KVR Audio

basslinemaster · Post by **basslinemaster** » Thu May 19, 2016 11:29 am

I laughed at Sound on Sound's review of Serum, in their 'Pros' section at the end, the first 'pro' is: "Clean, clear and detailed sound." What does that mean? Surely you could say the same about pretty much any VST that exists.

Clean, clear and detailed sound...

I have to say that I find most of the presets with Serum are too 'metallic' or 'harsh' for my liking, and the few libraries I've listened to demos of also sound 'metallic' - why is this? Is it just bad luck that that type of sound designer has decided to make banks for Serum?

Bathrobe · Post by **Bathrobe** » Thu May 19, 2016 11:31 am

its sound is so clear that you came to realize that its your speakers that are too metallic.

foosnark · Post by **foosnark** » Thu May 19, 2016 12:52 pm

There are a whole bunch of Serum presets I don't like, but the synth itself is pretty great. Ridiculous amounts of sound design potential just in the oscillator section.

basslinemaster · Post by **basslinemaster** » Thu May 19, 2016 2:45 pm

I just found it odd that it had so many presets that I didn't like, unlike other synths I've bought in the past, and also it was odd that even the commercial soundbanks I listened to demos of sounded 'metallic' too - obviously this was just down to the soundbank designers, but I can't understand why they would choose to do such sounds when it is clearly capable of so much more.

bitcrusher · Post by **bitcrusher** » Thu May 19, 2016 9:15 pm

I laughed at Sound on Sound's review of Serum, in their 'Pros' section at the end, the first 'pro' is: "Clean, clear and detailed sound." What does that mean? Surely you could say the same about pretty much any VST that exists.

Well, you certainly can't just make the statement that quality is level across softsynths, in fact it's a pretty wide range of difference - in virtually all digital synths, there's both aliasing (artifacts) and HF attenuation (to combat aliasing).

For instance, just play e.g. a 1kHz Sawtooth and look on a spectrum analyzer if you can't hear it, you'll definitely see the harmonics reflecting off the top of the spectrum and typically travelling well below the fundamental (1 Khz) muddying your entire spectrum.

On Serum, you should notice aliasing about 40 dB down from other good synths, it's sort of the equivalent of saying many synths have ~90 dB signal to noise ratio and Serum has ~130 dB. Though I'm not saying these numbers are fact, as it depends a lot on your source note/sample rate and a myriad of other factors.

Then playing a low (sawtooth say at 40 Hz) on Serum will be a lot more bright (flat/real/non-attenuated) than some synths which sometimes sound awful muddy. You might not care about brightness on a 40 Hz saw, but a lot of people actually do. Its one of those things that to me makes an analog oscillator sound better than a (naive) digital one.

So quality and clarity I wouldn't say it's "better than all" (as I haven't compared) but Serum was built to be flat 20-20kHz and clean.

As for factory presets, there is a bias towards aggressive music (I started Serum on tour with Skrillex and have a lot of friends in that world, hence a bias of factory content towards it) but I made Serum to be a general-purpose wavetable synth.

Here's a good example of non-aggressive sound (single preset!) and there's many more earlier in this forum thread:
https://soundcloud.com/asl-soundlab/one ... e-of-serum

Also I released the first "official soundpack" this week which does have a dance music focus but is more classic sounds rather than "bass music" focused, you could listen to the demo there! https://www.xferrecords.com/preset_packs/serum

I'm pretty sure "metallic" comments refer to the Serum 1.0 reverb which is a plate/metallic reverb, probably not the best choice for a sole reverb type. I've done over 90 updates to Serum now, including a lush hall reverb, which is the new default type. So, newer presets such as the preset pack above make use of the new reverb.

Steve
Serum | Xfer Records

Kain · Post by **Kain** » Sun May 29, 2016 10:50 pm

My new trance track is coming out on my birthday!

Inspired by the forest fires in Fort McMurray.

Check out this sneaklisten --> https://soundcloud.com/matthijsbos/snea ... -kain_niak

A videoclip is in the making too.

Instruments used: 12 x Serum (all synths and bass) and the Art Vista Grand Piano and the rest is Spectrasonics (pads, FX) + a bit of VSL (Horns).

Patch_Pachino · Post by **Patch_Pachino** » Tue May 31, 2016 3:38 am

Serum is more deadly than people think.

Ohlson_M · Post by **Ohlson_M** » Tue May 31, 2016 9:51 am

Over 90 updates so far on Serum. This is one of many reasons Steve is such a well-respected guy in the plugin world. He listens to feedback and makes changes accordingly.

I loved the demo and will definitely purchase Serum in the near future. The possibilities with Serum are endless.

Kain · Post by **Kain** » Thu Jun 16, 2016 8:38 pm

Serum got me interested and motivated for sound design. I can't be the only producer that so far was only ever editing existing presets and now because of Serum is building patches from scratch.

ChamomileShark · Post by **ChamomileShark** » Thu Jun 16, 2016 10:07 pm

Interesting I think Serum has also moved me away from presets. I have my own custom wavetables (I wish they'd remain with the original names) and own presets. Some use my own samples. I don't suppose anyone else would rate them but their mine and that feels good.

bitcrusher · Post by **bitcrusher** » Thu Jun 16, 2016 10:13 pm

just a quick note, I posted an update for Serum, now with

- 8 LFO's
- drag-and-drop wav files to the Noise Oscillator
- noise oscillator sample embedding for easy preset sharing/collaboration
- several browser enhancements, and more!

(there's several huge new features which didn't make it in to this release, but will be coming in the future!)

KingTuck · Post by **KingTuck** » Thu Jun 16, 2016 10:28 pm

Awesome, Steve!

Any chance one of those is a larger UI? I heard you were making on at one point. Don't know how long ago that was. That's really the only thing I find myself thinking of on a fairly regular basis when using Serum.

woodsdenis · Post by **woodsdenis** » Thu Jun 16, 2016 10:29 pm

bitcrusher wrote:just a quick note, I posted an update for Serum, now with

- 8 LFO's
- drag-and-drop wav files to the Noise Oscillator
- noise oscillator sample embedding for easy preset sharing/collaboration
- several browser enhancements, and more!

(there's several huge new features which didn't make it in to this release, but will be coming in the future!)

Tx Steve, great video with Skippy. Happy Birthday

bitcrusher · Post by **bitcrusher** » Thu Jun 16, 2016 10:46 pm

Any chance one of those is a larger UI? I heard you were making on at one point.

I actually have most of the work done for this, it was a lot of re-writing (about 60+ hours). I need HD bitmaps from my GUI designer, which is also a fair amount of work, however if he makes me wait too long I will probably put it in an update soon with upsample bitmaps (so many things will not look "better" than say using the OS zoom, but will be "larger" at the least.

Happy Birthday

Thanks!

4damind · Post by **4damind** » Thu Jun 16, 2016 10:54 pm

Happy Birthday Steve and thanks for the update (installed but not tested yet).
I've seen the video too

Skippy posted the video he made with you some hours ago on FB.

Official Serum thread!