What's that one synth that you find never sounds bad?

[liquidsound]

Dune 3, ZebraHZ, Spire.
Serum always pristine sound.

[BONES]

Is that a good or a bad thing?

I couldn't either. Sometimes it is synth A, sometimes it is synth B, sometimes it is ... etc.

I'm not even like that. If I'm honest, I've always liked Olga, even though I only bought it a couple of years ago. It and TRK-1 Bass are the two synths I will look for excuses to use and I'll keep at them until they do what I need because I want them to be in a song. It's childish and irrational and that's how I know they are my favourites. Other synths might get the same treatment for a while, when I first get them, but it never lasts.

[EnGee]

Is that a good or a bad thing?

I couldn't either. Sometimes it is synth A, sometimes it is synth B, sometimes it is ... etc.

I'm not even like that. If I'm honest, I've always liked Olga, even though I only bought it a couple of years ago. It and TRK-1 Bass are the two synths I will look for excuses to use and I'll keep at them until they do what I need because I want them to be in a song. It's childish and irrational and that's how I know they are my favourites. Other synths might get the same treatment for a while, when I first get them, but it never lasts.

The thing is while you are learning or knowing a synth, you would discover bad things and good things. Good things make you like the synth more eventually and bad things make you feel it is not going to be your favorite.

I should not be hasty on my judgment because many times, this or that tool becomes my favorite after knowing it better. It's also with people's opinions. I need to give them some thought.

I don't feel I'm wrong in changing my mind about a synth, but I feel wrong when I make a fast judgment. Many times the provided presets don't give that synth justice (like most presets in Bitwig synths). I need to make my own presets if I really want to use some synths. Today I spent about 10 mins with Polysynth and I could come with a good thick fat pad that not always easy to achieve with other subtractive simple synths.

[replicant X]

deleted

[rod_zero]

Diva, there is no other synth i always want to use, that I ultimately replace other with.

[damoog]

Softube Model 72 ,Arturia prophet V(longtime favorite)

Massive X is getting alot of praise here and I cannot understand why ,nothing inspires me that NI has ever done

[Echoes in the Attic]

Softube Model 72 ,Arturia pro-53(longtime favorite)

Massive X is getting alot of praise here and I cannot understand why ,nothing inspires me that NI has ever done

Arturia pro-53??

[hlmst]

synth1

[damoog]

Softube Model 72 ,Arturia pro-53(longtime favorite)

Massive X is getting alot of praise here and I cannot understand why ,nothing inspires me that NI has ever done

Arturia pro-53??

Corrected

[BONES]

The thing is while you are learning or knowing a synth, you would discover bad things and good things.

That will happen in the first 15 minutes after I install it because if it takes any longer than that to get my head around, I'll lose interest on the spot. Sometimes I'll persevere beyond that, as I did with Pigments, but I'll know in a few minutes whether I am going to like an instrument or not.

I should not be hasty on my judgment because many times, this or that tool becomes my favorite after knowing it better.

I am the opposite, no amount of getting to know a synth better will make me like it more because the only two things that really matter to me are the way it sounds and ease-of-use, which you know about fairly quickly. I mostly don't give a shit about features or functions, just sound and workflow. The one exception I'd make for that is Thorn's Glitch Sequencer, which definitely elevated my opinion of it once I discovered how useful it was.

It's also with people's opinions. I need to give them some thought.

Other people's opinions might get me interested in an instrument but they'll never influence my attitude towards it once I've tried it for myself.

I don't feel I'm wrong in changing my mind about a synth, but I feel wrong when I make a fast judgment. Many times the provided presets don't give that synth justice (like most presets in Bitwig synths). I need to make my own presets if I really want to use some synths. Today I spent about 10 mins with Polysynth and I could come with a good thick fat pad that not always easy to achieve with other subtractive simple synths.

I definitely agree with that, although probably in a different way. I find too many factory presets are designed to show off the instrument and aren't really usable in a song. They can serve to give you an overall impression of the sound quality on offer but I need to make my own sounds to know what the workflow is going to be like.

The other thing that happens is that synths can improve over time so you have to be willing to change your attitude towards them. The best example of that is how much more I find myself reaching for DUNE since it got a patch browser. I am really amazed at how big a difference that has made to working with the synth. An example that went the other way for me was the upgrade to Hive 2, which ruined that synth for me. All of a sudden I just hated using it. But I recently discovered Ploki's skins for Hive and I found one that looks incredible and makes it a lot more usable for me, so I've started working with it again.

All of you here are great musicians.

I'm actually a terrible musician but I have a great computer loaded with brilliant software. When people find out I am in a band, their first question is invariably "what instrument do you play?" and my answer is always "laptop".

Massive X is getting alot of praise here and I cannot understand why ,nothing inspires me that NI has ever done

That's a pretty poor attitude. I have no interest in Massive X but NI make some great stuff. TRK-01 Bass and Schema: DARK have become staples in my production workflow and I've relied heavily on (mostly 3rd party) Kontakt instruments for years.

[_leras]

The thing is while you are learning or knowing a synth, you would discover bad things and good things.

That will happen in the first 15 minutes after I install it because if it takes any longer than that to get my head around, I'll lose interest on the spot. Sometimes I'll persevere beyond that, as I did with Pigments, but I'll know in a few minutes whether I am going to like an instrument or not.

That sounds more like ADHD than logic. Sometimes it really does just take a bit more time to get to the guts of an instrument or to see what it can be capable of sounding like.

Sometimes I want a very specific type of sound and can't get it with the synth I wanted to use. Sometimes it's close enough, but sometimes I'll turn it into an exercise of trying to make the sound on a range of synths and include some I didn't gel with initially, or hadn't had time to use a lot.

This way I can push myself past things that might have annoyed me about workflow or layout of a synth and have a fair crack at seeing how it sounds.

Doing this I've sometimes got the best sounds out of unexpected synths and often have made a bunch of other good sounds in other synths along the way.

And on topic, weirdly, I didn't really love everything thing it did in the past, but I now think the og Massive usually sounds really good. I put this down to it having been so widely used that I've tuned into it over time.

[BONES]

Not ADHD so much as a lack of OCD. I have no real intertest in synths, my interest is in music. A mechanic doesn't obsess over his tools, why would I obsess over mine? I need them to do a job and mostly those jobs are pretty simple. A lot of people seem to want to make everything complicated but, in my experience, that doesn't work nearly as well as keeping things simple, although it can often feel like the easier approach.

[BBFG#]

Maybe not all, but most of the professional mechanics I've known absolutely obsess over their tools. And I've been caught in those conversations and equally with professional artists that obsess over theirs as well. Although the taggers I've had conversations with will use what ever is cheap and disposable since they might have to dump it all at the first squelch of the siren up the street.

[kritikon]

I have never had any synth that I can't make sound bad at some point if I try hard enough. OSCar was probably the best sounding synth ever for me, but I could get thin plinky additive sounds that were horrible even from that. Wavestate - I just love it, and 99% of the time it sounds fantastic, but I can make horrible thin digital whines on it really quickly. A synth that always sounds good doesn't exist, I suspect.

[BONES]

Maybe not all, but most of the professional mechanics I've known absolutely obsess over their tools.

And if you knew how much money they paid for them, you'd understand why. But their obsession is more in having the right tool for every job and knowing where it is when they need it. They don't buy tools they don't need, just for the sake of having them, like we do.