths I own though. And where that one has made me weary, it has also caused me to be very wary of the other. (Mine is for sale and has been for quite awhile). I like Bulent quite well and I like the synth, but I have others that don't take nearly the amount of non play time for me to keep working.

As far as Serum, I'll wait and watch a bit more.
And that means the developer as much as the customer base/forums.

Who'd be a synth developer. eh?
The amount of sniping Bulent takes for basically developing (and continuing to develop) more or less on his own the world's best budget synth amazes me.

First of all he has to deal with massive tools like Apostate.
And then snide sniping on the same thread that he's not instantly on-call at KVR to deal with what BBFG seems to be suggesting are his never ending string of technical issues (which none of the rest of us seem to suffer from - Synthmaster is the most stable synth I have ever used - never had a single conflict or crash with it).

On the very few occasions I've contacted Bulent with questions his responses have basically been instant and 100% helpful..

He's been supporting and improving it for years - and unlike many developer's hasn't rushed out a new versions to soak users for upgrade fees (see Rapture Pro) or or sold out and shut up shop (Alchemy).
He's just added another 300 presets and a host of new features and didn't charge a penny for it.

He also personally checks out Soundcloud tracks that tag his synth, so he has a good idea of the real world use his synth is being put to.

I hope he sells shedloads of the vst and the new iPad app...and doesn't walk away from this thread thinking that most of his KVR user base are entitled ingrates...

[chk071]

And then snide sniping on the same thread that he's not instantly on-call at KVR to deal with what BBFG seems to be suggesting are his never ending string of technical issues (which none of the rest of us seem to suffer from - Synthmaster is the most stable synth I have ever used - never had a single conflict or crash with it).

To be fair, i've read about a lot of technical complaints on these forums, not just from one person. I also don't quite get why he would be "taking a lot of snipe". Other devs aren't even present on these forums, or they don't respond defensive about their products. I consider internet forums in no way a representative average of user opinions anyway, so, basically, as a dev you don't even have to care much about the opinions expressed here, unless you want to. But "taking a lot of snipe" would mean nothing to me. I mean, the handful of people posting here can hardly been taken as a measurement, especially considering that there's a holy amount of "stinkers" among them, who don't grow tired of criticizing everything they come along. Not saying it is the case here, but there are those people. And as a dev or company it's a bad advice to listen to these people. Not only here, it's a general internet thing.

[keisuki]

Wow, this thread went to hell.

As an (ex-)owner of both they're both fantastic synths in different ways. Here's my opinion if it matters;

SynthMaster is a great "all-in-one" synth, I always made the best soundscapes with it (rivaling Absynth and Zebra), the analog filter was great too, it's a Swiss Army knife, but modulation was a pain compared to the drag and drop style of Serum, literally my only problem with it when speed is such an emphasis in my workflow. This was around the start of the year I sold it IIRC so maybe they (he?) improved modulation.

Serum had such a nice clean sound (quite "glossy" if that makes sense), perfect for Virus-like EDM sounds but not limited to it obviously. Wasn't a fan of some of the effects so I rarely used them, but the filters, the synth engine itself and modulation was a dream. But as I already have four other synths, I didn't see a point in the overlap (I like Massive's phase modulation better than Serum's FM for percussive or plucky sounds so kept it over Serum).

Support from either company is amazing (regardless of what that one guy ITT said about KV331), and that goes a long way to making the customer feel appreciated.

Serum would definitely compliment SynthMaster, but it wouldn't replace it. If you're just starting out you can't go wrong with either. Layer them both together and you can get some massive leads and basses (no pun) or gorgeous soundscapes. But it's really apples and oranges.

Edit; also never had any bugs with SynthMaster either, on Windows or Mac - I think sometimes the window would lose focus for some reason in Live and I had to click the title bar but that's it. Nothing horrible.

[BBFG#]

I don't want you to get the idea that everything is bad here, because it isn't.
The majority of my 'technical issues' come form the website user area, not the synth.
However there have been updates that broke functions for many... and times when many of us posted the issues as well as contacted support only to wonder if he did a Boris on us. But generally, once he starts the response, he responds with politeness and professionalism. The one time I spent trying to get SM to find the samples it always did before that particular update, he was very helpful.

What I do to minimize problems and time with SynthMaster is:
Wait until the newest update is done, redone by customer complaint and everyone else seems to be okay with it.
Don't try to download that file for the first week it is out.
After the usual fails in connecting to download (btw, the purchase link always works perfectly),
Contact him again and wait for him to send a link (because it's the only one that works).
Copy all patch/files before installing as they have had a history of breaking and even erasing that compatibility.
Be ready to do searches for the many places it might write different or even the same files and take care of them as necessary.
It's the little things, and if the website worked as good as it seems to for everyone else, I might be able to live with the rest. Since it seems to be a problem of my location to their server, I would say that someone else could buy mine and not see any of these problems.

But technical issues in my system. No. It just takes more time to deal with than any other program I own. YMMV

[kv331]

After the usual fails in connecting to download (btw, the purchase link always works perfectly),
Contact him again and wait for him to send a link (because it's the only one that works).
Copy all patch/files before installing as they have had a history of breaking and even erasing that compatibility.
Be ready to do searches for the many places it might write different or even the same files and take care of them as necessary.
It's the little things, and if the website worked as good as it seems to for everyone else, I might be able to live with the rest. Since it seems to be a problem of my location to their server, I would say that someone else could buy mine and not see any of these problems.

The thing is, your connectivity problems are issues that I can not reproduce on my end. and out of thousands of paid+free player users, I received the same bug report from only one other user, nobody else. (I get bug/issue reports from our website a lot, usually 10 per day). It's probably a setting on your network or firewall or virus program that's preventing you to download "dynamic" files from us. By "dynamic" I mean content that is delivered to you using the following ASP.NET code:

FileInfo fileInfo = new FileInfo(filePath);
response.AddHeader("Content-Length", fileInfo.Length.ToString());
response.TransmitFile(filePath);
HttpContext.Current.ApplicationInstance.CompleteRequest();

Maybe there are some .NET experts here who can show us if there's a bug with the above code

[zvenx]

You might want to consider the absence of Xfer on this thread a factor in purchasing?
(Not saying the presence of KV331 on a thread where the OP already owns it makes them any better).
Both have a history of disappearing unless they're on a promo run.

X-fer has a dedicated support forum for registered users over at their website. Also Steve is very responsive and helpful over there, so i don't see the big deal here..

Huge Plus one.......
Quite Frankly in my experience Steve fixes bugs at least the ones I report in four days or less on the average, and I am therefore exceedingly happy with both his product and his support.

rsp