Best Synth RELEASED In 2018

[BeeDog]

Personally, I'm having too much fun with both Audiaire Zone and Arturia Pigments, great little gems.

[EnGee]

Part of the problem is that I don't know what came out this year because I only bought 2 synths. So I didn't keep track of all the releases. All I know is that there weren't a lot of them.

January 2018 - Adam Szabo Viper, Seaweed Audio Fathom 2.0
March 2018 - Samplesphere Inspire
April 2018 - Rob Papen Go2, MOK Waverazor 2
May 2018 - Propellerhead Europa, PureMagnetik Solveig, Plogue chipsynth PortaFM
June 2018 - Tractkion Biotek 2
July 2018 - Yamaha Vocaloid 5
August 2018 - FXpansion Cypher 2
September 2018 - Dead Duck Deducktion, Strainwave StrainwaveSCA2018, Digital Systemic Emulations Syncla-X, Full Bucket MPS, Samplesphere InspireCC
October 2018 - Generalmusic Elka Panther, PureMagnetik Foomph, Tone2 Gladiator 3, Cherry Voltage Modular, Native Instruments Kontakt 6
November 2018 - Waves Flow Motion, Inertia Granulizer 2
December 2018 - AAS String Studio VS-3, Synapse Dune 3, Arturia Pigments

From the above list, it might be Gladiator 3, Dune 3, Cypher 2 and then Europa for me!

I have only Europa from that list though which is a great synth with low CPU
I might upgrade to Dune 3, but not very soon. I don't know if I want to buy any other synth from the list really. My shopping list has mostly synths released in the past years

[robotmonkey]

Why you guys still discuss old tech? It's 2019 already, time to make an updated thread about modern synths.

[Markku]

Laughed myself silly when I checked that list. I have *nine* synths from that 2018 list. Seven commercial, two free. What I have used most? Deducktion, by far. What makes this especially silly, is that because I'm mostly preset user and Deducktion does not have a lot of presets available, something must be right with the ones I have...

Honestly, there are so many powerful and musical synths on that list. You can make probably every genre and every level of sophistication music with them.

Btw, if Hive 1.2 had been from more greedy company, it'd been named Hive2 and would be on that list. But with those improvements it's like a new synth.

Some thoughts:

Adam Szabo Viper: Very nice and unique sound, classic vibes. If you love that Virus-like Trance sound, you need this.

Seaweed Audio Fathom 2.0: Modular-ish synth that even I can understand. (I have been playing ModulAir and this lately... Ideas in one can be completely different in other, but they still work.) Modular synths probably should come with addiction warnings.

Rob Papen Go2: Very nice starting point to current music styles. Name says it well.

Dead Duck Deducktion: As I said I have strange addiction to this. I just clicked with this. Go figure.

Tone2 Gladiator 3: Big. Heavy. Presets are full songs. Music workstation. I'd like to see some inspiring styles produced with this. I think it needs a bit taming for less in-your-face styles -- let's see what will be available. There are competent sound designers working with Tone2, possibilities are that my needs are served.

AAS String Studio VS-3: It sounds good, but it ditched 32-bit version (at least in my installation). So it's on the sidetrack, I can use it but it needs extra effort. I do need 32-bit, either because I'm closely related to Tyrannosaurus Rex or because I have two 5 000 VSTs strong 32-bit environments with problematic upgrade paths. You choose.

Synapse Dune 3: I think this one has currently strongest sounds for my use. I also seem to learn how to use it, even have made some modest base sounds. I know the deep learning would take years. But with this sound engine, I'm just waiting someone competent to come with something extraordinary. I bought some sound sets, but I have not had time enough to form opinion. I tend to just randomly play with keyboard and listen. Sometimes one just wants to enjoy some sound or combination of them endlessly. Not productive but fun.

[Dozius]

The only synth I got this year was PortaFM. I had a Yamaha PSS-140 as a kid. In fact, it was the first musical instrument I ever had. This sound chip holds a pretty special place in my heart. Love it! Bonus that it's also cheap as chips (pun intended).

[Daru925]

Yes, in terms of softsynths, i feel the market is heavily saturated with high quality instruments, both paid and free, but so redundant that i only ever bought Massive, Fm8, and phoscyon over the years... (in hindsight, buying only Zebra II would have been a better choice.)

That said, I have found good use for Live 10 Wavetable synth, simple but not simplistic, well integrated and usable Wtables (not just random noises and wobbles). Oh and the trk1 bass freebie idk, i'm having tons of fun with that thing, pretty cool stuff.

But yeah nothing too exciting in 2018 from my picky point of view, more like quality of life improvments.
For someone starting music though, now is a wonderful time to do so, because one could pick any softsynth and it would be a good purchase.

Hopefully Zebra III or Massive X will save us all, and bring gamechanging tools such as importing sounds directly from my mind! (usbrain cable not provided)

[MorpherX]

Best Synth released in 2018 is, in my view,

Hive 1.2

It has a simple and easy to use GUI, fast handling performance, much routing possibilities with the ModMatrix and a good sound. You can very easy and fast create musical usefull sounds and the wavetables delivered with v 1.2 are fantastic.
With the import of other wavetables the sound possibilities are infinite.

[BONES]

Personally, I'm having too much fun with both Audiaire Zone and Arturia Pigments, great little gems.

I tried the Zone demo last night and thought the presets were all very generic and not at all inspiring, to the point that I didn't even try tweaking anything to see if I could make it sound better. It just didn't do it for me at all.

[dermage]

No mention of TAL-Mod? This thing is really great sounding and has a lot of modulation possibilities.
Second for me is Pigments.

For free updated synths, yeah. Hive 1.2, Rapid 1.5-6 (both came out in 2018)

[v1o]

Part of the problem is that I don't know what came out this year because I only bought 2 synths. So I didn't keep track of all the releases. All I know is that there weren't a lot of them.

January 2018 - Adam Szabo Viper, Seaweed Audio Fathom 2.0
March 2018 - Samplesphere Inspire
April 2018 - Rob Papen Go2, MOK Waverazor 2
May 2018 - Propellerhead Europa, PureMagnetik Solveig, Plogue chipsynth PortaFM
June 2018 - Tractkion Biotek 2
July 2018 - Yamaha Vocaloid 5
August 2018 - FXpansion Cypher 2
September 2018 - Dead Duck Deducktion, Strainwave StrainwaveSCA2018, Digital Systemic Emulations Syncla-X, Full Bucket MPS, Samplesphere InspireCC
October 2018 - Generalmusic Elka Panther, PureMagnetik Foomph, Tone2 Gladiator 3, Cherry Voltage Modular, Native Instruments Kontakt 6
November 2018 - Waves Flow Motion, Inertia Granulizer 2
December 2018 - AAS String Studio VS-3, Synapse Dune 3, Arturia Pigments

Wow what an amazing year for synths.

[Butwug]

Yes, in terms of softsynths, i feel the market is heavily saturated with high quality instruments, both paid and free, but so redundant that i only ever bought Massive, Fm8, and phoscyon over the years... (in hindsight, buying only Zebra II would have been a better choice.)

Hopefully Zebra III or Massive X will save us all, and bring gamechanging tools such as importing sounds directly from my mind! (usbrain cable not provided)

Im similar to you. I only have zebra2/hz and have a hard time justifying any new synth still learning how to use it to it’s full potential. The only other vst synth I have is ABL3, which is like phosycon. Tried dune3, pigments, hive update, etc...and couldn't really get myself to have a lighbulb click and say “hey thats much different!” Well except the much heavier cpu usage on my underwhelming computer. That was different. Truth be told I could have did without ZebraHZ but got it on sale and will get Zebra3 for free when it comes out.

Im glad I got over the “need new synth bug” quick. I read these thread to live vicariously through you guys and all these synths!

[aMUSEd]

Part of the problem is that I don't know what came out this year because I only bought 2 synths. So I didn't keep track of all the releases. All I know is that there weren't a lot of them.

January 2018 - Adam Szabo Viper, Seaweed Audio Fathom 2.0
March 2018 - Samplesphere Inspire
April 2018 - Rob Papen Go2, MOK Waverazor 2
May 2018 - Propellerhead Europa, PureMagnetik Solveig, Plogue chipsynth PortaFM
June 2018 - Tractkion Biotek 2
July 2018 - Yamaha Vocaloid 5
August 2018 - FXpansion Cypher 2
September 2018 - Dead Duck Deducktion, Strainwave StrainwaveSCA2018, Digital Systemic Emulations Syncla-X, Full Bucket MPS, Samplesphere InspireCC
October 2018 - Generalmusic Elka Panther, PureMagnetik Foomph, Tone2 Gladiator 3, Cherry Voltage Modular, Native Instruments Kontakt 6
November 2018 - Waves Flow Motion, Inertia Granulizer 2
December 2018 - AAS String Studio VS-3, Synapse Dune 3, Arturia Pigments

Wow what an amazing year for synths.

Useful summary - out of all those I'd have to say Pigments, with Cypher 2 a close second mainly on the basis of the 5D integration (- it's not as easy to program as Pigments but in terms of playability and expression it scores higher).

[SteveWZ]

No mention of TAL-Mod? This thing is really great sounding and has a lot of modulation possibilities.
Second for me is Pigments.

For free updated synths, yeah. Hive 1.2, Rapid 1.5-6 (both came out in 2018)

TAL-Mod and Pigments are both substantial additions to the list of 2018 winners.

[4damind]

For me its Cypher2... the long awaited and announced synth with a scalable GUI and rich, analog sound.

[Lotuzia]

No mention of TAL-Mod? This thing is really great sounding and has a lot of modulation possibilities.
Second for me is Pigments.

For free updated synths, yeah. Hive 1.2, Rapid 1.5-6 (both came out in 2018)

TAL-Mod and Pigments are both substantial additions to the list of 2018 winners.

+1 for Tal-Mod and Pigments. Free updated synths : PolyM and Xils 4 as well. There are probably many more.