Comparing 30 VSTi Supersaws (MYR one)

[Lbdunequest]

Lush 2 has a very good supersaw. Here it is with internal delay/reverb and some PA MAAG EQ to open up the top end some more (maybe too much). Only issue here is it's CPU heavy and crashed on me multiple times while I was trying to make this. I'm running version 2.0 though and I know there's been a minor update.

https://soundcloud.com/aiyn-zahev/desti ... al_sharing

Thanks for the tip, to my surprise its really very good. And synth works flawesly here on latest fl studio.

One downside about the synth it doesnt have a crossmod.

[Lbdunequest]

One day, people will discover supersines and the electronic music scene will explode.

I'm working on a synth engine with 1000 free running sine oscillators, and tuning them all to a single frequency with a bit of detune sounds kind of... let's just say, it won't be a thing

Additive right?

[xbitz]

...Harmor can generate up to 516 sine wave (partials), per note, per unison voice AND modulate these in real-time to resynthesize ANY continuously evolving sound...

- https://www.image-line.com/fl-studio-le ... Harmor.htm

Harmor as of 2013, by today the machines can already handle the doubled number of partials, and we are already set

[Urs]

One day, people will discover supersines and the electronic music scene will explode.

I'm working on a synth engine with 1000 free running sine oscillators, and tuning them all to a single frequency with a bit of detune sounds kind of... let's just say, it won't be a thing

Additive right?

Yes. NAMM in 2 weeks. Lots of Supersaws and lots of free running sine oscillators.

[egbert101]

u-he Harmor.

I mean, I might just take plugins seriously again if this ever happened.

[dionenoid]

Hey everyone, the video is mine (I've been a lurker here for years) - thanks for the post here; I didn't want to self-promote the video. Much of this was my subjective opinion, and apologies Urs because you're right, the version of Hive I was using was an old 2.0 copy that I never bothered to update on that computer.
I plan on making a pt 2 which also includes some hardware - I have two virus TI2s, a JP8080, and a Novationa Ultranova (though I can't get the ultranova editor to work anymore - ugh). I would have loved to include Coronoa - I actually was considering Corona or Discovery, but it was Coronoa that has the Super-7 engine. I just don't think I have a license, though I remember trying out the demo a long time ago.
A few I left out:
V-Station - Discontinued, no per-oscillator unison, but still great
Synth1 - No per-oscillator unison
Sunrizer - I have the discontinued VST version, but it was giving me audio hiccups so I had to take it out of the running.
Viper/JP6K - I'm on a mac so unfortunately I can't, though I do plug Szabo in the video because he certainly knows what he is doing
Superwave P8 - Back when I was on PC I had a lot of fun with this one
If I do a Pt 2, I'll include Corona, the latest version of Hive, the JP & TI2, along with V-Station and maybe Thor (I have the reason bundle). I could also do DAW specific synths but I've found most are pretty trash at this - with the exception of FL Studio's such as Sytrus and Toxic Biohazard. I was not a fan of the unison on Ableton's stock plugins for instance.

Try this one, it's free, loads in Kontakt :
viewtopic.php?t=588845

[Lbdunequest]

One day, people will discover supersines and the electronic music scene will explode.

I'm working on a synth engine with 1000 free running sine oscillators, and tuning them all to a single frequency with a bit of detune sounds kind of... let's just say, it won't be a thing

Additive right?

Yes. NAMM in 2 weeks. Lots of Supersaws and lots of free running sine oscillators.

Hopefully its Zebra 3's additive module

[Uncle E]

I'm working on a synth engine with 1000 free running sine oscillators

1000 Pings Only

[paulm12]

Try this one, it's free, loads in Kontakt :
viewtopic.php?t=588845

Wow, this looks insane, never heard of it. Will certainly be checking this out.

My “dream” supersaw synth would be one where:

* You can choose the base waveform (or even better if you can adjust the partials, with presets for the Virus, JP, etc); since saws have all harmonics 1/n you don’t really need to worry about stuff outside this.
* You can adjust the number of voices (perhaps up to 16 per oscillator, at a certain point you get diminishing returns)
* You can adjust the detune amount and how the detune is spaced (not just with a “linear/exponential” switch but a legit way of specifying how the “detune” knob behaves as a function of the stack index). Some synths sort of do this by giving you individual oscillators, one for each voice, but let’s be honest this is a PITA to use, because if you want to adjust the relative detune between all voices at the same spacing you have to start from scratch.
* Can adjust how voices are panned in a similar way
* Can adjust the volume of voices as well (perhaps you want the side voices, or more heavily detuned voices, to be somewhat quieter.

As a result it looks like I need to check out this Kontakt module.

One thing to mention:
In my opinion, the saw is not “right” waveform for modern music. It has the correct harmonics present, but the 1/n dropping of amplitudes leads to a -6dB downtilt in the frequency domain. Most modern music is mixed to hit a -4.5dB downtilt, which is considerably brighter (the majority of music spectrum analyzers like SPAN have this downtilt already built-in, so modern pop tracks will look “flat” despite having significantly more low frequency content on a neutral scale).

What this leads to is people using aggressive high-shelf or parametric EQ to “boost” the high end of saw/supersaw sounds to account for this difference. The JP has its high-shelf EQ knob which is one of the most aggressive EQs I’ve ever heard/used - but IMO it somehow works for dialing in sounds and is part of the JP’s “character”. Look at presets in Sylenth1, Spire, or Serum - plenty of them use a high-shelf filter to account for this. Of course by doing this you are changing not only the relative amplitudes but the phases of the harmonics so the resulting waveform may not look very “saw-like” at all.

It seems to me Navira’s “Mode A” does try to correct for this - I should look at what it’s waveform is on an oscilloscope to see how much this affects the time-domain view. Regardless I wonder if it would be better to “start” with a saw-like waveform that has a -4.5dB downtilt than a -6 one, especially if one can adjust the phase of each harmonic beforehand. In actuality, the phase part of this may not matter all that much but sent though a bunch of nonlinear processing it could.

[LFO8]

My “dream” supersaw synth would be one where:

* You can choose the base waveform (or even better if you can adjust the partials, with presets for the Virus, JP, etc); since saws have all harmonics 1/n you don’t really need to worry about stuff outside this.
* You can adjust the number of voices (perhaps up to 16 per oscillator, at a certain point you get diminishing returns)
* You can adjust the detune amount and how the detune is spaced (not just with a “linear/exponential” switch but a legit way of specifying how the “detune” knob behaves as a function of the stack index). Some synths sort of do this by giving you individual oscillators, one for each voice, but let’s be honest this is a PITA to use, because if you want to adjust the relative detune between all voices at the same spacing you have to start from scratch.
* Can adjust how voices are panned in a similar way
* Can adjust the volume of voices as well (perhaps you want the side voices, or more heavily detuned voices, to be somewhat quieter.

Soo... Vital?

[carrieres]

Dune3.6 ?

[Lbdunequest]

Synthmaster 2 is surprisingly good at supersaws.

I always liked Dune 3 for supersaws but you really have to work it to have it as Lush as Lush 2, Diva or Sylenth1 can do the supersaws.

[Tone2 Synthesizers]

1. Ana 2 (Sonic Academy)
2. Ascension (W.A. Production / DMS)
3. Avenger 2 (Vengeance)
4. Chro-8080 (Pulsecraft)
5. Diva (U-he)
6. Diversion (DS Audio)
7. Dune 3 (Synapse Audio)
8. Electra3 (Tone 2)
9. Hive 2 (U-he)
10. Falcon (UVI)
11. Hybrid 3 (AIR)
12. Icarus 2 (Tone 2)
13. Massive (NI)
14. Massive X (NI)
15. Navira (TheTunes.ru)
16. Omnisphere (Spectrasonics)
17. Phase Plant (Kiloheartz)
18. Pigments (Arturia)
19. Rapid (Parawave Audio)
20. Serum (Xfer)
21. Spire (Reveal Sound)
22. Surge XT (Member Audio) [FREE]
23. Sylenth1 (Lennar Digital)
24. SynthMaster 3 (KV331 Audio)
25. Thorn (DS Audio)
26. Unison (Soundspot) - now WaveOsc (Pluginboutique)
27. Vanguard (ReFX)
28. Vital (Matt Tytel) [FREE]
29. Warlock (Tone 2)
30. Zebra 2 (U-he)

Don't Shoot the Messenger

Thanks for video. It helped me to find and fix a few weak spots in Icarus2. I have taken care of it for Icarus3 and it now sound absolutely awesome.
- The hypersaws do not longer suffer from an occasional 'phasing' sound. It did happen especially when patches with long release times were played.
- The mix is more transparent and the amplitude does not longer get out of control when many notes are played quickly.

[paulm12]

Thanks for video. It helped me to find and fix a few weak spots in Icarus2. I have taken care of it for Icarus3 and it now sound absolutely awesome.
- The hypersaws do not longer suffer from an occasional 'phasing' sound. It did happen especially when patches with long release times were played.
- The mix is more transparent and the amplitude does not longer get out of control when many notes are played quickly.

Wow thanks, this is great to hear. I purchased the upgrade from Electra2 to version 3 for this video in particular. Will need to add Icarus 3 on a new version when it is released. I have my JP8080 and TI2's wired up for comparison too, along with some of the other suggestions people have mentioned here as well (plus a redo of Hive, etc). I may even want to create a full track or demo using just Icarus 3, which I've done with Spire, Dune, Synthmaster, etc.

Soo... Vital?

Vital gets close, but its missing full customization on the detune curve and the stereo spread. There's also something about the sound of its supersaw that takes more work for me to dial in - it sounds good once you get there but it takes a bit more coaxing for me to get it in that "sweet spot." I did eventually get a Trance "Lead Stack" with 3-4 layers of Vital that I was pretty happy with: s . With that being said I've gotten good feedback from my Vital bank and sound design tutorials - one user even said he wanted to cancel his Access Virus order after hearing some of the sounds. However the biggest drawback of using Vital for this is that it takes a lot of CPU - in the context of a full track I'd imagine most computers would have underruns. I'm running a 3.6 GHz 10-Core Intel Core i9 and I can max out my CPU on a project that uses Vital for all the "bread and butter" sounds, which does not happen with Spire, Sylenth, Dune, Synthmaster, etc.
As a result I wouldn't put it in my "Top 3-5" Supersaw synths, despite Vital in general being a joy to program and super powerful (though it wouldn't be near the bottom either).

[xbitz]

could someone link me to a showcase of the third synthesizer in the picture,

Code: Select all

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjYilst4NFU

especially the D(esktop) version? I found videos on YouTube, but they didn't show how it compares to other software synthesizers.

https://www.behringer.com/behringer/pro ... Code=P0AC5
or
https://www.behringer.com/behringer/pro ... Code=P0CF7