Official Serum thread!

[Biome_Digital]

Serums Wavetable editor is also amazing. How's the one in Vital?

Not as good. As a matter of fact, there isn't any wavetable editor that can compare with Serum in intuitiveness and power features, IMO. I use Serum as much as a wavetable editor as I use it as a synth. Vital can't compare in that chapter.

Forgetting the wavetable editor, where, in your opinion, does Vital fall short of serum as a Synth?

[foosnark]

I just discovered Vital over the weekend, and I was pretty impressed. It's been a while since I had Serum installed but I'm going to give it another go for comparison.

I seem to recall liking Serum's interface a bit better. With Vital you have to go to a separate Matrix page to route modulation and that feels a bit awkward.

Vital's LFOs can run at audio rate and track pitch -- I don't think Serum has that. I'm a big fan of audio rate modulation.

I'll definitely have to try them side by side to compare sound in general, etc.

[Teksonik]

Serums Wavetable editor is also amazing. How's the one in Vital?

Not as good. As a matter of fact, there isn't any wavetable editor that can compare with Serum in intuitiveness and power features, IMO. I use Serum as much as a wavetable editor as I use it as a synth. Vital can't compare in that chapter.

I only have the Serum demo and have only spent a few minutes with it but at first glance Vital's WT editor appears to be superior.

Can you tell us why you feel Serum's is better? Perhaps I'm missing something.

[fmr]

Serums Wavetable editor is also amazing. How's the one in Vital?

Not as good. As a matter of fact, there isn't any wavetable editor that can compare with Serum in intuitiveness and power features, IMO. I use Serum as much as a wavetable editor as I use it as a synth. Vital can't compare in that chapter.

I only have the Serum demo and have only spent a few minutes with it but at first glance Vital's WT editor appears to be superior.

Can you tell us why you feel Serum's is better? Perhaps I'm missing something.

Vital wavetable editor only allows to edit the wavetable as a whole (basically treats it as an audio file). You can't edit a single wave, change/add/replace/withdraw waves, etc. (at least, I couldn't find a way to do it).

Serum allows all that. You can create a wavetable out of a bunch of single cycle waveforms, for example, and have the option to change the number of waves inside a wavetable, filling the empty spaces with interpolated waves, which you can then extract and save as new single cycle waveforms, etc.

These are just a couple of things you can do in Serum that you can't in Vital (again, as far as i can tell). There are a lot more. Not that Vital doesn't allow for powerful changes in the wavetables (again, treated as audio files in whole), and is not a very powerful and complete synth in itself. It is, and I'm amazed it is available for free.

[vertibration]

Serums Wavetable editor is also amazing. How's the one in Vital?

Not as good. As a matter of fact, there isn't any wavetable editor that can compare with Serum in intuitiveness and power features, IMO. I use Serum as much as a wavetable editor as I use it as a synth. Vital can't compare in that chapter.

I only have the Serum demo and have only spent a few minutes with it but at first glance Vital's WT editor appears to be superior.

Can you tell us why you feel Serum's is better? Perhaps I'm missing something.

Nothing beats Serums wavetable editor period. For instance.......I can take a walkthrough video on youtube of lets say a Moog Sub 37. Record some audio from the video into Ableton using VB-Audio for mac. Take my recordings and crop them, and drag them into Serums wavetable editor.

I was able to recreate a ton of Sub 37 wavetables, and you can pretty much do that with any audio source from youtube as long as the audio is very clean without any processing.

Mike Dean had a bad ass Moog video of the Moog grandmother, and I was able to recreate some Square waves into serum.

I compared the wavetable I made, back to the audio clip of the Mike Dean video and it was absolutely indistinguishable.

Nothing beats serums editor, its the only reason I keep coming back to Serum

[Teksonik]

Well I've spent some more time with Serum's WT editor and I like it. It's certainly different than Vital's editor but I think they both have their strengths. I find Vital's Text to Wavetable feature very useful.

I like Serum and it definitely has a pleasing character but I'm going to have a hard time justifying the price especially considering how many WT synths I already have in my folder. If I'm correct Steve never does a sale and license transfers are not allowed so full price appears to be the only option.

Does it bring $189 worth of value over Vital or any of the other options I have at my disposal ? That's the question I'll have to answer for myself once again which is the point I've reached every time I've tried the demo over the years and so far the answer has been no.

[cb8rwh]

With Vital you have to go to a separate Matrix page to route modulation and that feels a bit awkward.

Vital has drag and drop modulation as well. Just left-click and drag the square where the modulator name resides e.g. ENV 1

[vertibration]

Well I've spent some more time with Serum's WT editor and I like it. It's certainly different than Vital's editor but I think they both have their strengths. I find Vital's Text to Wavetable feature very useful.

I like Serum and it definitely has a pleasing character but I'm going to have a hard time justifying the price especially considering how many WT synths I already have in my folder. If I'm correct Steve never does a sale and license transfers are not allowed so full price appears to be the only option.

Does it bring $189 worth of value over Vital or any of the other options I have at my disposal ? That's the question I'll have to answer for myself once again which is the point I've reached every time I've tried the demo over the years and so far the answer has been no.

For real, if Vital was out when Serum came out, people would have had a real hard time buying Serum. They are both really similar. I need serum because I create wavetables, and nothing does it like Serum

[foosnark]

Nothing beats Serums wavetable editor period.

Yup... even though I mostly stopped using software synths when I got heavily into Eurorack, I found Serum really useful for importing, editing and exporting wavetables for the SynthTech E352.

Vital has drag and drop modulation as well. Just left-click and drag the square where the modulator name resides e.g. ENV 1

Ah, I'll have to play with that, it wasn't obvious from poking around. I was looking for something on a right-click menu I guess.

[foosnark]

My quick impression is Serum has filters I like better. Vital has more interesting things you can do with the oscillator. They're both very cool, but I agree that with Vital being free Serum is a harder sell.

[OzoneJunkie]

More distortion types in Serum too. I'm expecting good things from the Vital graphics engine rewrite - it's a little slow to open and seems to use more resources than Serum. But honestly, if I could own only 2 synths, it's Serum and Vital. I have a number of synths that are great - the Uhe stuff and Synapse Audio stuff... but still, I just really dig S & V for what I like to do...

[Gadget Fiend]

Nothing beats Serums wavetable editor period. For instance.......I can take a walkthrough video on youtube of lets say a Moog Sub 37. Record some audio from the video into Ableton using VB-Audio for mac. Take my recordings and crop them, and drag them into Serums wavetable editor.

I was able to recreate a ton of Sub 37 wavetables, and you can pretty much do that with any audio source from youtube as long as the audio is very clean without any processing.

Mike Dean had a bad ass Moog video of the Moog grandmother, and I was able to recreate some Square waves into serum.

I compared the wavetable I made, back to the audio clip of the Mike Dean video and it was absolutely indistinguishable.

Nothing beats serums editor, its the only reason I keep coming back to Serum

Hi, do you know of any Serum libraries that include wavetables of both classic and newer (e.g., the Sub 37 and Grandmother) analog synths? I have tried programming some Serum patches and the factory wavetables are all thin and digital sounding to my ears. The factory presets area also all terrible, IMO.

I bought a couple of Serum patch sets but these were mostly EDM patches that didn't sound anywhere near as good as Sylenth, Spire, Dune, Hive, etc.

[LeVzi]

In terms of showcasing , Serum's presets are hands down miles ahead of Vital (Pro version)'s

I was really disappointed with the selection in the Vital Pro version.

Serums , on the other hand, are first class.

[Gadget Fiend]

In terms of showcasing , Serum's presets are hands down miles ahead of Vital (Pro version)'s

I was really disappointed with the selection in the Vital Pro version.

Serums , on the other hand, are first class.

Really, I find Serum's presets to be unusable. They are so thin and weak sounding that I almost can't stand to listen to them. Lot's of people rave about Serum and I cannot for the life of me understand why. If I could get my money back on my Serum purchase, I would in a heartbeat.

u-he's Hive just crushes Serum.

[Dombaeb]

I find Vital's Text to Wavetable feature very useful.

Serum can make wavetables from text. Type "hey serum" inside the "formula" input and you'll be set. I'm surprised that people doesn't know about this feature. Serum have a lot of "hidden" sound design features.