Is it just me or Serum/Vital sounds without life?

[kritikon]

You might have bad ears, but your tasteful dislike of wavetables puts you amongst the elite.

[tony10000]

It is just you....

[kritikon]

I've been using Vital for a few weeks now and TBH I'm rapidly going off it. I still quite like some of the sounds it can make, and actually it's the obvious digital nature that attracts me, compared to the majority of my gear being analogue. But lots of what I've been doing with it is at least 50% FX, quite a lot more than half I think. Almost every sound I've used, when I take off all the FX then it sounds pretty lifeless and dull, even with a shitload of modulation/automation. It was the FX that initially grabbed me - I still like its formant filters, and though it's quite in-yer-face I even like its noisy chorus (that often sounds more like an added noise oscillator) and the drive can be quite musical for a digital synth distortion. But without any of those FX, it's really nothing special IMO. Fortunately I like the character of the FX but I will tire of them soon.

In a track I'm doing now, Vital is making a great high end snappy sound, almost like a blown bottle sound - but when I took off the chorus and the unison, I was surprised by how useless the little tiny plinky sound was underneath. It just disappeared from the track. Mind you, I find most sw synths weak without unison, so Vital is not alone in that. Still, the upside is that he coded great FX into it, which makes it useful. Shame about the underlying synth though... I want to like it more, but the actual synthesis leaves me cold.

[kritikon]

And as for those presets tony 10000 posted...meh. Nothing special IMO. I can think of any number of synths that can do those kind of sounds better . It's wavetables - love 'em or hate 'em with nothing inbetween. Unfortunately I hate 'em.

[sus4]

Vital has two thing that make it almost lovely. 1. Unison is very orchestral - something you cannot get from Omnisphere or Serum. Vitals unison works out of the box immediately giving rare good vibe shot. 2. Filters are extremely responsive to a live midi-knob. Cutoff sweet area of Analog 12db is exactly at right location knobwise. Do you have any favourite among standalone synths considering the filter knob exciting the addiction?

[djanthonyw]

I can’t understand why so many people like it. It definitely does sound cold and lifeless.

I demoed version 2 and it sounds marginally better but the insanely high CPU usage definitely does not justify the lackluster sound.

It’s using double or sometimes triple the amount of CPU as Diva. Pigments has pretty much the same features and sounds a lot better while using a fraction of the CPU.

[VELLTONE MUSIC]

all digital synths sound lifeless - that's the magic of sound design,to make that plastic,artificial sound more real like and natural to human ear.
Fx do substantial job too

[djanthonyw]

Pigments doesn’t sound lifeless. It sounds comparable to digital hardware synths. A Virus and Nord definitely don’t sound lifeless either.

Serum does have a good GUI, but that’s the only reason I can think of why so many people like it, but again, Pigments GUI is just as good, doesn’t sound sterile, and doesn’t use THREE times the amount of CPU as Diva.

So why does Serum use so much CPU if it sounds so lackluster and characterless while other synths sound so much better with a fraction of the CPU usage?

[writheuk]

Buddy, I wouldn't worry about it. Don't use it. It's that simple..

[empphryio]

Vital does seem a bit lifeless at first but can sound good with work. It's been featured twice in the OSC. Judge there if you still think it lifeless.

[VELLTONE MUSIC]

it's easy to squeeze dynamics with modern synths,but digital synths miss mostly the hardware colorization.
Take any advanced digital synth - Serum,Vital so on...
Make more 'functions' to move in 'right' range ,so to give 'right' sound during the sound design stage,then put the 'right' fx chain during mixing and all 'lifeless' feeling is not just gone,but you will have an amazing 'from another world' sound.
Default sound of any digital synth is linear,which must be changed to more chaotic diversity,so to have more 'analog warmth'.
3d sound isn't possible actually in stereo format via two speakers,but could be created fake 3d
A simple lfo or other modulator to 'shake' osc de-tuning or dedicated function that apply pleasant amount of it,plus analog filter will change the feeling immediately into more dynamic and warm sound.
Two-three of these tricks and voila the digital sound isn't so 'lifeless' any more.
It depends what style of music you make and what you want to achieve with specific synth ...compare few synths in demo mode before buy and 'feel' which one is right for you - best strategy in my opinion...
Cheers

[RirtualViot2013]

Serum is still alive, it got updated to version 2 this year and is basically almost a mini daw now
From a sound aesthetic pov, I would say one of the reasons why Serum might feel "lifeless":
It is a digital synth plugin that was never specifically designed to emulate hardware, or feel analog.
(its possible to do that though)

[mixyguy2]

Hi,

I know you can do good stuff with these synths especially when it's mixed well, but I have tried both and they sound lifeless to me.
For example Spire has much deeper sound.

Or is it just me?

Yep

Although honestly I'm not sure what is really even meant by "lifeless."

[JO512]

I can’t understand why so many people like it. It definitely does sound cold and lifeless.

Do you mostly browse and use presets, especially stock ones, to make your judgment? Or are you exploring and designing your own sounds while at the same time deeply understanding the tools you are using and also how sound works?

The presets you get with a synth can be highly misleading. You could create a single synth codebase, make two synth versions from it, making the interfaces and branding look different for the two, and package them with different preset libraries that have different flavors created by sound designers with different tastes. One might have presets that are all dubstep growl sort of stuff, and the other might have presets that emulate 1970s analog synths and be aimed at people who want to make synthwave. Then people who try out the former will say it sounds cold and aggressive and is a synth only good for making dubstep, while people might evaluate the latter as more warm, more analog, and so on.

One can make Serum patches that sound very similar to most Diva patches. It's harder to go the other direction though, since Serum's toolset offers a larger sound palette.

Serum offers some possibilities that lend a character to the sound that was not part of more traditional classic analog synths, like the way a lot of wavetables with nonstandard waveshapes sound (some emphasize a lot of high frequencies and unusual distributions of emphasized partials that wouldn't tend to come from an analog synth using simple oscillators), some of the warp modes, some of the odd "filters", etc. And if those are used, then yes, the synth will not sound like something you'd expect from a 1970s or 1980s synth. But you can use standard analog-style wavetables with simple saws and squares, avoid the warp modes, avoid wavetable sweeps, and so on, and use various kinds of modulation, noise, and saturation to get a very analog-like "warm" sound. Very subtle modulations, tastefully applied, can do a lot.

I've used Serum a LOT and also others like Diva and Repro and I don't at all agree that Serum sounds intrinsically cold or lifeless. It all depends on the sound designer and their know-how. You can take the same tools, pencil and paper, and make a technical drawing of machine parts, and you can also draw a very warm, impressionistic portrait. If all you ever saw of pencil and paper drawings were technical diagrams, you might think pencil and paper is an inherently technical and cold medium. Not so.

Try to dig into sound design and explore with your ears and your brain and really understand what it is that makes a sound "warm" and how to impart that deliberately. That understanding will prove far more valuable to you than any product you can buy.

If you don't want to do sound design or to understand synthesis at a deep level, no need. Just shop based on presets, think of different synths as collections of presets, and buy based on the ones you like the sound of and use them and make music and be happy. But realize that with any of these synths, there is the potential to explore much larger spaces of possible sounds than what you'll find in the included presets.

And as far as the most basic aspects of synths go, most synths are more alike than you might think.

[JO512]

Also, realize that priming plays a huge role in how you perceive the qualities in something like a synth. Just the way the interface looks can influence how you perceive it to sound. And received opinions about it can influence what you hear too. Because you have the idea that Serum sounds cold and lifeless, it might be hard for you to perceive warmth in anything you hear from it while knowing that it is Serum producing it. A series of blind tests to see if you can tell which is Serum and which is Diva might be more convincing.