What synths are in equal or better footing than VPS Avenger?

[MegaPixel]

Taste really is subjective... some people think Rapid and Falcon sound better than Avenger?

My two biggest issues with Avenger, well three... the price of their expansions, the every 3 month check in but most importantly it is a cpu hog especially at low latencies like I work at.

But for sure the sound is not its limitation at all for me...
It would need a Dune 3, or the u-he synths or omnisphere to sound better to me.

rsp

I think Rapid just has far better sound quality, everything that comes out of it just sounds better, not sure why. Kind of makes Avenger sound flat and a bit early 2000s mp3 lol, but I would like to see routing done way better as per phaseplant, vital, serum etc etc etc or blue print editor in unreal engine.

Omnisphere, I've never got on with it... Its a preset warehouse for me... I also find it slow and clunky, I was on support for nearly 3 weeks just trying to get it to stop lagging, never did solve that issue. It does have good / decent sound quality however but I wouldn't buy any expansions or extras for it, maybe an update when it goes to v3... But I don't even know about that... Got so much other stuff that covers everything it does and does a better job at it.

[zvenx]

Rapid like Falcon, like Alchemy before it, like the Kurzweil K2000 before it, sound very Vanilla to my ears.... Very Digital.... Very 'clean' sounding.. I grew up on Analog..and Avenger reminds me of that to an extent..
taste really is subjective.
rsp

[martiu]

Rapid like Falcon, like Alchemy before it, like the Kurzweil K2000 before it, sound very Vanilla to my ears.... Very Digital.... Very 'clean' sounding.. I grew up on Analog..and Avenger reminds me of that to an extent..
taste really is subjective.
rsp

some like it extra crispy

[Biome_Digital]

the ones that are most similar to avenger are rapid, serum, icarus, vital, maybe some others like pigments etc

IMO there are probably 3 groups:

Group 1
Falcon and those that can compete with it, as far as I know there only 1 that can, and that's Halion 6.

Group 2
Rapid, VPS Avenger and Icarus 2.
(No 1: Rapid, No 2: Avenger, No 3: Icarus 2)

Group 3
Vital, Phaseplant, Serum, Pigments, Anna 2. all u-he, plugin alliance instruments, cherry instruments etc etc etc etc


I think the comparison between groups is a bit unfair, only group 1 can compete with group 1 etc, eg Falcon would crush nearly everything in the other groups in many areas but not all etc etc

See, I definitely wouldn't group all your Group Three together. Some there are not in the same league! IMO.

[Biome_Digital]

It is subjective.

[MegaPixel]

See, I definitely would group all you Group three together. Some there are not in the same league! IMO.

I'm not a fan over classification, too many genres of music out there as it is

Rule no 1 KISS (if your a programmer)

Group 3 could be split into a few sub categories OFC, I'm just lumping all the rest in there as I can't be arsed to do type all that nonsense out or think about them all and then deal with probably even more irrelevant feedback (also see thread title, off subject a tad)... Also remember, this is one persons opinion (mine), last I checked it was ok for someone to have an OP.

Feel free to pick up where I left off

I'm out, un-subbed from thread.

[Aloysius]

You're.

[Biome_Digital]

See, I definitely would group all you Group three together. Some there are not in the same league! IMO.

I'm not a fan over classification, too many genres of music out there as it is

Rule no 1 KISS (if your a programmer)

Group 3 could be split into a few sub categories OFC, I'm just lumping all the rest in there as I can't be arsed to do type all that nonsense out or think about them all and then deal with probably even more irrelevant feedback (also see thread title, off subject a tad)... Also remember, this is one persons opinion (mine), last I checked it was ok for someone to have an OP.

Feel free to pick up where I left off

I'm out, un-subbed from thread.

wow, Sorry!

[kobal]

i don t know about avenger, rapid has something a bit special that i like in the sound. i think it might be underated synth.

[concon]

I'm always amazed at how old discussion threads get rejuvenated here. Is the original topic starter still interested in the topic?

Anyway, having just recently purchased Halion 6, I'll speak up in its defense. It is a wonderfully powerful and great-sounding piece of software, especially when it comes to creating and shaping wavetables. I can well appreciate the obstacles to learning how to use it for sound creation. I, too, was screaming at it for a couple of days until two pieces of understanding fell into line. One was that in the "slot" thingy on the left side of the screen, you have to manually add a "program" to it from a program selector panel. Then the other thing was the need to understand the hierarchy of the "program tree", and make sure you have added a layer and then a "zone" to it. The "zone" lets you choose whether you want to work with a synth, a sampler, a wavetable, an organ, or a granular engine. Then a bit of clicking around will reveal the other mysteries of Halion relatively easily.

I tried the Avenger demo, and I wouldn't recommend it. I thought it sounded cheesy, frankly, compared to other synth/sampler combo products. Maybe it was just the presets. And trying to delete the demo from my MacBook Pro was a nightmare of finding different components stuffed in a surprising array of locations.

[majedsalih]

Roli Equator 2

[Flip64]

Just been trying the demo of Avenger while its on sale and its rare for me to find a complex synth I can create sounds from scratch on, fairly easily. The workflow and layout (to me) seems pretty easy to use and it's fairly easy to make interesting sounds. The presets ...although there's quite a few, I've not found a whole lot I like.

But with so many waveforms, wavetables, samples, modulation possibilities and loading your own samples, how good it is might just end up being down to the user.

[OllieBoi]

I think Rapid just has far better sound quality, everything that comes out of it just sounds better, not sure why. Kind of makes Avenger sound flat and a bit early 2000s mp3 lol, but I would like to see routing done way better as per phaseplant, vital, serum etc etc etc or blue print editor in unreal engine.

Omnisphere, I've never got on with it... Its a preset warehouse for me... I also find it slow and clunky, I was on support for nearly 3 weeks just trying to get it to stop lagging, never did solve that issue. It does have good / decent sound quality however but I wouldn't buy any expansions or extras for it, maybe an update when it goes to v3... But I don't even know about that... Got so much other stuff that covers everything it does and does a better job at it.

I own practically every synth plugin on the market and I use almost none of them because they sound like ass compared to my hardware synths (mostly analog and hybrid synths but also some classic VA's like the Virus TI and Nord Lead 2).

I just purchased Avenger because it was on sale for half off on Plugin Boutique. I already regret it. Everything on the UI is impossibly tiny and super cramped. I got sucked in by the wide variety of expansion packs which seem to sound reasonably good at least when listening to their demos. But at $70 a pop, these packs better be phenomenal (which I don't think is possible given that Avenger's synth engine sounds a little weak).

As an all around great sounding synth, Omnisphere just crushes everything out there. Sure it's expensive, but you get something like 14,000 incredible presets and a surprisingly powerful synth engine that is SO much easier to use than almost any other synth plugin out there (especially compared to Falcon which has the most convoluted information architecture of any "synth" I have ever owned).

People say that Omnisphere is slow to load patches and that its interface is sluggish. I don't know what they are talking about in terms of interface sluggishness. It seems plenty snappy to me.

Sure, Omnisphere takes a bit longer to load patches compared to a purely algorithmic synth like Diva. But Falcon takes WAY longer to load its sample-based "synth" patches. Even Avenger and Serum take longer to load most of their wavetable patches compared to Omnisphere.

[Flip64]

You know the GUI on Avenger is resizable? It can be tiny and cramped...or far too big and super uncramped...

If you just want presets - Omnisphere is great. But that's all I use it for as I can't make any sense of how it actually puts sounds together. It's the one VSTi I regret actually buying because it cost a lot and ultimately...I rarely use it.

I'll be buying Avenger because I can see how to make a sound I want. I don't need the expansion packs so the cost of those is no impact on me.

[OllieBoi]

You know the GUI on Avenger is resizable? It can be tiny and cramped...or far too big and super uncramped...

If you just want presets - Omnisphere is great. But that's all I use it for as I can't make any sense of how it actually puts sounds together. It's the one VSTi I regret actually buying because it cost a lot and ultimately...I rarely use it.

I'll be buying Avenger because I can see how to make a sound I want. I don't need the expansion packs so the cost of those is no impact on me.

Wow, Omnisphere is about as easy as it gets. In the latest 2.8 version, you can have up to 4 layers per patch. Each layer is a self-contained synth with oscillator, filter, amp, envelopes (can be multistage) and LFOs along with a full-featured mod matrix and terrific arpeggiator / step sequencer per layer. The oscillators can either be sample-based (including 500 scannable wavetables) or DSP generated. That's it. Super simple but great sounding.

EDIT: Regarding the size of Avenger's UI, I have it as big as it will go on my 34" ultra widescreen LG monitor and I am still squinting to read the text. I guess they should put an age limit on Avenger.