One Synth Challenge #203: Synthmaster (ZioMau Wins!)

[spidergod]

Going to be a tough one judging when time comes around, some great tracks that have been entered.

[doctorbob]

It's always tough now - everyone has stepped up their game. I am always amazed at how good the tracks are every month, across many genres as well.

dB

[bzz]

Here's a short piece for this month's submission. Overall, it was a pleasant experience with the synth. It's stable, light on CPU, and has flexible modulation options - all I ask for.

Produced in Cakewalk. 21 instances of SynthMaster ONE. Magic7, LFX-1310, OTT, W1 Limiter as the external FX.

https://soundcloud.com/petr-n-mec/bzz-air-supremacy

[andyrichmond]

https://soundcloud.com/andy_richmond/osc-203

March of The Orcs

DAW:
REAPER 7.59

Synth:
19 instances of SynthMaster Player 3
Default patches with very little tweaking

FX:
TAL-Filter-2
ReaComp
ReaVerb with BGLex480 reverb IRs
ReaLimit
Waveshaping Distortion
ReaEQ

Master Bus:
ReaEQ
JS: 1175 Compressor
JS: Master Limiter

[andyrichmond]

I could not figure out how to delete this post.

[neverbeeninariot]

Apologies if this is posted twice, or is in the wrong place.

Getting back into it for 2026, a little late. I will update the details later.

Still in progress.

An audacious attempt at entering twice with the same track... we see you, we see you !

[seap]

Fast Track
By Seap, January 2026
https://soundcloud.com/seap681/fast-track

All sounds from SynthMaster One (KV331 Audio)

Experimented with pushing my workflow to be lightning fast (hence "fast track") with heavy use of custom shortcuts, custom scripts, pooled items and automation items.

Made with Reaper 7

Instruments:
19x VST3i: SynthMaster One (KV331 Audio)

Very light use of additional (free) effects:

Effects:
1x VST3: Deelay (Sixth Sample)
1x VST3: LoudMax (Thomas Mundt)
2x VST3: Raum (Native Instruments)
4x VST: ReaEQ (Cockos)
1x VST: ReaLimit (Cockos)
1x VST: ReaXcomp (Cockos)

[Vospi]

I was so excited about the possibilities, wrote a post here, then started showing it to my students... and in less than a day I discovered horrifying bugs that led to loud pops, un-undoable presets, whole DAW crashing on sight without a single window (didn't see that for a while)... and I'm not doing anything crazy. All happens within a single layer.

I'm always rather good at finding them, but this one is... special.

Got one on bug video, but overall too much work going on now to document them all. It's really scary to use an instrument that can't handle a power user. I add a scaler, map it -- the thing kills the preset. I replace a filter, undo after -- preset killed, redo after -- FL simply closed with no ifs, ands or buts. Wow! Just how careful do I have to be if I don't use Synthmaster3 as a preset player?.. I didn't realize that developing a complex plugin that costs money is still that treacherous. Am I spoiled for thinking that my workplace should be stable?..

I thought maybe some regressions were found during January, maybe an update incoming: nope. Still the same version a month later.

I'll get to documenting the bugs, but it's, like, disheartening to see just how present and fatal they are. You worked on a preset and didn't have a 5 minute autosave turned on in your DAW or something? Sorry! You now get bitcrushed clicks on attack/release and no other sound even if you disable every module. Every! Module! Get back to the init. You'd better remember how did you do the preset previously.

Idk. I was so excited about the ideas and the combinations. Especially musically in OSC.

I have a very stable and powerful system, VST3 plugin, nothing weird going on at all with anything else. Ppl know I finish a track a day for a month, a well-oiled machine here. This, right now, ain't it.

However, maybe they are easy to fix or something?..
Anyway. Have a good OSC.

Hmmm, I have the pretty deal breaking issue, that the effects parameter are not reliably safed, when saving a patch. Has anyone else observed that, or is it something I did wrong?
I designed a quite Metal snare, relying heavily on the inbuilt effects chain, but after saving and loading that patch to a new instance, all effects parameters are back to default. And now I can't recreate what I did before...

Oh wow. There you go. Thanks for the heads-up. Very sad to hear.

upd.: Yep. I've recreated the FL killing bug on video, and found another two (milder, but annoying) at least. The upside is that it's pretty reliable. The downside is I can't believe someone added the "replace with" function, but never came to press an undo on it before me. To see that it doesn't work or completely breaks things. (Just randomly tested REDO on OSCs and yes, it bugs out as well. Not 5 minutes from posting this update.) (Aaaand another DAW-killing undo bug right away. Also on video. This is crazy.)

Also, UNDO button not working upon you pressing a Random Preset button is maybe not a "bug", but definitely not a feature. Clicked that RND on accident? Another "sorry for your well-tuned sound, hope you have a backup" situation.

...but this synth is versatile and fun...

Oh, and now I was able to recreate the bug of incorrect instancing (mentioned by SeBaer above) on video, too. The sound does change instantly. That's crazy. That meant if I went all in on this OSC and then re-opened my project, I would be met with horror. I would argue that's even worse than crashing my DAW. This way, even a save doesn't help. Only a render. Wow.

To convert me from "I'll praise it everywhere" to "I'm scared to death to use this" in one session is, honestly, an achievement of sorts.

[aarongrooves]

Got one on bug video

I haven't been able to load Synthmaster 3 for the past 10 days. For whatever reason, it crashes any time I load it as a plugin in Reaper or open the standalone version. None of my sessions with SM3 Demo will open at all. No error reports, logs, or anything. I've never experienced this with any other VST. On the plus side, I was on the fence because of so many issues with SM3, so I hadn't bought it yet. Bullet dodged!

To convert me from "I'll praise it everywhere" to "I'm scared to death to use this" in one session is, honestly, an achievement of sorts.

I feel this. I had given up, but this morning I decided to jump back in for one reason: SM3Player is working well, so I'm creating something with presets (& minimal tweaks). Not ideal, but at least dependable. Focusing on the comp. Still having some fun

But with only 3-4 days left, we'll see what I can assemble...

[Vospi]

Yeah, I won it in an OSC. Would be fuming if I bought it in the current state.

Again, maybe there are good fixes for all of this. It's just that I have to be a QA engineer for the product first, and only then commit to using it as a regular working musician. Which is... you know.

(Good luck!)

[Nd6829]

Deleted

[kv331]

I haven't been able to load Synthmaster 3 for the past 10 days. For whatever reason, it crashes any time I load it as a plugin in Reaper or open the standalone version. None of my sessions with SM3 Demo will open at all. No error reports, logs, or anything. I've never experienced this with any other VST. On the plus side, I was on the fence because of so many issues with SM3, so I hadn't bought it yet. Bullet dodged!

No logs? Are you sure? did you try contacting us for this issue? or post the issue on our SynthMaster 3 thread on Instruments forum ?

SynthMaster 3 / SynthMaster 3 Player has log files under:

Win: c:\users\public\public documents\synthmaster3\logs
Mac: /users/shared/synthmaster3/logs

Your issue is most likely related to custom sample import. Once you send me the log files I will tell you the root cause of the issue.

Bulent

[SeBaer]

Oh wow. There you go. Thanks for the heads-up. Very sad to hear.

As I stated earlier in a follow-up post, I couldn't reproduce that issue reliably.

That's crazy. That meant if I went all in on this OSC and then re-opened my project, I would be met with horror. I would argue that's even worse than crashing my DAW. This way, even a save doesn't help. Only a render. Wow.

Saving the plugin state in my Reaper project has so far worked flawlessly for me. So, YMMW...

[kv331]

Also, UNDO button not working upon you pressing a Random Preset button is maybe not a "bug", but definitely not a feature. Clicked that RND on accident? Another "sorry for your well-tuned sound, hope you have a backup" situation.

Undo history is reset when a new preset is loaded. We don't have Undo/Redo functionality for preset loads yet. We will add that soon.

BTW, Undo/Redo functionality is very complicated in a "modular" synth, By modular, I mean one that creates/deletes modules dynamically over time.

I would appreciate if you could report bugs that you encountered directly to us, and send us the log files.

The log files located at:

Mac: users/shared/synthmaster3/logs
Win: c:\users\public\public documents\synthmaster3\logs

[kv331]

As I stated earlier in a follow-up post, I couldn't reproduce that issue reliably.

If it happens again, could you please send me your Reaper project file?

bulentbiyikoglu AT kv331audio DOT com

Thanks!