Best VST instrument for relaxation, Ambient, sounds

[pdxindy]

VA synth models were shite for years. That has never made them useless, but it absolutely says something about their quality as an instrument. That is, they would be a higher quality instrument given better models.

Yup... and for me that matters a lot. I do not much care for the drenched in reverb type ambient stuff. Of course my opinion of it does not define the music, but it does lead me to explore something besides that.

If I go sit in the forest and meditate (which I have done a lot of) the ambient sounds around me are not drenched in reverb, yet there is a lovely sense of space. My interests are more in that direction. I think the highest quality synths these days are an advantage for that. For example Bazille... it is excellent at creating what for me are ambient sounds ('natural' or mechanical) and doing so with a sound quality making it harder to tell if it is synthesized, or a field recording etc. I think the better models today are not just better at modeling analog synths, but also analog life in general.

[egbert101]

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[elassi]

When it comes to the highest quality ambient stuff, I can only think of Robert Rich. No one really seems to come close. I've no idea how he creates spaces so real, probably very expensive reverb hardware.

Drop a pill, even better: a trip, and you don't care of anything (VST3, mono, phase issues, GUI, aliasing, you name it).

Joke aside: It has been said already a couple of times in this thread. Ambient is what you make it feel.

[ghettosynth]

When it comes to the highest quality ambient stuff, I can only think of Robert Rich. No one really seems to come close. I've no idea how he creates spaces so real, probably very expensive reverb hardware.

Can you post some examples of stuff that stands out to you?

I listened to this, it's alright. I'm not a fan of the cliche bird sounds. For me they fall into the same realm as bells and chimes, didgeridoos and angel voices. That's just a stylistic preference though. I certainly don't hear any fantastic spaces in this, but my guess is that isn't what you're talking about?

If anyone is interested, here is some info on how Robert Rich uses his gear:
https://robertrich.com/gear-talk/

Well, I think that this confirms that he likes outboard reverb

2.3) I like Space Designer also. I still tend to use outboard reverb, especially Sony units. My R7 died recently so a friend found a used V55 for me. There are a lot of good impulse reverb plug-ins though.

The following is a methodology thing. Controlling and taming feedback is a variation on generative methods. When you use hardware you get multitouch as well as the delay imposed by your sound card. If you take the time to map hardware (controller) and recognize that the delay is an intrinsic part of what is making the hardware work, then you can get a lot out of software as well.

Tunings and feedback systems: the point of that liner note comment was to explain that feedback methods of sound-making tend to impart their own tonalities, without the need for analysis. Usually a harmonic series-like structure gets determined by the fundamental frequencies of short delays inherent in the returns from processor units. Resonances get imparted by comb filtering and such. It’s out of my control. Then I simply try to tune to what I hear. Sometimes the tunings are very blurry, and don’t really benefit from analysis.

[ghettosynth]

I like this comment on process, I share this approach. I treat all of my past recordings as fodder as well, including my contribution to jam sessions with others.

to 5. – I treat nature recordings as raw fodder, which I’ll modify as needed. I’m not a purist. I love the natural world, but when I record it, the sound becomes separate. I might slow a recording down, add processing, select the best moment or edit the noisy bits out from the smooth bits. No rules. The art decides the process.

[tapiodmitriyevich]

Another option for OP:

Any instrument PLUS Zynaptiq Adaptiverb (maybe even more than one instance) on top of it. Adaptiverb is an effect, but after all you use it like an instrument.
Also, you may want to add portions of Valhalla Shimmer. But that effect has been used very often.

[SciFiArtMan]

Thank you, elassi!

[Doug1978]

Not sure if someone has already recommended these, but i find making relaxing ambient noises very easy from these synths:

Augment,
Cracklefield,
Chromaphone

I echo the sentiments of those above who recommend using FX as appropriate also.

Here is one patch, quite Terry Riley-esque, which I made a bit by chance in Homegrown Sounds's Augment. Just one patch with no FX applied and only the G2 key held down on the piano:

https://soundcloud.com/doug1978/augment ... doug-plonk

With some FX, even just a simple delay, this could be quite charming for a while!

[ghettosynth]

Not sure if someone has already recommended these, but i find making relaxing ambient noises very easy from these synths:

Augment,
Cracklefield,
Chromaphone

I echo the sentiments of those above who recommend using FX as appropriate also.

Here is one patch, quite Terry Riley-esque, which I made a bit by chance in Homegrown Sounds's Augment. Just one patch with no FX applied and only the G2 key held down on the piano:

https://soundcloud.com/doug1978/augment ... doug-plonk

With some FX, even just a simple delay, this could be quite charming for a while!

Thanks for the reminder to jump in on the augment group buy. Also check out cassetto from hgsounds.

[nichttuntun]

Hi to you all. Interessting "discussion"

Difficult matter. A matter of taste. cannot discuss really.

For "Ambient" and absolute warm sounding tunes and sound design in general I like:

Madrona Labs - KAIVO
It´s just great. Can create incredibly thick and complicated pads because it uses physically modelled elements plus a complex granular synthese engine which you can control via the instruments modular structure. Will never get boring because of the given modulation options and the fact you can screen 4 layers samples through the granular engine.

U-He - BAZILLE + U-He - ZEBRA
both are organic, soft lush and incredibly complex in its modulation. Great for all kinds of ambient sounds in general and perfect for evolving and everchanging pads.

AAS - CHROMAPHONE 2
Not primary a ambient Pad-machine but it can add to any ambient production the right amount of feeling and you can set perfect accents with it. The right instrument for accomplishing "Ambient" things. It´s physically modelled and great for all kinds of real sounding percussions with a special something extra. Can make atmospheric pads nevertheless.

Steinberg - PADSHOP PRO
Granular synthesis sampler. Import your own Samples and have fun with sheer endless modulation options. Hence the name. Padshop makes fantastic ambient pads with a twist. The mod-matrix is great and the granular enginge itself isn´t the worst - indeed it is really good. And it is cheap!!

PPG Infinite PRO
There you have it. The Wonder-Machine for sound designers. Uses re-synthesis of WAV-files and you can design your own sounds from scratch. I mean really your own sounds. Play in your WAV, re-synthesize it with the build in analyzer (6 models - more to come) and split this sound in each of it´s waves (spectral layers) and use each and every single wave as a base for your new oscilator-sound (can use up to 5 sounds at once and morph between them). You can define, frequence-modulate and whatnot each single wave. You can draw complete wavetables from scratch too. The possibilities are fantastic. I think it´s a kind of its own for sure and it will lift up your creativity into new spheres. It makes LOOM 2 look small

Hardware - Maybe? Waldorf - BLOFELD
To stay in the territory of Wavetable Synth. Blofeld with Sample cardridge. You have a modulation matrix built in which leaves no wishes open. Can do Wavetablescanning / FM and additive Synthese and it can evolve its pads extreme long and due to the modulation madness matrix it will never become dull. Thanks to Wavetable usage you can make ambient and spacy pads other synth will have problems to reproduce.

General:
I think you got to own at least one VST instrument capable of doing granular synthesis as an effect-unit. So you can achieve great ambient padlike sounds even with generally dull and boring sounding VST or hardware synth - for cheap because you can use every free synth out there to achieve that.

Of course you should consider a nice delay and a good reverb. Maybe you like to take a look at VALHALLA. They offer great quality for a even greater price. But don´t rely too much on the mindbending power of a lush reverb-engine. You should design great sound carpets standing out for their own and then apply an effects unit to spice things a bit up the way it is needed in your mix

Finally I like to say that I think you can make relaxing sounds with every given synthesizer and with every given instrument and with nearly every given tool, object or recorded open world sound. Just a matter of aproach and ideas

Have joy and never run out of creativity

Have a nice winter holiday time

[wagtunes]

PPG Infinite PRO
There you have it. The Wonder-Machine for sound designers. Uses re-synthesis of WAV-files and you can design your own sounds from scratch. I mean really your own sounds. Play in your WAV, re-synthesize it with the build in analyzer (6 models - more to come) and split this sound in each of it´s waves (spectral layers) and use each and every single wave as a base for your new oscilator-sound (can use up to 5 sounds at once and morph between them). You can define, frequence-modulate and whatnot each single wave. You can draw complete wavetables from scratch too. The possibilities are fantastic. I think it´s a kind of its own for sure and it will lift up your creativity into new spheres. It makes LOOM 2 look small


Have a nice winter holiday time

I love Infinite Pro but like with all Wolfgang Palm's stuff, confusing as all hell. It takes me forever to figure out his synths. Wavemapper 2 and Wavegenerator drove me crazy for months and had to return to them a good 3 or 4 times after giving up in frustration before I finally got the hang of them.

His stuff is not for the meek if you want to design your own sounds.

But there is no question, nothing sounds like them. And Infinite Pro is in a class by itself.

[pdxindy]

PPG Infinite PRO
There you have it. The Wonder-Machine for sound designers. Uses re-synthesis of WAV-files and you can design your own sounds from scratch. I mean really your own sounds. Play in your WAV, re-synthesize it with the build in analyzer (6 models - more to come) and split this sound in each of it´s waves (spectral layers) and use each and every single wave as a base for your new oscilator-sound (can use up to 5 sounds at once and morph between them). You can define, frequence-modulate and whatnot each single wave. You can draw complete wavetables from scratch too. The possibilities are fantastic. I think it´s a kind of its own for sure and it will lift up your creativity into new spheres. It makes LOOM 2 look small


Have a nice winter holiday time

I love Infinite Pro but like with all Wolfgang Palm's stuff, confusing as all hell. It takes me forever to figure out his synths. Wavemapper 2 and Wavegenerator drove me crazy for months and had to return to them a good 3 or 4 times after giving up in frustration before I finally got the hang of them.

His stuff is not for the meek if you want to design your own sounds.

But there is no question, nothing sounds like them. And Infinite Pro is in a class by itself.

Don't forget Phonem... it is my favorite PPG synth (I have Phonem, Wavemapper2 and Infinite Pro)

[nichttuntun]

PPG infinite PRO isn't too hard to understand and the videos Wolfgang made and the detailed manual help a lot.

I will own Wavegenerator and Phenom too one day. But for now I got already enough parallel universes of sounds to discover

I love wavetable PPG in general but I wonder if I am able to still use Wolfgangs synth in 10 or 15 years because of the dull registration procedure...

[.jon]

Point taken. However, there is some truth to those processes yielding
an ambient piece, whether you respect it or not. Erik Satie is little more than piano and (obviously natural) reverb. There is no implication in the statement that no effort with respect to composition is intrinsically a part of the formula, that's your projection. Of course anything in -> reverb -> ambient out is an overstatement, but so is your unnecessary aggression and projection.

You started the aggression in this thread. Own up to it. And before I continue, I just want to say that I really like you as a KVR regular and you often bring valuable and unique insights to threads. However, you do have a tendency to drive yourself into a corner and instead of taking the right turn, you bury yourself deeper into a mass of strawmen and pseudo-logical arguments only loosely connected with what the discussion was all about, and then get yourself confused about what you were even trying to argue for. Just chill man, everybody is wrong on the internet.

Of course there is thruth and merit to process when creating ambient, and you're oversimplifying my argument as "everything processed by a chain is always just pointless noodling". This is just a general remark on the idea that really invoking and interesting ambient music is somehow easy to achieve with just reverb and fx. Maybe nobody implied anything of the sort, and I'm preaching to the choir- that's fine, but having followed the topic of ambient for a very long time, this hurr-durr argument is brought up often enough especially on general computer music fora. And my feeds are way too full with generic droney pads paulstretched, granulized and run thru 7 epic verbs.

Again, the need to stand out is your chosen constraint. The song "every breath you take" by sting was written in a half hour or so IIRC, effort does not necessarily equate to quality or interest. Again, that is your bias and projection. Effort does not necessarily make something stand out.

Personally I don't like the overly simple paulstretch tracks, it's why I got bored with the Drone Zone for a long time. That doesn't completely invalidate the process however.

I could say a lot more about this but this thread and this post isn't really the place for it.

Again, that is not a constraint. It's a goal, an aspiration, desire to create something that one can be satisfied with years later. I'm not binding anyone to this goal, but I honestly confess it is a driver for me personally- I want to make music today that moves me still when I'm old and do nothing but drink scotch in my rocker and stare into the void.

And oh dear, you just comfortably left out the part where Sting, an already established songwriter with multiple #1 albums, Brit and Grammy Awards

"woke up in the middle of the night with that line in my head, sat down at the piano and had written it in half an hour. The tune itself is generic, an aggregate of hundreds of others, but the words are interesting. It sounds like a comforting love song. I didn't realize at the time how sinister it is. I think I was thinking of Big Brother, surveillance and control."

...after escaping his relationship mess and the following nasty publicity into another country. Extreme emotional crisis, raw talent and skill combined can actually create amazing results in short time- no effort was just your smoke and mirrors. Obviously effort != quality, but nowhere did anyone imply that. However, you're more likely to get good results when you put your heart into something. Not sure you'd argue that.

didn't say that it "makes or breaks" a synth. I did say that it is a factor in synth quality, and it is. No amount of being offended is going to change that.

Your argument was that old synths have outdated DSP therefore they make for lousy analogue emulations, and therefore those who prefer Omnisphere to some U-he synth and sampler are wrong and can't hear the difference. Well, no shit sherlock, modern analog emulations emulate analog synths better than old synths not even trying to do that, but nobody else besides you brought up using Omnisphere for analogue pads. This is the definition of a strawman. And needing analog pads for ambient is no more than your projection.

Moreover, this fascination with ZDF, per se, is only a part of the equation. However, like it or not, the accuracy of the emulation does affect the quality of an instrument. That is almost definitional when an instrument purports to be a model of something else, as all synths with any hint of being a VA do. There's more to a good filter emulation than "ZDF", but trying to deny that it doesn't yield a more accurate filter when implemented properly is simply false. Get over it.

Accuracy of the emulation affects the quality of the emulation ffs And literally nobody tried to deny the benefits of ZDF implementations in filter emulations. It's just that it isn't a requirement for a good ambient synth.

Which is ample evidence to convey that this question is outside of your skill set. If you understood the field more, then you wouldn't be asking the question, sincerely or not.

What field? What is my skill set and what is your exactly?

As others are here, you are overreacting to my statements. If you ever thought that old VA synths sounded like accurate models in the first place then you have conveyed your inexperience with what good synths sound like.

No, you are overreacting to things you imagine people imply. And one more time, no one, literally no one, not even once stated that old "VA synths sound like accurate models"- you just started lashing out at himalaya because he recommended Omnisphere. I already listed what I use, I have real analogs, synths with premium ZDF filters, synths with old filter algos and no filters at all. I have decades of experience and I know precisely where even the best and latest plugins fall short from real filters, and certainly agree with you that old filters don't come even close to that- but my argument is that for a f**k ton of sounds, the accuracy of the filter emulation doesn't matter a single bit. It just doesn't come to play at all. Completely, totally and absolutely irrelevant by any objective and subjective measure. The worst filter ever indistinguishable from the the best in the universe.

And then there are sounds where it absolutely matters and only a fool would accept compromises. Whether you need these is up to you. I do, which is why I have these metal and wood thingies with circuits inside in front of me. But they can't do 90's sounding digital pads at all. Which is why I I need an old, discontinued VST plugin that sounds fantastic even with it's outdated filters. Why they don't matter even though I clearly hear their shortcomings? Because their purpose isn't to emulate some vintage analog synths, they are just one part of the synth with a purpose which they fill perfectly.

VA synth models were shite for years. That has never made them useless, but it absolutely says something about their quality as an instrument. That is, they would be a higher quality instrument given better models.

And they would be higher quality instruments given better UIs, more flexible and intuitive routings, more versatile oscillators, or even less features- these are all subjective things, and it's just as justified to consider synths as whole or prioritizing some other feature instead of the technical quality of the filter algos. Live with it.

I'm sorry for mocking you, and also for dragging this for way too long. I guess that's one thing where we're alike. Let's get this shit back on track, I know there's more we can contribute.

[wagtunes]

What's wrong with pointless noodling? I do it all the time.