easy/intuitive to program subtractive synths?

[ztrauq]

I recently upgraded to Logic Pro X, and one of the side effects of that upgrade was the deactivation of a number of my 32-bit plugins. I thought about getting a 32-bit bridge, but at the same time, I’m not sure I want to push forward with a lot of obsolete plugins that likely won’t see any more updates and could break further somewhere down the line.

As it turned out, there were updates available for a lot of my plug-ins, and I was able to get replacements for most of the others I was still interested in. The main one that I haven’t really been able to sort out a good substitute for is Vanguard, for a particular reason.

I know that I have synths that can match or exceed a lot of the sounds it can produce (Massive and Dune 2 being a couple of examples). The one thing I haven’t found yet is a synth that combines the capabilities of Vanguard (3osc, good waveform selection, unison, arp, decent effects) with the simple and intuitive programming that Vanguard provided. I’m not a synth expert by any means, but Vanguard was one synth where I could see everything right there on one page of the interface, and the routing and modulation were simple and straightforward enough that I knew what everything did, and what knobs to turn to change the sound in the particular way I was looking for.

I admit that when I look at the interface of something like Massive or SynthMaster, even though I know it can probably do what I want eventually, I just can’t get past the interface and the overwhelming amount of different controls to mess with. Dune 2 I find to be slightly more intuitive, but there’s still a ton of stuff on different tabs and a lot of features I’m not even close to sorting out, which makes it difficult to immediately dive in and create the sound I’m looking for. I thought about trying to work with Logic’s built-in synths, but between the tiny UI, especially obtuse designs and lack of interesting presets to start from, I haven’t been able to get much useful out of them.

I’ve been looking into it, and I’ve come up with a couple of possibilities so far. Beepstreet Sunrizer has one of the more intuitive interfaces overall, and while it doesn’t have as much in the way of oscillators or waveforms, just about all of the controls are there at a glance, and I’ve had decent success so far at tweaking some of the included presets to do what I want. (This is the only possible replacement I’ve actually acquired so far). I’ve also been looking into Carbon Electra, which also has a single-screen interface (albeit more complicated than Vanguard’s), and is specifically touted as being easy to program. I’ve also demoed Hive, although I don’t seem to get along with it well, and I’m not really enthusiastic about the sound.

So, here are my questions: For those of you who have used Carbon Electra, do you think it would fit the bill for what I’m looking for? Also, are there other synths in this category (easily programmable, one-page-design 3+osc subtractive synths) that would be worth looking into?

[rod_zero]

Check out FAW Circle, Fabfilter twin2 and uhe Hive.

[deastman]

Hive.

[V0RT3X]

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 1&t=456705

[ztrauq]

Thanks for the excellent suggestions. Circle and Twin2 especially are very much what I'm looking for in terms of interface workflow, and from the other linked thread, I also liked the interface of Sonic Academy ANA. I'm going to give those a try in addition to Carbon Electra to see which one works the best for me.

[Dúnedain]

Some time ago I asked something similar. Gave me this long list of some excellent and easy to use synths.

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 1&t=454525

[simon.a.billington]

I'm a bit biased, but I'm quite partial to Element. Sic a great rich sounding synth for just 2 oscillators. There's no multiple pages of controls, settings and configurations, what you see is what you get and it is quite, quite capable.

http://www.waves.com/plugins/element

Oh as i was getting the link I noticed its on sale at the moment. Definitely worth checking out.

[urlwolf]

Twin2 oscillators are a bit weak. The modulation is great though.

[ztrauq]

Thanks again for all of these great suggestions. While trying to decide, though, I ended up mostly going in a different direction.

To really figure out what I was looking for, I dug up my old copy of Logic, opened up some of my custom Vanguard presets, and dissected what each of them was doing (waveforms, settings, modulations, etc). Then I decided to see which plugins I could recreate them in from scratch intuitively. ANA and Carbon Electra, it turned out, didn't really have the right modulation options for some of the things I was doing - Circle was close, but not quite.

Interestingly enough, when I fired up Dune 2 to give it a try, I was able to set them up in no time at all, with sounds that were passably close (although it seems hard to replicate the precise sound of those Vanguard waveforms). I started playing around with it some more, and started to get into it more intuitively, even with the tabbed interface (and now that I'm beginning to understand what I'm doing with it, the mod matrix allows me to do what I'm looking for a lot more quickly than I thought it would). I also discovered that the wavetable/waveshaping synthesis was actually coming up with more sounds that I was interested in. I eventually picked up z3ta+2 during a recent sale, and for some reason I instantly clicked with its workflow, so I've been happily tweaking presets with it ever since.

More precisely on topic, though, thanks to another sale, I have found another synth that fits with what I was initially looking for: Novation V-Station. Admittedly, the preset browsing on it is somewhat painful, but for coming up with my own presets the controls are laid out in a way that for me is really intuitive for tweaking, and I can quickly take it towards some of the subtractive-synth sounds I'm looking for.

[skolskoly]

I'm sure you're looking for something a bit more powerful, but I think that charlatan probably has the best "ease-of-use to usefulness" ratio of any synth I've used. Other synths like Synth-master or Massive have lots of modulation capabilities, but for learning the basics, that can sometimes just get in the way.

[Michael L]

Try Guda's Euterpe XL on sale now for $20 - simple yet lots of variety & great sound. Loving the sound is a huge motivator to learn, so that should be #1. BTW, Syntorial has free tuts on Z3ta & Syn is on sale too iirc.

[V0RT3X]

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