What were your go-to synths for 2018?

[deastman]

I had to really think about the question. I’ve only started really making music again this year after a pretty long hiatus for various personal reasons. I’ve partially completed a bunch of tracks and sent them off to various friends to contribute to, but so far no one has sent anything back yet. (Slackers!). I’ve also acquired a bunch of new hardware in the past couple of years, and I had to replace my laptop, which means that after several months I’m still in the process of reinstalling old software and new versions of large libraries.

With that said, my most prolific work this year has been from sampling little bits of sound from YouTube into an Emax at the lowest possible sample rate, pitching things down, and playing parts live by hand into Ableton. I’m basically revisiting my old industrial band days, but with the benefits of modern recording technology. It’s been a lot of fun!

At the moment, I’m focused primarily on the Haken Continuum and its internal synth engine, again playing parts live into Ableton.

[Sparky77]

Been using Omnisphere more these days since the 2.5 update.
Also, Repro is getting a workout.

[EnGee]

It gets confusing when choosing which synth I should use now!

obviously, the one that goes best with your current outfit.

amateurs!

Finally, I've got it

[BONES]

Now that's some whack apologetics there. Komplete nonsense that's also not worth my time.

No, it's just living in the real world, not looking at everything through the lens of "what's in it for me?".They make their decisions, the reasons for which are perfectly reasonable, and you make yours, for reasons that are at least as valid. Everyone moves on. No point being pissed off about it.

I might start using Bitwigs poly and fm synths more. I bought zebra/dark zebra as my workhorse synth shortly after getting the DAW. I absolutely love Bitwigs modulations and how it shows you whats being modulated. That is the one thing that is missing from most synths, visuals on modulation depth/rate. Ive found a middle ground, use modulators from Bitwig on Zebra.

I found Bitwig's synths to be very weak, almost unusable. I agree with the visual modulation thing, though, it makes it so quick and easy to go in and make changes to a preset. You should grab NI's Xmas freebie, TRK-01 Play. It does that.

[telecode]

Actually, can you post your favorite goto synth and what kind of music you make (or you think you make)? That would be interesting to get a sort of matrix of VST synth to type of music you make.

[BBFG#]

Now you're just trolling.
Which gave me a little laugh.

The synths I reach for are more important than the ones I don't or can't even install anymore.

[BONES]

So why bring the others up?

[BBFG#]

So why bring the others up?

You should be able to figure that out on your own by just reading the posts.

[voidhead23]

Actually, can you post your favorite goto synth and what kind of music you make (or you think you make)? That would be interesting to get a sort of matrix of VST synth to type of music you make.

i'm taking the bait on this and being a whore.

Go to's for this particular EP were Zebra, Massive, Hive and Serum. i think a lot of soft synths really fail in creating a good low end when mixing with physical sounds like guitars and drums, even if they sound good with other electronic elements. i find Zebra and Hive do a great job with the low end, Serum and Massive make great 'rhythm guitars', blurring the distinction in the midrange between synth and guitar. If i use Serum for bass, i usually have to layer it with Hive to fill the lower fundamental.

https://soundcloud.com/izalith/sets/shibboleth

[telecode]

Actually, can you post your favorite goto synth and what kind of music you make (or you think you make)? That would be interesting to get a sort of matrix of VST synth to type of music you make.

i'm taking the bait on this and being a whore.

Go to's for this particular EP were Zebra, Massive, Hive and Serum. i think a lot of soft synths really fail in creating a good low end when mixing with physical sounds like guitars and drums, even if they sound good with other electronic elements. i find Zebra and Hive do a great job with the low end, Serum and Massive make great 'rhythm guitars', blurring the distinction in the midrange between synth and guitar. If i use Serum for bass, i usually have to layer it with Hive to fill the lower fundamental.

Not a bait tactic at all. It's actually a very useful post for people that aren't familiar with all the different soft synths out there. I am one of them, just because I feel I have too many synths and try to stick to what I have.

To my ears, I am finding the soft synths excel at doing what they do best, making keyboard based sounds and aren't quite believable sounds that require more intricate rhythmic playing. Speaking at real sounds like drums or electric or acoustic guitars -- unless you are just using very very basic rhythmic structures. There are elements of rhythmic playing technique which can't be reproduced on a keyboard because it actually requires fingers and picks and strings in the case of guitars or two hands and sticks in the case of drums.

But I got to say, I am starting to feel I have way to many soft synths but my investment in a hard synth seemed to be more worth while because I find I got much more useful sounds and the feeling or creating sounds from the hard synth.

[BONES]

Really? I'm the opposite. I enjoy "playing" with my hardware synths but I don't find them very good when it comes to making patches I can use in our music. Quite the opposite, even one knob per function synths like Korg's Minilogue and Monologue are much harder to get a good patch from than any of my softsynths. Same with my Ultranova, Pulse 2, Uno and especially my Analog Keys. If I didn't have Overbridge so I could program the AK from my PC, I doubt I'd use it at all. Same with Uno, I do all it's programming from the VSTi editor.

I was playing with the Ultranova the other day, for the first time in ages (it lives at my band mate's place), and I realised that in the 6 or7 years I've had it, I've made exactly 8 patches for it, which I use on stage. I've had the AK for a year now and I haven't even made a single new patch for it, just tweaked a few presets. OTOH, I've had Thorn for less than a month and I already have half-a-dozen patches I've made from scratch and another dozen I've tweaked from existing presets. After 18 or so years of working on my laptop, it is so much more natural for me to work with a mouse.

[voidhead23]

But I got to say, I am starting to feel I have way to many soft synths but my investment in a hard synth seemed to be more worth while because I find I got much more useful sounds and the feeling or creating sounds from the hard synth.

i hear you. i only had a hardware synth for six months (if you forget a very early experience with a microKorg), but bonded way more with that thing than i have with any softsynth. i also really enjoyed the limitations it gave me, whereas i feel like most soft-synths suffer from this thinking of 'well, we can add it in, so why don't we?'. But i had to move overseas so the studio and tools had to become software only, for the most part.

i went on a softsynth buying binge the last couple years trying to replace the experience and sound i had with my hardware synth. i'm in a similar boat of having too much and trying to whittle them down, trying to get back to that sweet spot of really knowing my instruments.

[v1o]

Where would one find this comprehensive ASR-10 sample pack you speak of?

https://www.digitalsoundfactory.com/pro ... soniq-asr/

officially licensed, no less.
1.4 gigs. can you imagine the pain it must've been to copy that all off floppies?

Does Tal load these in the soundfont format?

[sleepcircle]

It SHOULD--I think it does, except I converted all my soundfonts to sfz for reasons I cannot currently recall. As far as I know, TAL imports sf2 as well as sfz.

[tapiodmitriyevich]

Avenger and Tal-Sampler. IDM.