Official Serum 2 thread!

[bitcrusher]

> I don't doubt Serum 2 is better than any other synth ever, but I don't feel I need it.

If I had to summarize KVR in a sentence, I couldn't do much better than this.

[KBSoundSmith]

> I don't doubt Serum 2 is better than any other synth ever, but I don't feel I need it.

If I had to summarize KVR in a sentence, I couldn't do much better than this.

KVR is a special place

I haven't tuned in frequently enough to know whether or not there's been any updates since Serum 2 was released, but still going off the release version, Serum 2 is quite impressive. Lots of cool, experimental ways it can be twisted. Recently, Bazille and Generate and F'em have been my experimental darlings, Serum can now join that list and more cohesively sit in the same space.

[sempondr]

... I consider myself a composer. I personally don't like tweaking around a synth for too long. I just want them to sound great...

That's strange.
The top notch, inspiring, great sounding and actually useful presets was the main reason I bought Serum.
Alas, I can't say the same about Pigments, which I also own.

[aMUSEd]

... I consider myself a composer. I personally don't like tweaking around a synth for too long. I just want them to sound great...

That's strange.
The top notch, inspiring, great sounding and actually useful presets was the main reason I bought Serum.
Alas, I can't say the same about Pigments, which I also own.

Other way round for me - shows how subjective this all is. Personally I think Serum 2 itself is very capable but the presets don't do much for me, not that that matters too much given what it can do but I'm certainly not inspired by them. On the other hand Pigments has both great capabilities and outstanding existing presets.

[sempondr]

Other way round for me - shows how subjective this all is.

[rod_zero]

It really looks like an incredible synth, but maybe it's a little too late to the party for some people? I already own (and love) some of its nearest competitors. $249 is too steep for me as well, I can't justify it these days.

No man, if anything everyone else is now scrambling to match what Serum brings to the table. Its like cutting edge in almost everything and for sure the oscillators set the new standard in terms of what is possible. Its daunting at first and I am still realizing what it can do but it just set the bar in ways I did not believe was even possible. The sampler alone is better than most samplers including the details concerning looping, slicing, slice to midi, loop modes,beg/end modulation, exporting midi slices, unison and warping with built in resampling that is one module! Wavetable/granular/spectrum beat ABleton's offerings except wavtable still has better sound to wavetable conversion. "Late to the party", its for sure the new leader but that does not mean the others are bad.

While it is doing several things better than others Pigments and Current have a very similar feature set.

On the surface, Pigments/Current are similar but Serum goes way deeper than both. Particularly noteworthy is Serums ability to use oscillators as mod sources, modulating LFO nodes, clip launcher, spectral engine with warp modes, etc. Serum has many more modulation sources than Pigments or Current, plus the resynthesis engine and wavetable editor which neither of the other two have.

Current probably has nicer overall FX than Serum, despite the reverb. The Waveshifter is seriously brilliant. Also finding the granular engine in Current much less resource heavy than Serums. But even so, I would consider Current to be a significantly more 'simple' synth than Serum, and really quite different to it. Both get used a lot by me (tend to forget about Pigments tbh).

Yeah I agree, Serum has deeper features for sure, but the 3 of them are going in the same direction, multiple oscillator types, sampling, diverse modulation options. For many users the features they will use will be the same among the 3.

BTW, do you know any presets which use the Osc as modulation source in Serum?

[Alexander_D]

... I consider myself a composer. I personally don't like tweaking around a synth for too long. I just want them to sound great...

That's strange.
The top notch, inspiring, great sounding and actually useful presets was the main reason I bought Serum.
Alas, I can't say the same about Pigments, which I also own.

Yeah. I was sold Pigments and bought Serum 2. I think it's a really powerful synth! Love the sound.

[chagzuki]

A quick go with the spectral oscillator and I can see it's really great. I'm not sure that everything is 'best in class' though, the filters don't exactly jump out, nor do they sound bad. I might well still prefer e.g. ANA 2 for more conventional sounds just based on the filters.

[Morty-C-137]

Ah nuts, should have consulted the manual about embedding audio files in multisample first. Went ahead and tweaked and sculpted so make an interesting hybrid cello patch saved it, but wanted to embed but got notified my files were to large (229MB) and the max for embedding is 64MB

O well... will have to keep that patch to myself then

[Sinisterbr]

> I don't doubt Serum 2 is better than any other synth ever, but I don't feel I need it.

If I had to summarize KVR in a sentence, I couldn't do much better than this.

Yeah, actually, maybe you're right. I just expressed my thoughts because that's where I am now, but perhaps this isn't the right thread for that. I don't want to spoil your enjoyment of the synth, sorry.

[coroknight]

> I don't doubt Serum 2 is better than any other synth ever, but I don't feel I need it.

If I had to summarize KVR in a sentence, I couldn't do much better than this.

All that's missing is a reference to their favorite synth but it's 10+ years old and from a company you've never heard of with a weird name.

[daily patcher]

> I don't doubt Serum 2 is better than any other synth ever, but I don't feel I need it.

If I had to summarize KVR in a sentence, I couldn't do much better than this.

Yeah, actually, maybe you're right. I just expressed my thoughts because that's where I am now, but perhaps this isn't the right thread for that. I don't want to spoil your enjoyment of the synth, sorry.

not to make things more awkward, but he made the synth

[tumface]

A quick go with the spectral oscillator and I can see it's really great. I'm not sure that everything is 'best in class' though, the filters don't exactly jump out, nor do they sound bad. I might well still prefer e.g. ANA 2 for more conventional sounds just based on the filters.

Make sure you choose from the "S2 Filters" category for the filters that are new to Serum 2 to get a good idea of what it's capable of. The others are from Serum 1, which are closer to what you get in ANA 2.

The Serum 2 filters (with the exception of Diffusor?) are component modeled, and in a different class than the Serum 1 filters. I think they are among best subtractive synthesis-oriented filters that currently exist in any synthesizer, period. They also chew through CPU. The Serum 1 filters are still good choices if you don't need hardcore modeled filters, or wild stuff like the PZ SVF and Diffusor filters.

Screen Shot 2025-05-03 at 08.27.53.png

[Morty-C-137]

Screenshot 2025-05-03 at 15.17.24.png

Is anyone repeatedly getting this notification when switching skins? I got it after installing version 2.0.18. It does so even after me renaming the control_global_voice_control_steps.png to control_global_voice_panel_steps.png (I assumed that was the file it was referencing and maybe the file name change got overlooked in the update).

re-running the installer for 2.0.18 did not fix it.

[aMUSEd]

Are there other skins now?