So, with it's release, is SynthMaster 3 the new reigning Super Synth?

[3lu5iv3]

made a few songs with SM2 back in the day. it was fun. maybe i should try SM3.

[martiu]

made a few songs with SM2 back in the day. it was fun. maybe i should try SM3.

plugin very good, buy now

[Jac459]

I always found Avenger and the company behind it weird, I never really took to it. No MPE either and they told me that they never will do it.

I sold Falcon since I found it's sound sterile and the sample loading abysmally slow. UVIs focus was mostly on their own libraries and they seemed to miss a lot of low hanging fruit, like really good surround support and native MPE at the core, not as a script. The sequencers and scripting is really good, but 3rd party support is abysmally bad.

I never had Omnisphere but from videos I did not like the UI.

Pigments is somehow nice GUI wise but for some reason it's sound never really made my ears happy.

With earlier SM versions I did not gel either, but since SM3 came out, this changed.
The UI could use a bit of a kick in the "sexy" department but it is extremely usable, well thought out and deep.
I'm not the biggest fan of "everything rightclick menu", but at the same time it is very clear and consistent.
The detail editors for sequencers, arps, samples, slices, wavetables etc. are really good.
And sequencers and arps per layer and Midi input and output also per layer is rad.

And I have no idea what it is, but the sound has something raw, natural and real that does something for my ears hardly any other synth does.

So I've retired mostly everything else other than my collection of physical modelling synths and SM3.

The presets are fantastic, it supports MPE, can go as deep as you like or very simple and still sound great, the filters are very good, the FM is top tier, CPU is good for what it's capable of...
And it was also great to see how fast bugs got fixed and features added recently.

So yeah, I personally can highly recommend to dig in.
This would be my "lonely island synth" for sure.

Cheers,

Tom

With such capable synth, I am not surprised of your feedback.

You forgot to mention phase plant which is an absolute beast and has a perfect UI in terms of efficiency and usability.
SM3 blows it underwater for presets...

Your comment on Avenger and VPS being weird is understandable, but since V2, I considere it to be weirdly awesomely sounding, with an awesome UI, awesome features and awesome presets... Ymmv...

So I think we have the answer to the OP question.

SM3 can perfectly be the leading super synth of the period for some. Some other will prefer avenger, falcon, current, pigments or phase plant. The point is now it is part of the leading pack.

[audiojunkie]

Just so you guys know.... just because I'm not talking much, doesn't mean I (the OP) am not listening. Some of my personal thoughts that I have regarding things:

1. If I'm not mistaken, of all of the pack-leading super synths, SynthMaster 3 is the only one that has copy protection that doesn't hurt the honest more than the pirates. I use the following criteria:

viewtopic.php?t=612966

1. The copy protection must use either a serial number, a keyfile or a per user Watermark.

2. The copy protection must not tie itself to anything. For example, there are now developers claiming they only use serial number copy protection, but then the copy protection ties itself to a particular CPU or other hardware. Another example is having just a serial number, but the software has to download required files from the vendor site in order to run. This is just as bad as challenge/response authentication. The software should not restrict you to using only the one computer. If you buy a new computer, you should be able to use it without dealing with the company further.

3. The software should not require any form of calling home to authenticate or to obtain the plugin. In other words, if a company were to go out of business, you should be able to pull a copy of the software and serial number or keyfile off of your backup drive, and authenticate the software. Be wary of companies using a single installer for their entire lineup of products.

Cutting to the chase, this is the most important thing about proper copy protection:

"If a company were to go out of business, you should be able to pull a copy of the software and serial number or keyfile off of your backup drive, and authenticate the software on a new computer."

As far as I know (and please correct me if I'm mistaken, KV331), SynthMaster is the only supersynth that meets all of the above criteria. And for those for whom copy protection matters, this alone could mean the difference between a purchase or not.






@Kv331: Could you please expound on SynthMaster 3's copy protection? Am I correct, that SynthMaster 3 does indeed meet my above listed criteria?

[audiojunkie]

One other thing that I would like to comment on about SynthMaster 3. At this point, it appears that one must install the other SynthMaster software versions in order to access everything from the previous versions of SynthMaster products inside of SynthMaster 3. It would be much better to not have to do that, and be able to simply install SynthMaster 3 as a single install, and have everything installed as one product.

[kv331]

It would be much better to not have to do that, and be able to simply install SynthMaster 3 as a single install, and have everything installed as one product.

There IS a valid reason for this. Most of our existing users had SM1 / SM2 installed on their machines. We don't want to increase network traffic+costs. So, that's why we required SM1 / SM2 to be installed to be able to load SM1 / SM2 presets.

[audiojunkie]

I always found Avenger and the company behind it weird, I never really took to it. No MPE either and they told me that they never will do it.

I sold Falcon since I found it's sound sterile and the sample loading abysmally slow. UVIs focus was mostly on their own libraries and they seemed to miss a lot of low hanging fruit, like really good surround support and native MPE at the core, not as a script. The sequencers and scripting is really good, but 3rd party support is abysmally bad.

I never had Omnisphere but from videos I did not like the UI.

Pigments is somehow nice GUI wise but for some reason it's sound never really made my ears happy.

With earlier SM versions I did not gel either, but since SM3 came out, this changed.
The UI could use a bit of a kick in the "sexy" department but it is extremely usable, well thought out and deep.
I'm not the biggest fan of "everything rightclick menu", but at the same time it is very clear and consistent.
The detail editors for sequencers, arps, samples, slices, wavetables etc. are really good.
And sequencers and arps per layer and Midi input and output also per layer is rad.

And I have no idea what it is, but the sound has something raw, natural and real that does something for my ears hardly any other synth does.

So I've retired mostly everything else other than my collection of physical modelling synths and SM3.

The presets are fantastic, it supports MPE, can go as deep as you like or very simple and still sound great, the filters are very good, the FM is top tier, CPU is good for what it's capable of...
And it was also great to see how fast bugs got fixed and features added recently.

So yeah, I personally can highly recommend to dig in.
This would be my "lonely island synth" for sure.

Cheers,

Tom

So I think we have the answer to the OP question.

SM3 can perfectly be the leading super synth of the period for some. Some other will prefer avenger, falcon, current, pigments or phase plant. The point is now it is part of the leading pack.

I think so as well!

[audiojunkie]

Just so you guys know.... just because I'm not talking much, doesn't mean I (the OP) am not listening. Some of my personal thoughts that I have regarding things:

1. If I'm not mistaken, of all of the pack-leading super synths, SynthMaster 3 is the only one that has copy protection that doesn't hurt the honest more than the pirates. I use the following criteria:

viewtopic.php?t=612966

1. The copy protection must use either a serial number, a keyfile or a per user Watermark.

2. The copy protection must not tie itself to anything. For example, there are now developers claiming they only use serial number copy protection, but then the copy protection ties itself to a particular CPU or other hardware. Another example is having just a serial number, but the software has to download required files from the vendor site in order to run. This is just as bad as challenge/response authentication. The software should not restrict you to using only the one computer. If you buy a new computer, you should be able to use it without dealing with the company further.

3. The software should not require any form of calling home to authenticate or to obtain the plugin. In other words, if a company were to go out of business, you should be able to pull a copy of the software and serial number or keyfile off of your backup drive, and authenticate the software. Be wary of companies using a single installer for their entire lineup of products.

Cutting to the chase, this is the most important thing about proper copy protection:

"If a company were to go out of business, you should be able to pull a copy of the software and serial number or keyfile off of your backup drive, and authenticate the software on a new computer."

As far as I know (and please correct me if I'm mistaken, KV331), SynthMaster is the only supersynth that meets all of the above criteria. And for those for whom copy protection matters, this alone could mean the difference between a purchase or not.






@Kv331: Could you please expound on SynthMaster 3's copy protection? Am I correct, that SynthMaster 3 does indeed meet my above listed criteria?

...and regarding your copy protection, @Kv331?

[swilow11]

The biggest downside to Avenger is its inability to load my many thousands of wavetables. Even throwing them into the resample oscillator didn't always give me access to all the frames. This just made it much less appealing. That said, SM3 seems to load wavetables (wavs) into the multissmple engine which is also not ideal.

I liked that I could use Avenger as a drum sequencer but I also know that I was just never going to use it like that. Multitimbral is great but faffing around with midi routing is a waste of time when I could just load Battery and HyRPE or the Bitwig drum machine.

I would say that SM3 compares most strongly to Phase Plant. Of course, as PP has no arp or sequencer, SM3 beats it there. Phase Plant has more/better FX, plus the whole Snapheap deal. SM3 does cleaner sounding FM to my ears. Phase Plant has a better granular engine. Sm3 has less filter options but I think even the standard SVF sounds better than anything in Phase Plant. The vector engine in SM3 is very interesting, but the additive engine is a bit odd and not really rhe sort of additive I would like to use. But Phase Plant has nothing like that so... SM3 has better presets imo and is more affordable. Upon comparison, I think SM3 edges out Phase Plant.

If the bugs in Synthmaster 3 get sorted out, this will be an absolutely mighty piece of software.

[Dunbar]

There IS a valid reason for this. Most of our existing users had SM1 / SM2 installed on their machines. We don't want to increase network traffic+costs. So, that's why we required SM1 / SM2 to be installed to be able to load SM1 / SM2 presets.

If your aim is to reduce network traffic, bundle the SM1 and SM2 presets into a separate installer. This will reduce the size of the download and spare us from installing redundant software on our systems.

[kv331]

...and regarding your copy protection, @Kv331?

SynthMaster 3 refreshes license key file when

1. computer name / computer identification changes
2. user downloaded license key from our website file via email

[imrae]

So it wouldn't work on a new computer if KV331 closes down?

[kv331]

That said, SM3 seems to load wavetables (wavs) into the multissmple engine which is also not ideal.

I don't understand what you mean by that. Did you try to drag-n-drop a wav into the basic oscillator directly?

SynthMaster 3 CAN import wavetables (skip to 56:55)

[kv331]

So it wouldn't work on a new computer if KV331 closes down?

If SM3 can not download a new license key file, it continues with the old one. Just tested this use case

[kv331]

hase Plant has a better granular engine.

In what ways is PP's granular better I'd like to know. Thx