Official Serum 2 thread!

[martinjuenke]

This is blurry.
The blurriness is the same in all DAWs I tested. Bitwig, Live, Reaper, Luna. Same on macOS and Windows.
It's not unexpected once you know there are no dedicated images for each zoom level.

This should solve your problem:

IMG_0766.jpeg

[Muziksculp]

Serum 2 has essentially had me sell of 80% of my soft synths. I still use Phase Plant, Massive X, FM8, Bitwig grid and Tal Mod, but Serum 2 does about 70% of the work now. So good.

Does anyone else experience the 'bug' when changing unisons voices? It's also a feature in S1, the arrows don't always function when clicking. It seems to sometimes work better when you expand the plugin window though. It's an odd bug to have persisted between versions.

Wow ! You mention Serum 2 does 70% of your work now, I'm guessing for synthetic sounds.

I don't have Serum 2, I know it is very popular, for good reasons, what are the main reasons you find it so good to use ?

Thanks.

[swilow11]

Serum 2 has essentially had me sell of 80% of my soft synths. I still use Phase Plant, Massive X, FM8, Bitwig grid and Tal Mod, but Serum 2 does about 70% of the work now. So good.

Does anyone else experience the 'bug' when changing unisons voices? It's also a feature in S1, the arrows don't always function when clicking. It seems to sometimes work better when you expand the plugin window though. It's an odd bug to have persisted between versions.

Wow ! You mention Serum 2 does 70% of your work now, I'm guessing for synthetic sounds.

I don't have Serum 2, I know it is very popular, for good reasons, what are the main reasons you find it so good to use ?

Thanks.

Where to start? You can FM from basically everywhere as every oscillator is now a mod source for everything. Multiple FX lanes for parallel processing. Can easily do keyboard splits now, has an extremely versatile arp, dual filters which are pannable and a good selection of analogue modelled filters too. The voice mod sequencer section allows you to do per voice modulation (up to 8 voices) so you can add random values per voice to get some more analogue style instability, plus the new note on random discrete modulator which provides an arbitrary amount of additional random values to assign to any parameter.

Wavetable engine with easy to use editor. Can do granular with a number of relatively unique features, multisample engine (although limited to 3 velocity layers afaik), basically sample playback, and the spectral oscillator which has an array of pretty crazy spectral warp modes plus you can do things like use a wavetable as a spectral filter, etc.

The only real downside to Serum is how cpu hungry it can get. With a very basic supersaw patch with unison and longish release, it's actually easy to name a single patch that almost devours all my CPU. This fact requires some forethought tbh but can be easily enough resolved because you can just render directly out of Serum 2 and drop the render back into a sample oscillator.

I think the best thing about Serum is the workflow tbh. It is one of the most complex synths out there but the complexity doesn't smack you in the face. You have to look for it (admittedly there is a lot of context based right clicking for hidden functionality) and can pretty easily just use the surface/superficial features to get very useful sounds from it. It flows very well, it's rare that there is anything truly head scratching or buggy (the unison thing I mentioned is a bit weird). Sound wise, it is great but in this context, great is neutral- just pristine digital which you can use for digital sounds or rough up for something warmer and more characterful.

It is just by far the synth I use the most and I've probably not even truly used 100% of the features yet.

Anyway, that's it from me

[Sampleconstruct]

Multisamples are not limited to 3 velocity layers, it's just a sfz-player with up to no aliasing.

[tumface]

With a very basic supersaw patch with unison and longish release, it's actually easy to name a single patch that almost devours all my CPU.

It's true that Serum 2 in general uses more CPU than Serum 1, but specifically for unison, Serum 2 is more efficient, at least on my computer. I think Serum 1 basically cloned the oscillator for each unison voice, and Serum 2 is a bit smarter about it. (That can go out the window as soon as I start enabling osc warps while also having unison on, though.)

[kraster]

Serum 2 has essentially had me sell of 80% of my soft synths. I still use Phase Plant, Massive X, FM8, Bitwig grid and Tal Mod, but Serum 2 does about 70% of the work now. So good.

Does anyone else experience the 'bug' when changing unisons voices? It's also a feature in S1, the arrows don't always function when clicking. It seems to sometimes work better when you expand the plugin window though. It's an odd bug to have persisted between versions.

Wow ! You mention Serum 2 does 70% of your work now, I'm guessing for synthetic sounds.

I don't have Serum 2, I know it is very popular, for good reasons, what are the main reasons you find it so good to use ?

Thanks.

Where to start? You can FM from basically everywhere as every oscillator is now a mod source for everything. Multiple FX lanes for parallel processing. Can easily do keyboard splits now, has an extremely versatile arp, dual filters which are pannable and a good selection of analogue modelled filters too. The voice mod sequencer section allows you to do per voice modulation (up to 8 voices) so you can add random values per voice to get some more analogue style instability, plus the new note on random discrete modulator which provides an arbitrary amount of additional random values to assign to any parameter.

Wavetable engine with easy to use editor. Can do granular with a number of relatively unique features, multisample engine (although limited to 3 velocity layers afaik), basically sample playback, and the spectral oscillator which has an array of pretty crazy spectral warp modes plus you can do things like use a wavetable as a spectral filter, etc.

The only real downside to Serum is how cpu hungry it can get. With a very basic supersaw patch with unison and longish release, it's actually easy to name a single patch that almost devours all my CPU. This fact requires some forethought tbh but can be easily enough resolved because you can just render directly out of Serum 2 and drop the render back into a sample oscillator.

I think the best thing about Serum is the workflow tbh. It is one of the most complex synths out there but the complexity doesn't smack you in the face. You have to look for it (admittedly there is a lot of context based right clicking for hidden functionality) and can pretty easily just use the surface/superficial features to get very useful sounds from it. It flows very well, it's rare that there is anything truly head scratching or buggy (the unison thing I mentioned is a bit weird). Sound wise, it is great but in this context, great is neutral- just pristine digital which you can use for digital sounds or rough up for something warmer and more characterful.

It is just by far the synth I use the most and I've probably not even truly used 100% of the features yet.

Anyway, that's it from me

There's also the fact that it has a clip player and a very advanced arpeggiator which can both be used simultaneously.

But I totally agree that the workflow is among the best. That's ultimately what keeps me reaching for it.

There's also the fact that you also get Serum FX with the deal which is an incredibly powerful Multi FX in its own right.

[MichaelWhiteMusic]

I know a comment like this might get some pushback, but honestly, it could easily be the best and most capable synthesizer ever made. Every time a new synth comes out, I try it whenever I can, and I never get the feeling that I can't recreate those sounds in Serum (plus other workflows never quite click for me) Some people will say it sounds 'sterile' or 'digital,' and I always tell them to try Loopsy’s presets, they have incredible recreations of retro sounds made in Serum and I'm pretty sure they'll fail in a blind test

[swilow11]

Serum 2 has essentially had me sell of 80% of my soft synths. I still use Phase Plant, Massive X, FM8, Bitwig grid and Tal Mod, but Serum 2 does about 70% of the work now. So good.

Does anyone else experience the 'bug' when changing unisons voices? It's also a feature in S1, the arrows don't always function when clicking. It seems to sometimes work better when you expand the plugin window though. It's an odd bug to have persisted between versions.

Wow ! You mention Serum 2 does 70% of your work now, I'm guessing for synthetic sounds.

I don't have Serum 2, I know it is very popular, for good reasons, what are the main reasons you find it so good to use ?

Thanks.

Where to start? You can FM from basically everywhere as every oscillator is now a mod source for everything. Multiple FX lanes for parallel processing. Can easily do keyboard splits now, has an extremely versatile arp, dual filters which are pannable and a good selection of analogue modelled filters too. The voice mod sequencer section allows you to do per voice modulation (up to 8 voices) so you can add random values per voice to get some more analogue style instability, plus the new note on random discrete modulator which provides an arbitrary amount of additional random values to assign to any parameter.

Wavetable engine with easy to use editor. Can do granular with a number of relatively unique features, multisample engine (although limited to 3 velocity layers afaik), basically sample playback, and the spectral oscillator which has an array of pretty crazy spectral warp modes plus you can do things like use a wavetable as a spectral filter, etc.

The only real downside to Serum is how cpu hungry it can get. With a very basic supersaw patch with unison and longish release, it's actually easy to name a single patch that almost devours all my CPU. This fact requires some forethought tbh but can be easily enough resolved because you can just render directly out of Serum 2 and drop the render back into a sample oscillator.

I think the best thing about Serum is the workflow tbh. It is one of the most complex synths out there but the complexity doesn't smack you in the face. You have to look for it (admittedly there is a lot of context based right clicking for hidden functionality) and can pretty easily just use the surface/superficial features to get very useful sounds from it. It flows very well, it's rare that there is anything truly head scratching or buggy (the unison thing I mentioned is a bit weird). Sound wise, it is great but in this context, great is neutral- just pristine digital which you can use for digital sounds or rough up for something warmer and more characterful.

It is just by far the synth I use the most and I've probably not even truly used 100% of the features yet.

Anyway, that's it from me

There's also the fact that it has a clip player and a very advanced arpeggiator which can both be used simultaneously.

But I totally agree that the workflow is among the best. That's ultimately what keeps me reaching for it.

There's also the fact that you also get Serum FX with the deal which is an incredibly powerful Multi FX in its own right.

Very true. I must admit that I rarely use the clip launcher but the arp is great and can do some super interesting things.

SERUM FX doesn't see much use from me mainly because Bitwig and too many other VSTS but you're right, this is a huge added perk. Standalone, SerumFX would be incredibly useful and yet it's just a sort of sideshow to the synth.

[swilow11]

Multisamples are not limited to 3 velocity layers, it's just a sfz-player with up to no aliasing.

I stand corrected, thanks for clarifying that. I've not spent much time using the multisample engine beyond just playing a bunch of the instruments, some of which are really great tbh. Obviously not comparable to the depth of stuff from Kontakt but usually decent enough to get some genuine realism from it. I've been making a few guitar presets run through the convolver and getting nice results.

[swilow11]

I know a comment like this might get some pushback, but honestly, it could easily be the best and most capable synthesizer ever made. Every time a new synth comes out, I try it whenever I can, and I never get the feeling that I can't recreate those sounds in Serum (plus other workflows never quite click for me) Some people will say it sounds 'sterile' or 'digital,' and I always tell them to try Loopsy’s presets, they have incredible recreations of retro sounds made in Serum and I'm pretty sure they'll fail in a blind test

I'm with you tbh. Steve Duda seemed to think of everything and implements stuff in a way that just makes sense. There is genius there.

As to sound. I don't really think it has any particular character or at least one that is noticeable regardless of what the input is. S2 has some nice analogue wavetables, like the various drift tables or those sampled from analogue synths, plus the ability to throw randomisation everywhere with unique random values (note on discrete) and the voice mod step sequencer thing, allows for a lot of warm instability. Like you, I would simply scoff madly at anyone who said Serum has a distinct timbre at all.

Still, I love Phase Plant too. Phase Plant is imo better for the sort of huge randomised things I like doing, and you get great visual feedback when fming etc. Having Serum, Phase Plant and Bitwig just makes me feel spoiled. I love it. Always feel inspired.

Still really want The LegendHZ though.

[kraster]

Serum 2 has essentially had me sell of 80% of my soft synths. I still use Phase Plant, Massive X, FM8, Bitwig grid and Tal Mod, but Serum 2 does about 70% of the work now. So good.

Does anyone else experience the 'bug' when changing unisons voices? It's also a feature in S1, the arrows don't always function when clicking. It seems to sometimes work better when you expand the plugin window though. It's an odd bug to have persisted between versions.

Wow ! You mention Serum 2 does 70% of your work now, I'm guessing for synthetic sounds.

I don't have Serum 2, I know it is very popular, for good reasons, what are the main reasons you find it so good to use ?

Thanks.

Where to start? You can FM from basically everywhere as every oscillator is now a mod source for everything. Multiple FX lanes for parallel processing. Can easily do keyboard splits now, has an extremely versatile arp, dual filters which are pannable and a good selection of analogue modelled filters too. The voice mod sequencer section allows you to do per voice modulation (up to 8 voices) so you can add random values per voice to get some more analogue style instability, plus the new note on random discrete modulator which provides an arbitrary amount of additional random values to assign to any parameter.

Wavetable engine with easy to use editor. Can do granular with a number of relatively unique features, multisample engine (although limited to 3 velocity layers afaik), basically sample playback, and the spectral oscillator which has an array of pretty crazy spectral warp modes plus you can do things like use a wavetable as a spectral filter, etc.

The only real downside to Serum is how cpu hungry it can get. With a very basic supersaw patch with unison and longish release, it's actually easy to name a single patch that almost devours all my CPU. This fact requires some forethought tbh but can be easily enough resolved because you can just render directly out of Serum 2 and drop the render back into a sample oscillator.

I think the best thing about Serum is the workflow tbh. It is one of the most complex synths out there but the complexity doesn't smack you in the face. You have to look for it (admittedly there is a lot of context based right clicking for hidden functionality) and can pretty easily just use the surface/superficial features to get very useful sounds from it. It flows very well, it's rare that there is anything truly head scratching or buggy (the unison thing I mentioned is a bit weird). Sound wise, it is great but in this context, great is neutral- just pristine digital which you can use for digital sounds or rough up for something warmer and more characterful.

It is just by far the synth I use the most and I've probably not even truly used 100% of the features yet.

Anyway, that's it from me

There's also the fact that it has a clip player and a very advanced arpeggiator which can both be used simultaneously.

But I totally agree that the workflow is among the best. That's ultimately what keeps me reaching for it.

There's also the fact that you also get Serum FX with the deal which is an incredibly powerful Multi FX in its own right.

Very true. I must admit that I rarely use the clip launcher but the arp is great and can do some super interesting things.

SERUM FX doesn't see much use from me mainly because Bitwig and too many other VSTS but you're right, this is a huge added perk. Standalone, SerumFX would be incredibly useful and yet it's just a sort of sideshow to the synth.

The clip launcher is amazing.


It's (yet another) one of Serum's lesser known strengths.

It's great for chopping loops. Particularly now with the expanded Sample editing view. You can cut up a loop and instantly send the chopped break sequence to the clip launcher.

You can set playback to random order. Great for hi hat loops.

The clip launcher can also has a transpose mode so you can have a sequence that is transposed by pressing a key and with the scale quantize function it's always in key.

Also the clip launcher has a fantastic MPE editing system. Particularly for polyphonic pitch bending.

it can also be polyphonic ie. You can have multiple clips running simultaneously.

You can also sequence Macros in the clip launcher. So it can be used as a really elaborate snapshot mode.

And all of that can be fed into the Arp which has its own pattern editor.

Absolutely ridiculous.

[waxdoctor]

Do you find this blurry??
This is 150% on my system... (rightclick the image and open it in a new tab for full size) ...are you talking eventually about loading it in Ableton without turning their wonky software scaling option off?
Blurry.jpg

I’m not even using a HiDPI screen; I'm on a standard monitor. 100%, 150%, and 200% work, but I need 125% and that setting is blurry. Other plugins manage it fine, so it's clearly an issue with how this specific one handles non-integer scaling.

[Trancit]

Do you find this blurry??
This is 150% on my system... (rightclick the image and open it in a new tab for full size) ...are you talking eventually about loading it in Ableton without turning their wonky software scaling option off?
Blurry.jpg

I’m not even using a HiDPI screen; I'm on a standard monitor. 100%, 150%, and 200% work, but I need 125% and that setting is blurry. Other plugins manage it fine, so it's clearly an issue with how this specific one handles non-integer scaling.

I am sorry but not here... 110%/125%/133% have the same quality over here like all others...

Which DAW are you using?

[jrwaltb]

Do you find this blurry??
This is 150% on my system... (rightclick the image and open it in a new tab for full size) ...are you talking eventually about loading it in Ableton without turning their wonky software scaling option off?
Blurry.jpg

I’m not even using a HiDPI screen; I'm on a standard monitor. 100%, 150%, and 200% work, but I need 125% and that setting is blurry. Other plugins manage it fine, so it's clearly an issue with how this specific one handles non-integer scaling.

No idea what you are talking about, its probably the reason you don't get an answer from the company. Get a new monitor

[waxdoctor]

Do you find this blurry??
This is 150% on my system... (rightclick the image and open it in a new tab for full size) ...are you talking eventually about loading it in Ableton without turning their wonky software scaling option off?
Blurry.jpg

I’m not even using a HiDPI screen; I'm on a standard monitor. 100%, 150%, and 200% work, but I need 125% and that setting is blurry. Other plugins manage it fine, so it's clearly an issue with how this specific one handles non-integer scaling.

I am sorry but not here... 110%/125%/133% have the same quality over here like all others...

Which DAW are you using?

Latest Ableton Live version (12.3.6) on a mac mini m2 pro