I'm looking to buy my first VST, but I'm unsure of which to pick

[fluffy_little_something]

Diva and Sylenth1 is a perfect start overall. To be honest there are many good VST Plugins out there, so You should try as many as You can before investing money. For Your musical Taste You should check out all Synths from Arturia, Native Instrumens, GeForce, Roland, Synapse Audio, Dmitry Sches, KV331 Audio, Spectrasonics, Reveal Sound, u-he, Xfer and LennarDigital, to name a few.
I have them all, so hit me up if u have any questions

Try all synths from all those brands? That would take a long time. I guess when someone asks for advice like in this thread, they want to avoid having to download and test lots of plugins, and instead rely on the experience of others and save a lot of time.

Diva and Sylenth1 are rather expensive, while doing similar things. I think it would make more sense to get one good subtractive synth, one that is very different (wavetable, FM or whatever), and one rompler.

[2ZrgE]

I just read this page more thoroughly (https://audioplugin.deals/the-deal/) and it clearly states: "(available in Ableton Live, Kontakt and Logic formats only)"

By investing $ 99 to Kontakt 5 and $ 9,99 to that 80's set, you have a rather versatile set. Kontakt is always useful to have.

If you have time to wait, you can always find good bargains.

I would never recommend Kontakt to a beginner, it surely kills all creativity with all the premade stuff and samples, and its awkward usability.

Buy Ableton, that DAW contains everything you ever need to start. No other VSTs needed for quite a long time. Don't get infected by GAS and VST marketing hogwash...

Why so negative?
I have to reply now, because mathematics say, that two negative turns the value to positive.

Kontakt won't "kill the creativity", one of the most stupid comment for a long time.
And, tweaking a "real synth" is no absolute value. Synth is a tool, and so is the Kontakt. It all depends how you use your tools, whatever they are.

You really think loading a Kontakt patch has the same value in terms of creativity than making your own sounds with a synth VST?

As I understood it the OP wants to learn how to produce music as a hobby. There's no really need for Kontakt if you want to use different synth sounds, but maybe if he wants to score the next Nolan blockbuster Kontakt comes in handy.

Why not just recommend Band in a Box then, it's also a good tool.

[hopkihc]

+1 for starting out with free stuff.

Synth 1
TAL NoiseMaker
u-he free stuff already mentioned
Dexed
OB-xd
Crystal

Then, if those aren't working for you, and you think you should buy something, get DEMOS. Try before you buy. MOST synth developers have demoware that either runs for a set period of time (with patch saving or other features disabled), or run for several minutes before introducing noise (u-he does this). You need to ensure the synth runs well on YOUR computer with YOUR DAW.

Then come back here and listen to everyone fanboy about their VST faves. For example, I noticed Rob Papen Predator wasn't on your list. Lots of classic synth sounds in the (absurdly huge) presets.

[Distorted Horizon]

Synth is a tool, and so is the Kontakt. It all depends how you use your tools, whatever they are.

+1

I find Kontakt very inspirational. Especially those sampled instruments that it's either not possible for me to get in "real" world or I just don't have skill/enough time to achieve that skill.

[ziegler12]

thanks for the help, now I know what to do. I will just be playing around with all the free VST I can get my hands on (or stick with a few of the best), in till I need someone better.

Then come back here and listen to everyone fanboy about their VST faves. For example, I noticed Rob Papen Predator wasn't on your list. Lots of classic synth sounds in the (absurdly huge) presets.

I didn't know about this one, that is one beast of a VST (I think...). Thanks for telling me about it.


going off topic here a bit, because I just bought the vegas pro (and music) humble bundle, which come with some gems (and a good amount of shit). https://www.humblebundle.com/software/v ... m-rebundle

here are some of the good parts:
- music maker '80s' _ 3 different 80s sound pools of your choice _ 1 software instrument of your own choice
- music maker 'hip hop beat' _ 3 different hip hop soundpools of your choice _ 1 software instrument of your own choice
- MAGIX Vintage Effects Suite (VST)
- VEGAS Pro 14 Edit
- Soundpool: Blockbuster (700 samples)

The 'Vintage Effects Suite' can be used on anything, no problem there, but the samples need to be downloaded from inside of the 'Music Maker' program. I wonder if I can export them from the program, so I can use them in an other DAW. (I haven't found any info on the net, that this is possible though).

I not sure about this 'MAGIX music maker' DAW, even though I haven't tried it yet. I can't find a lot of videos of people using it (or a long list of reviews, for that matter).

[ziegler12]

I just saw that the post page, have hit 5 pages of comments, I did not inspect this. So I went back to read through all of them.

To Zexila and rod_zero, I have installed the Syntorial demo, and will be using it soon.
To Scrubbing Monkeys, thank you for telling me about the 'One Synth Challenges', I will be looking it to that some more.
To dune_rave, thank you for telling me that I can inport sysex soundbanks, that I can find for free on the web, into the Dexed VST.

To Tj Shredder thanks for telling me about the amazing 'this plug-in', didn't knew about it before now.

This is a really welcoming forum, I will remember that in the future, when every I get stuck with anything music related problems.

Thanks for the feedback guys/girls.

[Halonmusic]

Denpends how much money you´ve got.
One of the most affordable investment at the moment in the genre you mentioned, is
9,99 $ (!), you get nine 80´s synths
https://audioplugin.deals/the-deal/

My choise, because it seems that you can put up to $ 200, is Repro1.

Arturia has some great vintage emulations, from which to choose.

Outside your genre, more modern sounds, I´d say Reaktor 6 and all the stuff you get with it.

Seems like these are for Ableton, Logic and Kontakt only (?)