Unloved synths

[chk071]

I wished they made a Hybrid 4, which fixes the niggles I have with it (no stereo oscillators, bad wavetable audio quality, redundant decay 2 parameter, turns monphonic when you use unison...). Unfortunately, AIR doesn't seem to plan any new versions of their plugins, at least I never heard anything in that regard.

Hybrid is a nice synth, but, there's simply some things I always run into which are not so great...

[ecasasmusic2]

I wished they made a Hybrid 4, which fixes the niggles I have with it (no stereo oscillators, bad wavetable audio quality, redundant decay 2 parameter, turns monphonic when you use unison...). Unfortunately, AIR doesn't seem to plan any new versions of their plugins, at least I never heard anything in that regard.

Hybrid is a nice synth, but, there's simply some things I always run into which are not so great...

You're right, of course it has limitations. Still a good choice in combination with other warmer sounding synths.

[chk071]

It surely sounds nice, and, I especially like filter's character. Digital filter, but, nice sounding.

[Cooker]

I wish Waldorf would update Largo. Personally I have no problems with the sound but the preset browser is really ancient.

Mainly I guess people don't use things like izotope iris or audio damage Quanta. Probably cause the editing experience is still far from a typical synth. design.

[chk071]

I wish Waldorf would update Largo. Personally I have no problems with the sound but the preset browser is really ancient.

I took a look at their forum recently, and found a post which stated that Nave is more or less unsupported now as well (it doesn't work on Mac OS X Catalina for example), which makes me wonder how much manpower Waldorf has left. I know that Rolf Wöhrmann and Thomas Rehaag who does VST3 porting, and general bug fixing of their plugins AFAIK, were more or less the one (two) man show in terms of software support at Waldorf. The fact that their last synth wasn't a internal development, but purchased tech from Manuel Caballero also fits into the picture. If I had to guess, then I would say that Waldorf isn't doing too well at the moment, once again. I could be (and hope that I'm) wrong.

[flechtwerk]

Kaivo is certainly underappreciated, but then it's a very specific instrument, not meant as a bread-and-butter synth.

I never understood all the hate Massive X got, I think it's extremely powerful & gorgeously sounding. (I can see the huge marketing fail on Native Instrument's side though.) It won't replace Hive 2 for me, and it still lacks some essentials like MPE or saving & loading performer patterns, but then I do not believe in the "one synth to rule them all" myth and Massive X is certainly capable of a lot of wonderful things.

[DJMaytag]

I took a look at their forum recently, and found a post which stated that Nave is more or less unsupported now as well (it doesn't work on Mac OS X Catalina for example), which makes me wonder how much manpower Waldorf has left. I know that Rolf Wöhrmann and Thomas Rehaag who does VST3 porting, and general bug fixing of their plugins AFAIK, were more or less the one (two) man show in terms of software support at Waldorf. The fact that their last synth wasn't a internal development, but purchased tech from Manuel Caballero also fits into the picture. If I had to guess, then I would say that Waldorf isn't doing too well at the moment, once again. I could be (and hope that I'm) wrong.

Hardware synths are where it’s at for them, and they seem to be doing OK there AFAIK.

In general, the more abandonware there is out there for VSTi’s, the less likely I am to continue buying them. This and Korg’s lack of updates are really making it hard to want to invest in more VSTi’s. I can’t remember the last time I bought one, maybe a few years ago? It might have been as long as since Camel Audio shut down, THAT long ago. That and some macOS incompatibility upgrades that pushed me into more hardware synth gear than virtual.

[chk071]

Hardware synths are where it’s at for them, and they seem to be doing OK there AFAIK.

Yep, surely looks like it.

In general, the more abandonware there is out there for VSTi’s, the less likely I am to continue buying them.

Largo works OK for me though. I rarely had a issue with it. Even reported a issue once, which obviously was known though, and it was fixed within a week or so.

[BONES]

Mainly I guess people don't use things like izotope iris or audio damage Quanta. Probably cause the editing experience is still far from a typical synth. design.

I've had Iris for a while and use it a bit. I also got Quanta recently but I've been too buy with other things to spend much time with it. I see them both as synths with a limited scope but one that lies outside most of the other VSTi I own and, therefore, potentially useful.

[perpetual3]

Isn’t there a bit of overlap between Quanta and Pigments?

[BONES]

Yes, and Straylight, which I also own. But each seems to have a different focus - Straylight is very much about ambience, Quanta seems to do rhythmic stuff really well and Pigments does more standard kind of instrument sounds without much effort. Of course, Pigments was the last of the three I picked up so it's granular engine didn't rank highly in my decision to buy it.

[perpetual3]

I keep meaning to look more into Straylight too. I’m currently using Inertia Granulizer 2.

[Sinisterbr]

NI Form sounds great as well!

[yellowmix]

Mainly I guess people don't use things like izotope iris or audio damage Quanta. Probably cause the editing experience is still far from a typical synth. design.

I use several idiosyncratic synths and if I know it's the right tool for the job it doesn't stop me from loading it. But it also helps me to separate patch design from composing. Iris in particular comes to mind when I'm thinking of layers first and spectral second. So it is really good for drones, beds, pads, atmospheric, pulses, rhythmic, textures.

However, izotope sends out marketing emails with tutorials for their products and it's geared toward electronic dance music. If you want to read into the Iris tutorials it's clear many people don't read the manual or have a clue how to approach it.

A couple years ago I said izotope's tutorials were more or less garbage and I gotta say they've turned it around. There are a lot more tutorials now and they're pretty good. Which is kinda funny considering how old the software is. But they're not abandoned, they had just updated them for Catalina. They're feature-frozen but there's nothing else quite like Iris (and for that matter most of their portfolio).

[perpetual3]

Plogue PortaFM and MD are two incredibly unloved synths.