The State of Serum in 2017

[Armagibbon]

Serum does all kinds of sounds. But you gotta use the wavetable morphing and modulation options for that whole other level of movement or you're not using serum. You want warmth? Use distortion and filters and all that shit easy. Starts edgy but can be anything, that's how it is.

When I want a new sound I never heard before? I go to serum loom or zebra or just use a multiplexer or spectral whatever on some real basic shit. All the other synths I grab for a specific sound I know they can do. Serum is amazing for finding new sonic territory man. Workflow is easy

[Local Man]

My advice would be to experiment on your own instead of using tutorial videos. Read the manual so you know what does what, but then mold those capabilities to your own sound and workflow. The reason being is that most tutorials tend to cater to the most popular and played out styles of music and right now that is the edm sound that you don't seem to be very in to. It's the same with presets (which I blame for the crossover appeal of edm and how it has infected and corrupted the world's of indie rock and hip hop).
At the end of the day we all know (whether we care to admit it or not) that you can make any style of music with any synthesizer. You can make jazz with serum and you can make edm with a minimoog. Some things may take more work than others but it's ultimately about what inspires you, and if after experimenting with it serum doesn't inspire you then there you go.

[Dasheesh]

Thing about Serum is it has great oscillators but poor filters. I understand a lot of folks like the German and french filters... but that is too obtuse for me. give me two real filters in the chain before the FX.,and drop mouse head because i instantly disregard mouse head.

[layzer]

Just an example.
Serum and only Serum.
https://soundcloud.com/leap-into-the-vo ... the-palace

sounds like something any old freeware synth drenched in reverb can do. big deal.

[DJ Warmonger]

Thing about Serum is it has great oscillators but poor filters. I understand a lot of folks like the German and french filters... but that is too obtuse for me. give me two real filters in the chain before the FX.,and drop mouse head because i instantly disregard mouse head.

I don't know what you mean by "real" and "not real". Serum is not analog-modelled synth so it doesn't need pinpoint filter emulation. For all the purposes it works for me.

BTW, the thread name is somewhat misleading.

[sfxsound3]

I've never loaded a synth that I've hated as much as Serum...maybe Sylenth.

I know hate is a strong word. But it applies.

Gotta love 'em Sylenth haters! And who are YOU, boyo???

[Ingonator]

Serum might have lots of features but sound wise it just dosn't work for me. FWIW i had tried the demo version several times and always had the same result. More or less same is true for Spire that i had tested several times too.
Due to the "hype" for both here at KVR i had tested them again multiple times but oposingto other wavetable synths i used and own they did not really work for me yet.

Anyway i got Tone2 Icarus that got a built-in wavetable and waveform editor too and overall got even more features than Serum while maybe certain features from Serum might be missing. Sound wise icarus is really great for me including some really nice filters (it has more than 60 filter modes including analog models...).
As Icarus saves wavetables as a WAV file in a format compatible with Serum (and it could directly lad wavetables in Serum WAV format) i was able to impprt the wavetables in multiple other wavetable synths.

Besides that i got a bunch of other nice wavetable synths including also all plugins from Waldorf (and a hardware Blofeld). If you ar really interested to get the typical Waldorf sound you will not really get that from synths of other developers. On te other hand different Waldorf synths like e.g. Largo, Nave and PPG Wave 3.V are not similar both feature and sound wise so they are no real replacement for each other.

[liv]

Just an example.
Serum and only Serum.
https://soundcloud.com/leap-into-the-vo ... the-palace

sounds like something any old freeware synth drenched in reverb can do. big deal.

Thanks for the listen.
I think it sounds great. Deep, smooth and powerful at the same time. Personally I don't hear this character very often.

Please give an example.

[foosnark]

Anyway i got Tone2 Icarus that got a built-in wavetable and waveform editor too and overall got even more features than Serum while maybe certain features from Serum might be missing. Sound wise icarus is really great for me including some really nice filters (it has more than 60 filter modes including analog models...).

And conversely, Icarus does nothing for me, just like every other Tone2 synth since Firebird. I suppose I should check out their FM one again to see if my opinion on it has changed, but, eh.

To me Serum isn't about the filters, but then to me there's a lot more to synths than filters. Honestly I just use them like shelving EQ or as sine oscillators more often than not.

If you ar really interested to get the typical Waldorf sound you will not really get that from synths of other developers.

I agree there, nothing else sounds like a PPG.

[Yorrrrrr]

Serum sounds boring, clinical, sterile, cold, if I am allowed to used those terms (maybe they don't really mean anything). It's nice to have its many features, but in the end, the sound is what matters the most to me. But Serum keeps going very strong in 2017, I believe. So many people love it. It seems to me like it's the pinnacle of wavetable synths, but I hope the incoming DUNE 3 will keep up with it.

[p4tz3r]

BTW, the thread name is somewhat misleading.

I was hoping the discussion would hit on where Serum stands in the world of VST synths in 2017, especially outside the confines of EDM.

[generaldiomedes]

Why does ambient have to be 'warm' again? I find 'cold' ambient quite satisfying.

Anyways, you can warm up serum with the right wavetable, filter and some saturation.

[pdxindy]

Why does ambient have to be 'warm' again? I find 'cold' ambient quite satisfying.

For me, it is not a warm/cold thing as such... Serum is like a camera that every part of every picture is hyper sharp in focus... yet it is the motion blur and depth of field blur that gives lots of photos life. Perhaps that is why Serum sounds clinical to me.

[layzer]

Just an example.
Serum and only Serum.
https://soundcloud.com/leap-into-the-vo ... the-palace

sounds like something any old freeware synth drenched in reverb can do. big deal.

Thanks for the listen.
I think it sounds great. Deep, smooth and powerful at the same time. Personally I don't hear this character very often.

Please give an example.

korg M1, Vanguard and freeware:
https://soundcloud.com/layzerkvr/ramire ... red-forest

[cron]

How do people like the conversion from audio to wavetables in Serum? I'm not particularly pleased with my results... but I only tried a dozen times or so on the demo. Maybe there are some tricks to learn that I did not figure out but I like the results and capability in Icarus more.

FFT followed by wavetable morph (zero all phases) is generally a solid catch-all for 'smooth' sounding wavetables when you're just looking to capture the general 'spectral evolution' over time of your source material. The FFT import in Serum is a bit of a mystery to me, as it appears to be breaking the wav file into chunks of [FFT size] samples and that's it. I'm curious as to why it needs to operate in the frequency domain at all. The wavetable morph (zero all phases) step transforms those frames into something better resembling what FFT import IMO implies in the first place.

With regard to the OP, I've owned Serum since the intro price period, and it's a tremendous synth with a few notable disappointments.

The single biggest plus is easily the ease of programming and workflow. I didn't even bother making my customary 'alt-init' starting patches because the workflow is so fast and intuitive. It's a synth that laughs at the idea you might need a manual. Having said that the manual is excellent, and there are a few things you'd miss without reading (multiselect envelope points for relative editing with arbitrary 'magnetism' strength, .png import etc) and there are a few undocumented features lurking in there too once you start combing the Xfer forum. It really is the holy grail when it comes to ease of use and ergonomics, and while it's arguably following the template that NI's Massive set all those years back, it refines and polishes up that template in all the right places.

Of the negatives, only one is a biggie for me: one filter. Well, two filters if you count the one in the effects section, but even then that's just two filters in strictly serial configuration. No parallel filtering, or split mode where you can give two oscillators their own filter (my favourite Massive trick). It's somewhat helped by the fact that there are switches on the main filter allowing you choose which sections (Osc A and/or B, Sub, and Noise) pass through the filter, while the combined filter types allow more interesting filter shapes and can approximate a number of parallel filtering strategies. It's still a restriction I feel most times I use it though, especially given how often I used Massive's split filtering topology.

The other negative for me is that wavetables aren't interpolated during modulation. It's always a hard 'jump' between one frame and the next. While I've only noticed popping artifacts with 'difficult' wavetables I crafted specifically to test Serum's abilities in this area, it's maybe something to think about if you're interested in the whole 'ambient journey' thing wavetable synthesis is usually good at. If your modulation is slow enough and the differences between frames large enough, you'll hear 'stepped' changes rather than smooth motion. Something like Massive's Carbon wavetable, which shines when you contrast very large against very small modulations, just wouldn't meaningfully work in Serum. Xfer use spectrogram images in their marketing to show how clean their oscillators are compared to competing wavetable synths, but I'd be very interested to see how those spectrograms look with wavetable modulation engaged. I expect the picture wouldn't be quite so flattering.

Negatives aside, it's a great synth I'd still recommend in a heartbeat. It's just a joy to work with, and while it may not be the only wavetable synth you'll ever need, I'd be surprised if it doesn't become the one you always reach for first after only a few days of use.