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

[billinder33]

....

KV331... first off, I have no experience with older versions of Synthmaster, but the new release is really powerful. I do agree with other posters that it needs some usability improvements.

My biggest complaint seems like a relatively easy thing to fix.... The tab access is the biggest workflow killer in this synth. When you have a lot of oscs/filters/mods, accessing the correct tab is a major, major pain. When building a patch, ending up with (for example) Osc 3 somehow ordered in front of Osc 1 with no way to change that is incredibly unintuitive. And you can't manually order them by dragging. So making the tabs automatically ordered in terms of osc/filter/mod number by default, and also making them manually re-orderable by dragging or some other method would be a huge help.

What would really help tab management, is if clicking an object in the Routing area would pull that osc/filter/mod's tab into the foreground... so instead of that click disabling/muting the object as it does now, instead make that click activate the object's tab and pull it to the foreground. That way you could just use the Routing area as a navigator to access whatever osc/filter/mod you needed. Fast. Easy.

Then just make the disable/mute function in the Routing area a right-click option. Because if you could actually get to the tab easily, you wouldn't likely disable it from Routing anyhow, you'd just do it from the tab. But you can't easily get to the correct tab.

Workflow killer number 2 is.... connecting objects in the routing tab is a MAJOR pain in the azz. It's way, way too finicky. To the point where sometimes I'm not sure if something will connect and I'm just not being accurate enough, or if it won't connect because it's not allowed to. Make the sweet spot for a connection much larger and more obvious when it's connecting (possibly a green hue), and also make it obvious when it's not allowed to connect (red hue).

Otherwise, really cool synth.

[zerocrossing]

There is so much.. no I don't have the time nor the strength to do so right now. But you could start by reading the post by @zerocrossing to get a general idea of things.

I will.

Thanks for bashing a product that you have not tried

Thanks for dismissing constructive criticism of your product.

Seriously, I generally charge a lot for that type of consulting and here it is, laid as a gift at your feet. You are free to accept or ignore it, but I've been on KVR for quite a while, and Synthmaster isn't generally the most spoken of instrument, despite how good it is in many respects. I think it could be a lot more popular, but the UI has always been a sticking point for a lot of people. Most people will just try the demo and never buy it, and not say anything about it. I'm not even talking some sort of giant overhaul either, just a few changes that I think would make the overall experience a lot better.

[kv331]

Thanks for dismissing constructive criticism of your product.

My comment was to bmanic, not to you. I thank you for taking the time to evaluate it and write your observations. bmanic did not even check out the software, and yet he trashed it completely.

[Examigan]

Workflow killer number 2 is.... connecting objects in the routing tab is a MAJOR pain in the azz. It's way, way too finicky. To the point where sometimes I'm not sure if something will connect and I'm just not being accurate enough, or if it won't connect because it's not allowed to. Make the sweet spot for a connection much larger and more obvious when it's connecting (possibly a green hue), and also make it obvious when it's not allowed to connect

I wonder if there could be a way to make it more like a sort of an FM matrix grid, like FM8’s for example.

[Jac459]

If I may add my 2 cents in the somewhat heated debate that just happened, I think no "super synth" is perfect in the market today.

If we rate a synth quality by these few criterias:
- UI/UX aka ergonomic.
- capabilities (routing, layering effects, synthesis types, filters number and so on and so forth.
- presets
- sound quality.
- price/value/quality of support

Synthmaster 3 obtains a strong mark on price, capabilities and sound quality, more or less top the charts in presets and kind of fail to impress in the UX part. I too find the UI difficult to learn and while better than the sm2, it is still far far from being a good modern UI.

BUT! If you take phase plant (my top UX super-synth), its presets are light years from SM3 (behind).
Serum, Spire and Current are excellent but fall behind in capability.
Falcon 3 is the king of capabilities but the UI isn't better than SM3.
Hive 2 hasn't the same preset quality and sorry for the uhe lovers but the UI isn't great either (and yes I tried various skins, it is about workflow).
Only Avenger 2 for me have a consistently excellent score everywhere (price excepted maybe) and is my favourite synth for that.

I don't know very well bmanic but I know he was the presets creator for Twin 3 synth. I guess he doesn't care much about presets (I am just guessing here) and if you are used of Twin 3 which is (in my subjective mind) the absolute best UX of the market today, I can understand going to SM3 feels unpolished and mediocre on that particular front....


My conclusion is that as discussed before, while I agree that SM3 has all the UI shortcomings mentioned, it is still a perfectly valid contender for the king of the super synths for some. Depending on their criterias.

For me SM3 is an awesome source of inspiration with absolutely divine presets that I can tweak, transform and make my own with a super powerful engine. And that, with an excellent price point and a developer super involved in the community and hard working.
That's enough to place it easily as one of my top buy of the previous few years (I am saying years because I bought the complete package and received sm3 for free and I was thinking similarly of SM2).

[swilow11]

Tbh I am slightly underwhelmed by the additive oscillator too. Any synth with more than 1 oscillator and a variety of waveforms could be considered additive if by additive we mean 'able to play different waveforms simultaneously'.. but this is just not what the general community mean by additive. We mean a bank of sine waves/partials. I guess one could construct something approximate using multiple oscillators anf layers but that's a hassle..

I know 8 partials are not enough to call it an "additive" oscillator. I don't know how to rename it though. "Organ" oscillator maybe? or "Multi Osc" ?

I wonder if you've considered making a genuine additive engine ala Pigments style? This would be absolutely amazing and would truly (imo) elevate this already fantastic synth....

Let me see what I can do about this. if it won't involve fast fourier transforms, I can consider that. It might be feasible rendering sine waves using SIMD vector instructions hopefuly.

EDIT: I've been watching videos on "Additive synths" today. Loom II looks good, Pigments as well.

This is awesome Something additive like Pigments would be amazingly cool. CPU is an issue though.

[Held]

EDIT: I've been watching videos on "Additive synths" today. Loom II looks good, Pigments as well.

Razor by Native Instruments is pretty cool as well. It has some nice spectral effects.

[chagzuki]

Seriously, I generally charge a lot for that type of consulting and here it is, laid as a gift at your feet.

That's news to me. Consulting for feedback on a synth, feedback which would aim to represent community sensibilities/the market in general, a market which will include users of all tiers of experience and subjective preferences. Since devs talk to users on forums it seems a stretch that they would pay for such purported expertise.

I've played with it a bit and generally agree with billinder33, I had a similar experience with tab navigation and routing. And also had some confusion with the basic osc menu, having to go through three sub folders to get to the standard basic types, with initial ones apparently not standard square/saw etc. I still feel like I must be missing something.

I really like the configurability of the core components, the envelopers, filters and oscillators, which have options lacking in most other similar synths and therefore guarantee that one can pretty much take any starting point and tweak without limitations.

Also, the noise LFOs don't seem to be operating the way I'd expect in terms of generating simple constant random change polyphonically, with random starting position, but I need to spend more time with that aspect. It appears that they use noise to generate static shapes. One can use noise as a modulator but I don't see any options to change it, smooth etc.

[audiojunkie]

Tbh I am slightly underwhelmed by the additive oscillator too. Any synth with more than 1 oscillator and a variety of waveforms could be considered additive if by additive we mean 'able to play different waveforms simultaneously'.. but this is just not what the general community mean by additive. We mean a bank of sine waves/partials. I guess one could construct something approximate using multiple oscillators anf layers but that's a hassle..

I know 8 partials are not enough to call it an "additive" oscillator. I don't know how to rename it though. "Organ" oscillator maybe? or "Multi Osc" ?

I wonder if you've considered making a genuine additive engine ala Pigments style? This would be absolutely amazing and would truly (imo) elevate this already fantastic synth....

Let me see what I can do about this. if it won't involve fast fourier transforms, I can consider that. It might be feasible rendering sine waves using SIMD vector instructions hopefuly.

EDIT: I've been watching videos on "Additive synths" today. Loom II looks good, Pigments as well.

This is awesome Something additive like Pigments would be amazingly cool. CPU is an issue though.

Computers continue to get faster and faster. While CPU is an issue, it won't be in a couple of years. Just like Diva isn't so bad anymore CPU-wise. I'd say Pigments-style additive would be a welcome addition, regardless of the high CPU.

[MorpherX]

Synthmaster3 is for shure not a "Supersynth" !
I have tested the new version for hours.

First, the Gui is a complete mess and chaos compared to Serum, Icarus or Hive.
Second, it's to complicated to achieve certain actions like modulate something or prepare a user sample or user wavetable for playback.
Third, the modmatrix is a mess. It doesn't show all modulations at the same time and is much to big (Gui).

Sound:
The presets are nothing exceptionell.
The soundquality is good and also the effects, except the reverb.
Therefore I have the above mentioned synths I for for shure don`t buy this synth-sampler.

[Examigan]

Synthmaster3 is for shure not a "Supersynth" !
I have tested the new version for hours.

First, the Gui is a complete mess and chaos compared to Serum, Icarus or Hive.
Second, it's to complicated to achieve certain actions like modulate something or prepare a user sample or user wavetable for playback.

Right-click on a control and select modulation.
Prepare a user sample: drag and drop onto the osc and go from there.

Third, the modmatrix is a mess. It doesn't show all modulations at the same time and is much to big (Gui).

There are filters at the top and you can scroll up and down.

Sound:
The presets are nothing exceptionell.

I disagree, there are some great ones in there, but of course you can design your own.

[audiojunkie]

Synthmaster3 is for shure not a "Supersynth" !
I have tested the new version for hours.

First, the Gui is a complete mess and chaos compared to Serum, Icarus or Hive.
Second, it's to complicated to achieve certain actions like modulate something or prepare a user sample or user wavetable for playback.
Third, the modmatrix is a mess. It doesn't show all modulations at the same time and is much to big (Gui).

Sound:
The presets are nothing exceptionell.
The soundquality is good and also the effects, except the reverb.
Therefore I have the above mentioned synths I for for shure don`t buy this synth-sampler.

Yeah, well, you know, that's just like, uh, your opinion, man.

[Jac459]

Synthmaster3 is for shure not a "Supersynth" !
I have tested the new version for hours.

First, the Gui is a complete mess and chaos compared to Serum, Icarus or Hive.
Second, it's to complicated to achieve certain actions like modulate something or prepare a user sample or user wavetable for playback.
Third, the modmatrix is a mess. It doesn't show all modulations at the same time and is much to big (Gui).

Sound:
The presets are nothing exceptionell.
The soundquality is good and also the effects, except the reverb.
Therefore I have the above mentioned synths I for for shure don`t buy this synth-sampler.

If you missed the quality of the presets, even compared to hive, diva, serum, vital pro, current, pigments, phase plant spire and others, I would say that you missed some obvious quality of this product.
Maybe try it a bit more before posting.

[zerocrossing]

Synthmaster3 is for shure not a "Supersynth" !
I have tested the new version for hours.

First, the Gui is a complete mess and chaos compared to Serum, Icarus or Hive.
Second, it's to complicated to achieve certain actions like modulate something or prepare a user sample or user wavetable for playback.
Third, the modmatrix is a mess. It doesn't show all modulations at the same time and is much to big (Gui).

Sound:
The presets are nothing exceptionell.
The soundquality is good and also the effects, except the reverb.
Therefore I have the above mentioned synths I for for shure don`t buy this synth-sampler.

If you missed the quality of the presets, even compared to hive, diva, serum, vital pro, current, pigments, phase plant spire and others, I would say that you missed some obvious quality of this product.
Maybe try it a bit more before posting.

Preset style is really subjective. I tried a few, and they seemed fine, but a lot are the type of “synth seller” type things that are fun to use on a demo, but not anything I’d use in a track. Of course, it’s easy enough to make your own or edit what’s there to get something good. I could see being cold on them if you wanted more mix ready sounds for your production. I mostly see presets as inspiration showing what a synth can do.

[seafire]

Synthmaster3 is for shure not a "Supersynth" !
I have tested the new version for hours.

First, the Gui is a complete mess and chaos compared to Serum, Icarus or Hive.

I wouldn't put any of those in the 'supersynth' stable