Official Serum 2 thread!

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Anybody else experiencing hanging notes while playing?

Which DAW/version? Which platform (Mac/Win) and OS version? Which plugin format? Any exact steps to reproduce?

What you're likely experiencing is a bug, but if it were common, it would be all over the forums. So I'd suggest providing this info so others with similar setups can test and confirm.

But to answer your question: in my brief time demoing it in Reaper on Windows 10 using the VST3, no.

[zerocrossing]

Honestly, I think Serums main benefit is workflow wise. Of course, any synth can become easy to use with enough experience, but for me, Serum has always just been intuitive and quick. Many synths can do the same things, and probably better, but if I havr a sound in mind, getting that into my ears is quickest with Serum. I've got basically all the monster synths, Pigments, Phaseplant, Massive X, Falcon, Current etc but find myself using Serum as much as all of those synths combined.

Serum was really the first synth to use the sort of drag & drop style of modulation assignment in a good way. It's become pretty commonplace, but I believe Serum was the first. My only complaint about it is that there is no modulation ring display for CC type controls when assigned with a right-click. For instance, if I want to assign aftertouch to something, it just adds some default amount and then one has to go to the mod matrix to adjust it. I feel like it should show the ring just like it would if you had an LFO or other mod source selected.

I think the idea of other synths doing what Serum does "probably better" is no longer true. Every instrument is going to shine on one particular thing, but from what I'm seeing so far, Serum is maybe the best all-rounder, at least in terms of quality. Its weakness was always a lack of good analog modeled filters (even though the French and German models are decent) but now that's been covered. Its audio rate modulation is now definitely better than Dune 3, which had been one of the best. MSoundFactory is also very good, but you have to jump though a bunch of hoops to get it there, which is good for flexibility but a bit of a work-flow speed bump. Also, MSoundFactory doesn't have any analog modeled filters, though you can coax a bit of that out if you use other gain type modules in the right way. I have a feeling I'll be using it a lot less now.

[aMUSEd]

'Serum was really the first synth to use the sort of drag & drop style of modulation assignment in a good way'

Think it was Massive actually

[zerocrossing]

All that aside, I actually really love Falcon, always get a sense of possibility when I open it despite it having been seemingly designed by aliens.

If you think of Falcon as more of a modular synthesis system set up around a core sampler, it makes a lot more sense. It seemed very unintuitive to me, but a few minutes with the manual and some tutorial videos and I realized that it's very efficiently designed for the type of thing it's best at. Melda plugins are like this too. Not instantly intuitive to use, but once you know their paradigm, they're easy to use.

[zerocrossing]

'Serum was really the first synth to use the sort of drag & drop style of modulation assignment in a good way'

Think it was Massive actually

You're probably right, though I always thought that Massive was not the most intuitive to use. Something about Serum always struck me as being familiar even though I'd never used it.

[gentleclockdivider]

'Serum was really the first synth to use the sort of drag & drop style of modulation assignment in a good way'

Think it was Massive actually

Think it was fabfilter twin actually , back in 2006

[coroknight]

I meant type 440 into the filter not oscillator.

We are talking about the same thing.

It definitely works.

Interesting, it doesn’t work for me. Setting the filter cutoff to 440 Hz produces an A when I play a C. To get the correct pitch I have to use e.g. 121, 233 or 444 Hz as base frequency.

Maybe it’s just a bug? I’m on macOS and Live/VST3.

I posted about keytracking being weird a few pages ago and got called an idiot repeatedly because I think serum should tune the filters properly out of the box.

When I type 440 I get a filter an octave above what I played, which isn't correct. And if I use 220 it is closer but still off a few notes. Doing physical modeling in serum is definitely more than a PITA than it needs to be, and you don't see this in Vital for example.

[swilow11]

All that aside, I actually really love Falcon, always get a sense of possibility when I open it despite it having been seemingly designed by aliens.

If you think of Falcon as more of a modular synthesis system set up around a core sampler, it makes a lot more sense. It seemed very unintuitive to me, but a few minutes with the manual and some tutorial videos and I realized that it's very efficiently designed for the type of thing it's best at. Melda plugins are like this too. Not instantly intuitive to use, but once you know their paradigm, they're easy to use.

Can't speak to Melda but I've slowly come to see the logic behind Falcon and really love what it can do. It just doesn't feel like a musical instrument sometimes with all the menu diving and clicking. But I love how deep it goes.

[zerocrossing]

All that aside, I actually really love Falcon, always get a sense of possibility when I open it despite it having been seemingly designed by aliens.

If you think of Falcon as more of a modular synthesis system set up around a core sampler, it makes a lot more sense. It seemed very unintuitive to me, but a few minutes with the manual and some tutorial videos and I realized that it's very efficiently designed for the type of thing it's best at. Melda plugins are like this too. Not instantly intuitive to use, but once you know their paradigm, they're easy to use.

Can't speak to Melda but I've slowly come to see the logic behind Falcon and really love what it can do. It just doesn't feel like a musical instrument sometimes with all the menu diving and clicking. But I love how deep it goes.

In a sense MSoundFactory and Falcon are instrument building tools, complete with their own User Interface building tools (though I've never used them, so I can't speak about them). It's sort of like comparing a Kenner Millennium Falcon toy that you take out of the box and start playing with, with a Lego Millennium Falcon set, which is going to take time to put together, but if you want to go off the instructions and start merging it with Boba Fett's Slave 1, you can.

It's up to the user to choose what tool works best for the job at hand. It would be stupid to build a Minimoog type instrument in MSoundFactory or Falcon and even if you did it wouldn't sound as much like a Minimoog as the worst stand alone Minimoog emulation plugin.

[foosnark]

For hundreds of preset packs or as a Multi FX plugin - yes, but for patching, I'm not so sure. I have expected something greater.

I feel exactly the opposite. I don't care about presets, I have plenty of FX, but have had some really fun results patching it from scratch.

[swilow11]

I meant type 440 into the filter not oscillator.

We are talking about the same thing.

It definitely works.

Interesting, it doesn’t work for me. Setting the filter cutoff to 440 Hz produces an A when I play a C. To get the correct pitch I have to use e.g. 121, 233 or 444 Hz as base frequency.

Maybe it’s just a bug? I’m on macOS and Live/VST3.

I posted about keytracking being weird a few pages ago and got called an idiot repeatedly because I think serum should tune the filters properly out of the box.

When I type 440 I get a filter an octave above what I played, which isn't correct. And if I use 220 it is closer but still off a few notes. Doing physical modeling in serum is definitely more than a PITA than it needs to be, and you don't see this in Vital for example.

Have you written to xfer support?

[Iva]

Serum was really the first synth to use the sort of drag & drop style of modulation assignment in a good way.

the first synth to use the sort of drag & drop style of modulation assignment in a good way was DCAM Synth Squad

[Andreya_Autumn]

I meant type 440 into the filter not oscillator.

We are talking about the same thing.

It definitely works.

Interesting, it doesn’t work for me. Setting the filter cutoff to 440 Hz produces an A when I play a C. To get the correct pitch I have to use e.g. 121, 233 or 444 Hz as base frequency.

Maybe it’s just a bug? I’m on macOS and Live/VST3.

I posted about keytracking being weird a few pages ago and got called an idiot repeatedly because I think serum should tune the filters properly out of the box.

When I type 440 I get a filter an octave above what I played, which isn't correct. And if I use 220 it is closer but still off a few notes. Doing physical modeling in serum is definitely more than a PITA than it needs to be, and you don't see this in Vital for example.

Most synths use MIDI note 60 (middle C) as the keytrack center. Its frequency in standard tuning is 261.626Hz.
Some others use note 69 (A above middle C), its frequency is 440Hz.

Nanostreams comment above seems to imply this is one of the former cases, C being the note that gives you the nominal frequency. So try typing in 261.626Hz and see if that helps!

Be advised though, even if you set up the keytracking right you might not get perfectly predictable keytracking across the whole range. For many filter topologies, especially analog-modeled ones, the exact cutoff frequency changes with the resonance value and sometimes other factors. And the amount by which it changes is different across the frequency range. Perfectly predicting the exact resonant frequency in every scenario is non-trivial. So don't be surprised if pitch drifts off a bit for higher or lower notes.

[Held]

It would be stupid to build a Minimoog type instrument in MSoundFactory or Falcon and even if you did it wouldn't sound as much like a Minimoog as the worst stand alone Minimoog emulation plugin.

I think the "mini mono" instrument in MSoundFactory sounds pretty good.

[kraster]

^ I think the workflow of Current is quick and efficient.

Oh yeah, agreed. Probably better than Serum in many ways. It is sort of a hybrid between Serum and Pigments in layout terms. I think Serum probably paved the way for it though. But yeah, Current is super quick and intuitive and despite many similarities, it has its own place in my setup. I am deciding whether to sell either Pigments or Current because they overlap so much, and while Pigments has stuff like the additive and new modal engine, Current is more likely to stay in my setup because of its ease of use and sheer sonic quality. But a big factor is how less ubiquitous Current is- not as many are using it so I can trick myself into thinking I'm doing something unique with it.

All that aside, I actually really love Falcon, always get a sense of possibility when I open it despite it having been seemingly designed by aliens.

To be honest, we're just spoiled for choice nowadays.

I love Current. It's a more fixed architecture than Serum 2 or Pigments ie. In Serum 2 and Pigments you can change what each oscillator type is.

That makes Serum 2 and Pigments more flexible but makes Current arguably quicker to use since you always know where everything is.

I think the additions in Pigments ans Serum 2 like the auxilliary oscillators/noise gens, subs etc do bring them close to the 5 source configuration of Current.

Outside of the reverb I think Current has the best FX suite of all of them.

Then there's Avenger which is also another beast of a synth. A bit more complex and less immediate but enormously capable.

Vital is less comprehensive but it is a staggeringly good synth.

I do think when you get to Falcon, Phaseplant, Halion and Msoundfactory levels you're into another class of synth where there is no real fixed architecture in terms of oscillator and filter configuration. You can just keep adding stuff.