Official Serum 2 thread!

[dysjoint]

If you're working with clips or the arp you can send midi out and therefore run into Serum fx for extra oscillators and effects chains. I didn't find an obvious way to pass midi through from just standard midi keyboard input yet, is it there somewhere? Bit of a trick missed if it's not available.

[coroknight]

Ok I may have found one issue.

It sounds like the FM warp modes are filtered sometimes? If you do a simple chain, lets say a series of sine waves FM'd in a series like A -> B -> C it's hard to get higher harmonics until you push the FM quite far and even then it sounds muffled.

I'm not an expert in FM though. I'm curious if FM folks think it sounds correct.

[bite_me]

How do I make the arpeggiator play in a range of several octaves? Can´t get it to work.

[loungepanda]

I find myself coming back to Serum 2 even after the honeymoon period. There's something about it that makes it easy to get good sounds out of it. The DSP is clearly high quality.

I barely even used Serum 1 but I am now in the same boat. This is update is excellent because it adds things to it that makes it more unique and less of a bog standard WT synth. Previously I'd just use Polymer instead. I especially appreciate that they've added more verb algos as I think those are just as important as filters (big up for adding a Wasp and EMS filter, by the way).

[Morty-C-137]

Is there a way to make the plugin set a default for the size of the FX and Matrix page? I the top left we can maximize those panes with the maximize window icon. That minimizes the bottom modulation section. I like that to be the default for these pages instead of manually having to set these every time.

[Cyforce]

Will Serum 2 be able to compare with Kontakt 7 and 8 as for advanced third-party emulations of real instruments?

I’m curious about this too because from what I understand Kontakt is very much like the multisample oscillator in Serum so I wonder what advantage Kontakt has, if any, at this point now that Serum 2 can do multisample too.

I think in Mr. Bill's interview video, Steve Duda said something like this: that with the new UI/skin framework, it would be possible to completely customize, change, reduce, etc. the UI.

So at least in the future, it would certainly be possible to have something similar or even better with Serum2, similar to Kontakt with custom UI & script.

[jules99]

As much as breaking out of the Kontakt universe (which you can do with Falcon, Soundpaint, Decent Sampler, and more with many instruments) is welcome, Serum 2's multi-sampling options at this point pales in comparison - by a lot.

From velocity layering to scripting instruments (not the UI) to more sophisticated round-robin setups, Serum 2 is lacking on just about any level in this regard. But that is not a bad thing, because so far wasn't intended to be. Who knows, maybe someone comes up with a clever way to create realistic sounding multi-sample instruments in it.

[kraster]

How do I make the arpeggiator play in a range of several octaves? Can´t get it to work.

In the ARP the SHIFT parameter controls how much the each note in the chord is shifted by and the RANGE control is how high or low that can go.

So if you select 12 for Shift and then adjust the range it will shift octaves determined by the range.

You can also modulate the range with an LFO etc. and quantize the pitch to a scale and key.

The same control is in the Arp's pattern mode.

If you want the arp to behave like a sequencer that shifts pitch with the note you play then set the shift to 1 and Range to whatever and write in an arp pattern. This pattern will play according to the intervals you set in the arp's pattern but shift pitch according to which key you press. If you use the quantize function then it will also follow the key/mode you set.

You can also set it to play chords that shift according to the pattern.

Just set the mode to Chord.

It's insanely powerful. Particularly in conjunction with clip mode

[audiojunkie]

I am very impressed with how intuitive the layout is for this much power! I wish it supported Linux, because I can see me never having to use another synth ever again. This has pretty much everything I could ever want. Sampling has always been my strong suit over synthesis (except for subtractive, which I actually understand). I think of Wavetable and granular synthesis like I do samples, so they come naturally to me as well. Everything is laid out very well, and logically. This is a very beautiful synth! Congrats to the development team, and congrats to all of the Windows and MacOS users who get to use this synth natively!!

[bite_me]

In the ARP the SHIFT...

THANKS!

[zerocrossing]

I'm pretty impressed so far, though I'm noticing a few bugs. One is, the quality modes don't seem to give expected results. They actually seem like they're doing the opposite of what's labeled.

Second, it kind of looks a little blurry at all sizes, as if they're over anti-aliasing fonts.

Last thing I noticed is, if you right-click-assign an oscillator as mod source, you can see the little graphic on the corner of the knob showing it's being modulated, but you can't control the amount unless you go to the mod matrix. Other drag-and-drop stuff works as expected.

Anyone else noticing these? I'm on Windows 11 using Bitwig.

[MorpherX]

The spectral oscillator can do some amazing things, I'm really impressed.

Playing a tonal wind-chime texture, sampled today in Serum 2's spectral oscillator, using two warp modes with modulation and a notch-filter/reverb.

This is indeed a nice sound you made here. !
Many years ago I bought 2 preset packs from you for Serum 1. You are one of few sound-desinger who offers really good inspering sound.
Do you also expirience that Serum 2 uses 1 GB of memory ?

[MorpherX]

I'm pretty impressed so far, though I'm noticing a few bugs. One is, the quality modes don't seem to give expected results. They actually seem like they're doing the opposite of what's labeled.

Second, it kind of looks a little blurry at all sizes, as if they're over anti-aliasing fonts.

Last thing I noticed is, if you right-click-assign an oscillator as mod source, you can see the little graphic on the corner of the knob showing it's being modulated, but you can't control the amount unless you go to the mod matrix. Other drag-and-drop stuff works as expected.

Anyone else noticing these? I'm on Windows 11 using Bitwig.

Try inceasing the buffer size until it disapears, if it doesn't disapear it's a bug.
Keep in mind that you may need a powerfull CPU with a lot of memory.

[coroknight]

Something a little more annoying than it needs to be is keytracked filters. In a lot of synths you can just turn keytracking all the way up and it'll automatically be tuned properly. But in Serum 2 if you do that it'll be off by a couple notes so you have to manually tune the filter cutoff.

[zerocrossing]

I'm pretty impressed so far, though I'm noticing a few bugs. One is, the quality modes don't seem to give expected results. They actually seem like they're doing the opposite of what's labeled.

Second, it kind of looks a little blurry at all sizes, as if they're over anti-aliasing fonts.

Last thing I noticed is, if you right-click-assign an oscillator as mod source, you can see the little graphic on the corner of the knob showing it's being modulated, but you can't control the amount unless you go to the mod matrix. Other drag-and-drop stuff works as expected.

Anyone else noticing these? I'm on Windows 11 using Bitwig.

Try inceasing the buffer size until it disapears, if it doesn't disapear it's a bug.
Keep in mind that you may need a powerfull CPU with a lot of memory.

Buffer size has no effect. My machine is pretty modern, a i9-11900K with 32 gig of ram. So far with my own sounds I'm fine, but some of those presets...

I also notice I'm getting loud volume spikes at times. I thought it might have something to do with oscillator phase, but even when I set the random to zero, I'm still getting random loud notes. I don't notice it on presets, but if I just have two sawtooths going with no detuning and zero random phase, I get intermittent loud notes.