Dune 3 vs Sylenth 1 vs Seum for techno/trance

[EnGee]

There is the underrated "Factory" for $69 now in JRR Shop:
https://www.jrrshop.com/sugar-bytes-factory

Excellent synth that I don't see many using it. On the other hand, Serum is a no brainer with the Splice monthly payment not only for Trance, but for every genre IMO. Very well rounded. Both Factory and Serum have native Apple Silicon support and works beautifully with M1 chip. While Dune 3 has a native support, but it is only AU, so when I use Bitwig, that doesn't support AU, I can't use Dune 3 (or any SA synth for this matter).

[Urs]

Maybe, the not-very-bright oscillator sound is U-he typical?

Not anymore, hasn't been for over a decade. Hive certainly has no more or less brightness in its oscillators than any of the synths discussed here. If anything, due to the way we created the factory set of wavetables - mathematically, not from samples - it has the most crisp tone possible.

(also, as for the 13 year old quote you dug up, I used to equal "overly bright" with harshness and aliasing, and "smooth" was a good way to avoid that at low CPU cost... we have since found ways to build oscillators that perform well on post-2005 machines and are brilliant and don't sound overly bright. IIRC back then some companies added extra EQ or "psychoacoustic", which sounded particularly bad to me, ugh...)

[recursive one]

I never did proper "scientific" tests of Hive oscillators, nor A/B comparions with Spire, Serum or whatever, but my overall impression that the supersaws in Hive tend to sound "warmer" and "muddier" than the other synths. Not sure if that's the harmonic content of the saw waveform, or the unison laws or what, also this obiously depends on what engine I choose in Hive and how much I drive the filter.

I don't really use supersaws all that often and don't have a preferred synth for that, when i need supersaws it's few "usual suspects" and Hive is one of them.

[gentleclockdivider]

Zebra's osc's can be as bright as you want when set to crisp , no roll off for the upper harmonics
Some people should better shut up instead of assumming this or that

[chk071]

And you should read better. This has already been said.

[Urs]

I never did proper "scientific" tests of Hive oscillators, nor A/B comparions with Spire, Serum or whatever, but my overall impression that the supersaws in Hive tend to sound "warmer" and "muddier" than the other synths. Not sure if that's the harmonic content of the saw waveform, or the unison laws or what, also this obiously depends on what engine I choose in Hive and how much I drive the filter.

I don't really use supersaws all that often and don't have a preferred synth for that, when i need supersaws it's few "usual suspects" and Hive is one of them.

At the time, it was commonly agreed upon that analogue supersaws sound even better than any of the others because of the way analogue ones drift and thus break up any repetitive patterns in the beating. Hive's unison oscillators constantly drift while using a novel technology (or rather, one I can't find any reference of in DSP literature) to preserve the overall "detunedness" while minimizing any form of reptitiveness or phasing. This was confirmed in many, many listening tests almost a decade ago when we surveyed people using raw, unmarked audio examples.

It's possible that the well of wavetable synths have moved the common taste back to more cleaner and "colder" (for lack of a better word) unison oscillators though. We might investigate that some time later this year as there's a project approaching that could benefit from this kind of research.

[chk071]

At the time, it was commonly agreed upon that analogue supersaws sound even better than any of the others because of the way analogue ones drift and thus break up any repetitive patterns in the beating. Hive's unison oscillators constantly drift while using a novel technology (or rather, one I can't find any reference of in DSP literature) to preserve the overall "detunedness" while minimizing any form of reptitiveness or phasing. This was confirmed in many, many listening tests almost a decade ago when we surveyed people using raw, unmarked audio examples.

Just wondering, but, who did you survey, and where did you do a survey?

[Urs]

At the time, it was commonly agreed upon that analogue supersaws sound even better than any of the others because of the way analogue ones drift and thus break up any repetitive patterns in the beating. Hive's unison oscillators constantly drift while using a novel technology (or rather, one I can't find any reference of in DSP literature) to preserve the overall "detunedness" while minimizing any form of reptitiveness or phasing. This was confirmed in many, many listening tests almost a decade ago when we surveyed people using raw, unmarked audio examples.

Just wondering, but, who did you survey, and where did you do a survey?

You don't remember? - Me neither. But I do remember that the oscillator detune laws were called "pixiedust".

[recursive one]

I never did proper "scientific" tests of Hive oscillators, nor A/B comparions with Spire, Serum or whatever, but my overall impression that the supersaws in Hive tend to sound "warmer" and "muddier" than the other synths. Not sure if that's the harmonic content of the saw waveform, or the unison laws or what, also this obiously depends on what engine I choose in Hive and how much I drive the filter.

I don't really use supersaws all that often and don't have a preferred synth for that, when i need supersaws it's few "usual suspects" and Hive is one of them.

At the time, it was commonly agreed upon that analogue supersaws sound even better than any of the others because of the way analogue ones drift and thus break up any repetitive patterns in the beating. Hive's unison oscillators constantly drift while using a novel technology (or rather, one I can't find any reference of in DSP literature) to preserve the overall "detunedness" while minimizing any form of reptitiveness or phasing. This was confirmed in many, many listening tests almost a decade ago when we surveyed people using raw, unmarked audio examples.

It's possible that the well of wavetable synths have moved the common taste back to more cleaner and "colder" (for lack of a better word) unison oscillators though. We might investigate that some time later this year as there's a project approaching that could benefit from this kind of research.

Thanks, that's interesting to know.

What is an "analogue supersaw"? When I think of supersaws in hardware, JP 80x0 and Virus TI come to mind.

I didn't mean to say Hive's supersaws sound worse than Spire/Serum etc, just a bit different flavour which is good to have. I've used them all in my actual tracks.

[PieBerger]

I would too, has good sound quality, a 1000 presets and a farily simple interface though, but I too am... hmmm erm... probably not... Maybe on a blackfriday sale of 75% lol

Not quite 75%, but since we have Brexited, Thomann no longer charge UK customers VAT on digital purchases so during Synapse's 40% sale, you can save an additional 20% on top. This means Dune can be purchased for about £64 (and Obsession/The Legend for £37/36).

When's the sale?

Obsession currently £61 + VAT at Thomann from what I can see...

Synapse aren't currently having a sale, I should have been more clear about that. I also didn't realise they were charging VAT on orders under £135, including digital purchases, thanks for the correction!

[Urs]

What is an "analogue supersaw"? When I think of supersaws in hardware, JP 80x0 and Virus TI come to mind.

I remember a large thread about a KVRist building an analogue synth (Eurorack maybe?) with a dozen analogue oscillators in unison. In the aftermath I recall discussions where people possibly referred to those experiments when they pointed out that the temperature drift of analogue oscillators was beneficial to the sound of unsion sawtooth oscillators. I really can't recall the who-is-who of these discussions, but I do think some of those were the people we later surveyed. The order of events eludes me though, maybe there were separate inquiries as for detune laws in general and oscillator drift in particular.

I didn't mean to say Hive's supersaws sound worse than Spire/Serum etc, just a bit different flavour which is good to have. I've used them all in my actual tracks.

No worries, I just wanted to point out what Hive might do differently, and why.

[Rastkovic]

I never did proper "scientific" tests of Hive oscillators, nor A/B comparions with Spire, Serum or whatever, but my overall impression that the supersaws in Hive tend to sound "warmer" and "muddier" than the other synths. Not sure if that's the harmonic content of the saw waveform, or the unison laws or what, also this obiously depends on what engine I choose in Hive and how much I drive the filter.

I don't really use supersaws all that often and don't have a preferred synth for that, when i need supersaws it's few "usual suspects" and Hive is one of them.

At the time, it was commonly agreed upon that analogue supersaws sound even better than any of the others because of the way analogue ones drift and thus break up any repetitive patterns in the beating. Hive's unison oscillators constantly drift while using a novel technology (or rather, one I can't find any reference of in DSP literature) to preserve the overall "detunedness" while minimizing any form of reptitiveness or phasing. This was confirmed in many, many listening tests almost a decade ago when we surveyed people using raw, unmarked audio examples.

It's possible that the well of wavetable synths have moved the common taste back to more cleaner and "colder" (for lack of a better word) unison oscillators though. We might investigate that some time later this year as there's a project approaching that could benefit from this kind of research.

Interesting. My initial comment was, Hive didn't fit my personal taste. No Problem at all, others may not like the Waldorf (Blofeld) sound like I do.

Your explanation makes sense to me, I'm definitely not a big fan of analogue polysynths.

I can't say why, but I don't like Hive2 much for Trance type of sounds. It doesn't sound right to me, at least for lush lead and pad sounds. Percussive sounds sound great....

And yes, I already own Hive2. So I don't have to search for arguments, not to buy it.

[nIGhT-SoN]

Another benefit of Serum is updates for life, you get Serum 2, 3, 4,.. 100,.. 99999 etc for free.

I like Serum, but seriously the development isn't fast.


For Trancer: I was in the same boat, i didn't know which expensive synth to buy so i decided to take both Serum and Sylenth on rent-to-own. I'm still paying for it now. Then i bought Diva, Repro, Hive, and Zebra 2 in a sale bundle then i bought Spire in a sale. I'm not unhappy with any of my purchases. If it were me making trance i'd start with Sylenth on rent-to-own then i'd buy Diva and Spire. The trance i like is 1995-2000.

Serum 2 was and is in the works. There is nothing specific, how far in development is, but a personal guess maybe next year we'll see it.

[chk071]

Another benefit of Serum is updates for life, you get Serum 2, 3, 4,.. 100,.. 99999 etc for free.

Did they announce that?

[nIGhT-SoN]

You get lifetime updates with Serum or any other Xfer product, and before buying it, I asked Steve and said to me you'll get for free any future versions.

up.png

There is also a discussion about lifetime updates here - https://xferrecords.com/forums/general/ ... me-updates


Serum 2 wasn't officially announced, but Steve said in different interviews he's working on it. Also, this is from his discord channel:

s2.png

He doesn't want to announce it until it's finished and I think it's because he doesn't wants the pressure to force a release earlier than what he wants it to be, but from his statement Serum 2 will come. When? Nobody knows for sure. The "next year" thing, it's just my assumption/hope, I don't have any insights or info in that regard.