SONICALLY Best VST Synth

[Cinebient]

Hey,

i know there are many Synth vs. Synth and whos better type of threads. However if you ONLY hear for the pur capability/sound of a Synths Oscillator/Sound Quality without looking at features what would the top ten look like?

in that case, i would have to say, a cat.

But only the Octave Cat.

[chk071]

My VST synths sound the best.

[NeoKortex88]

Hey,

i know there are many Synth vs. Synth and whos better type of threads. However if you ONLY hear for the pur capability/sound of a Synths Oscillator/Sound Quality without looking at features what would the top ten look like?

in that case, i would have to say, a cat.

But only the Octave Cat.

sorry iam no native speaker

[liv]

Falcon.
Bazille.
Absynth.
Massive.

[glokraw]

I don't see much point in leaving the sound designers
out of the equasion, until synths are sold without presets.
And more instruments being able to import wav files
further biases opinions.

To answer the question almost directly,
I suggest that having Howard Scarr spend a month or four
creating new Zebra 3 sounds, will be a tough act to follow

(I might add that my favorite 10 instrument presets are still
from instruments in the 32 bit dynasty
Cheers

[DuX]

My VST synths sound the best.

Exactly. Especially with your own presets.

My VST synths [no samplers] of choice are DIVA, RePro, The Legend, Dune, Spire, SoloRack, Hive, and some freeware/open source ones like Surge, Dexed, and OB-Xd. They all sound pretty great for soft synths, and I don't think anybody should need more than that, but having competition is beneficial.

[Pictus]

You may also like:

Phonec viewtopic.php?f=78&t=474337
ArcSyn viewforum.php?f=291
String Studio VS-3 viewtopic.php?t=516040
Xils 4 viewtopic.php?t=410753

If you got a MPE controller, Cypher2
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=509331

If want something very direct and fun to play, try Pigments
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=516074

[cfanyc]

pure synthesis: diva, repro, roland cloud

hybrid sampling/synthesis: omni/trillian, tal sampler, granite, plus many kontakt and uvi libraries

[DuX]

Roland cloud is rather interesting, but their synths are incredibly CPU consuming for what you get. I mean the sound is OK, but not 50% CPU OK. They should change the whole programming team. Same goes for the last couple of years NI synths... FM7 is still great. Old Kontakt and Battery, too. Their new plugins consume so much more resources without actually sounding any better. Arturia stuff, too. People should probably look a bit deeper than the biggest companies in this business, to find true gems. That's excluding u-he and newer Synapsis synths. Their synths sound great, and use resources, yes, but for a reason.

There are developers who think "if I make my synth use the CPU and RAM a lot, maybe they'll think it's better quality". You should be able to discern those things. I was very sceptical about u-he synths at first, and I still am a bit, thinking they could use less CPU. But hey... funk it.

[nordickvr]

Sounds like conspiracy theory.

[generaldiomedes]

If you go by CPU usage then repro or diva for sure.

[cthonophonic]

Softube Modular has some of the best sounding oscillators I've used - mostly the Rubicon emulation, but even the basic A-110 oscillator is quite good. Of course, it's really a question of how well everything responds to modulation; there's no separating the sound of the oscillators from the synth as a whole. And I think this is true for all synths. If you're using a comb filter or resonator to produce your tonal content, the quality of those filters is going to be the key factor in how good the result sounds. They're not somehow extraneous to how the synth is performing "sonically."

[BONES]

The question is a bit pointless because my favourite synths are much more than the sum of their parts. e.g. I don't think any particular aspect of Thorn is outstanding in it's own right - the oscillators re OK but the filter is so-so - yet the sounds you can get when you combine those elements are nothing short of amazing. So for overall sound quality, my list would be something like -

DUNE
Substance (Kontakt instrument)
Diva (don't own it but it sounds amazing)
Re-Pro
Hive
Thorn
Factory
Equator
TRK-01 Play Bass (Reaktor)
Korg ARP Odyssey

If we were just talking about raw oscillator sound, I'd replace Thorn with The Legend and the bottom three would probably drop out in favour of other things.

[NeoKortex88]

I don't see much point in leaving the sound designers
out of the equasion, until synths are sold without presets.
And more instruments being able to import wav files
further biases opinions.

To answer the question almost directly,
I suggest that having Howard Scarr spend a month or four
creating new Zebra 3 sounds, will be a tough act to follow

(I might add that my favorite 10 instrument presets are still
from instruments in the 32 bit dynasty
Cheers

Honestly I know HS and HZ are big names and all but it was hard for me to find one preset I personally like. I wasn’t really impressed (However they seem to be very resource efficient). Zebra 3 might be a different story .
Opening up Dune 3 I was instantly creaming myself in joy. Well good that we have diversity I guess.

[voidhead23]

i think it's also common to lose sight of how well particular synths work in song, since a lot of discussion on here focuses on the minutia of our instruments instead of their usefulness in creating music.

For example, i really don't like the basic sound of Massive, but no other synth i've tried is as good at doubling with an electric guitar and sitting nicely in the mix without screaming attention to itself. Anything u-he sounds amazing on its own, but i find the bass in Zebra hard to mix unless i want it to be really focal in the mix. i have the same issue when using Serum (which i find excels at lead moments). TRK-01 Play's bass module, however, while sounding a little dull in the mids, is absolutely the hardest hitting bass synth i've ever used. You can cave your skull in listening to the low end on that thing. And while Absynth is definitely lagging behind in things we take for granted today (oscillator features, awesomepants filters), i'm turning to it more and more because it excels at weird, organic, quasi-physical modeling sounds which fit really well in the music i'm making.

Most people will agree that Thorn, RePro and Aalto sound absolutely amazing, but i have a really hard time fitting them into my music. So while they have an objective, base sound quality, they're almost worthless to me for what i do, subjectively.

Maybe because i make crappy sounding music.