Best for 303: Serum? Ana2? Pigments2?

[SamDi]

factory presets are that lame and wanna-be oldschool

Stated after posting a 303 preset

You are right. I forgot, how old I am.

Oldschool for me, is what happened before the 90ies (in terms of music style). 303 acid chirps thus is more the modern area of electronic music.

But the factory presets of Pigments are more covering these Vangelis, Tangerine Dream, whatever esoteric stuff, what for me is some kind of meditation(or should I say go-to-sleep?) music.

[MMaarrkk]

From what you have listed, I would say Pigments 2. But Spire also clicks as a good choice.

[Cinebient]

I think many synths do this. From the demos here i like Pigments the most. Really great.
The best for me is still the mentioned Pure Acid iOS app
I´m a child of 90´s acid trance and house music.
But i prefer more than usual 303, a bit more aggressive, different filter, hard to say.
P900 is my favorite now for these sounds as well
But for classic 303 Pure Acid is so good. No VST is better for me sadly.

[dark water]

Software wise, many synths (as per the previous suggestions) are very good at acid tones.
ABL3 for a dedicated acid synth and Synthmaster for an excellent all-rounder which can make great acid sounds would be my top software picks.

I'm lucky however in that I've had an Abstrakt Instruments Avalon Bassline for the last couple of years however, which means I favour that over any of the software synth attempts nowadays.

[cron]

I'd say a dedicated 303 plugin is a must simply because the 303 'sound' isn't the oscillator or filters IMO - it's the sequencer. At the very least it's equally important as the tone. For instance, SamDi's Pigments example sounds incredible in terms of tone (genuinely impressive stuff - well done!), but contains a note where glide starts at the same instant as an envelope trigger. The 303 won't let you do this.

There are other sequencer quirks like accent 'stacking' on adjacent steps that can throw you off. If you want to sound like a 303, make pay equal if not more attention to the sequencing aspect.

[Cinebient]

This. The sequencer might be the most important part. For classic 303 sounds you need a classic 303 emulation. Point. Otherwise nearly all synths can do nice acid sounds and each sound different.
I really like the 303 but today when i think about acid sound in general i find other synths much better, even if they will never match that classic 303. But maybe i just got tired of the classic 303.
You can mimic the sequencer with some synths (and i like some even better) but it not that "classic" sound you might want.
However, freaking awesome what tools we can get today.
I still love this little app so much for this special sounds, maybe also because it comes with some classic presets i remember.

[Tannaliini]

Amazing to have something that for mobile devices Too bad it's not a computer VST The price of that thing isn't bad (seems to be under 20e in apple shop). Just don't know how useful it would be for my workflow with FL Studio on PC :/

[JO512]

ANA2 has good beefy oscillators modeled after some classics and some of the squelchiest filters I've heard in any synth, so I think it would be a pretty good pick. Pigments, no not for that kind of sound.

Pigments has some great filters! This might be yet another example of that old anti-Arturia bias that seems to have spread at some point like a virus. In another thread, there was some discussion of filters and people insisted that, for example, Hive 2's filter is amazing and those in Pigments not so much. I set the two synths up to do a controlled filter sweep, using the Mini filter in Pigments, and presented an audio file with a comparison and asked people to guess which was which. Nobody dared to guess. Why? They sounded nearly indistinguishable. Neither sounded superior in any way.

I think it is a little like those blind tests of wine where the experts can't tell the difference between cheap and expensive wines. Or how about this very interesting one:
https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2 ... ting.html

To me, this is fascinating! Preconceptions can greatly influence perception. I've come to realize that even how the interface of a plugin looks influences how I hear the sound! I also know that the design on the label of a beer bottle influences how I perceive its taste.

As SamDi shows here, Pigments can do the acid bass thing nicely!

Pigments: I would say, this is the best option:
Pigments 303

In case you are wondering, I am not an Arturia fanboy. I don't even own Pigments, though I do have V Collection. Serum, Harmor, Reaktor, Soundemote's stuff, and Diva are the main synths I use. I've done some careful comparisons where I try to eliminate my own biases, and I've found that Arturia's stuff is easily on the level quality-wise as U-He's. I did that testing mainly to see if what people say about Arturia is true. I found that it just isn't true.

Part of the problem is that Arturia's synths tend to be quieter by default. And we all know that louder always sounds better. I suspect people are possibly doing comparisons without normalizing levels. Turn Arturia's synths up and maybe they'll sound more like we expect they should. All synths sound flat and dull when the level is too low.

Nowadays, softsynths with great-sounding filters that are stable with fast modulations are common. The methods for coding good ZDF filters are well-known now and not exclusive to any one company.

Part of the problem, as SamDi pointed out earlier, are the presets. When evaluating a synth, a lot of people maybe mostly go through the presets to form an opinion, rather than testing the basic components of the synth. You can't do comparisons that way. Presets vary a lot due to the taste of the sound designers and the decisions made about how the synth is to be marketed. If you don't do your own sound design and just use presets, that's fine. But the raw components of the synths aren't as different from synth to synth as people seem to think, unless you are comparing something like a regular subtractive synth with something additive like Harmor or Razor. Then the differences are significant.

[Biome_Digital]

Pigments distortion effects are pretty good for acid sounds.

[Tannaliini]

ANA2 has good beefy oscillators modeled after some classics and some of the squelchiest filters I've heard in any synth, so I think it would be a pretty good pick. Pigments, no not for that kind of sound.

Part of the problem, as SamDi pointed out earlier, are the presets. When evaluating a synth, a lot of people maybe mostly go through the presets to form an opinion, rather than testing the basic components of the synth. You can't do comparisons that way. Presets vary a lot due to the taste of the sound designers and the decisions made about how the synth is to be marketed. If you don't do your own sound design and just use presets, that's fine. But the raw components of the synths aren't as different from synth to synth as people seem to think, unless you are comparing something like a regular subtractive synth with something additive like Harmor or Razor. Then the differences are significant.

Yes, I was listening from youtube people demoing many different synths's factory sounds. And while Pigment did sounds "rich", it some how sounded "dated". Where other synths maybe didn't have so rich/warm sounds, but they had this more modern twist to them.

[Digivolt]

Because it's so cheap I'd just buy a TD-3 if I wanted 303 sounds

[DJErmac]

I never heard a convincing synthesized replication of this sound...(other than samples...)

I don't know how it's been generated in Tone2 Gladiator but it's close from perfection. Afaik Gladiator doesn't use samples. Maybe some kind of resynthesis, idk...

[jeffb01]

This might be yet another example of that old anti-Arturia bias that seems to have spread at some point like a virus.

I think it is a little like those blind tests of wine where the experts can't tell the difference between cheap and expensive wines.

To me, this is fascinating! Preconceptions can greatly influence perception. I've come to realize that even how the interface of a plugin looks influences how I hear the sound! I also know that the design on the label of a beer bottle influences how I perceive its taste.


Part of the problem is that Arturia's synths tend to be quieter by default. And we all know that louder always sounds better. I suspect people are possibly doing comparisons without normalizing levels. Turn Arturia's synths up and maybe they'll sound more like we expect they should. All synths sound flat and dull when the level is too low.

Nowadays, softsynths with great-sounding filters that are stable with fast modulations are common. The methods for coding good ZDF filters are well-known now and not exclusive to any one company.

Part of the problem, as SamDi pointed out earlier, are the presets. When evaluating a synth, a lot of people maybe mostly go through the presets to form an opinion, rather than testing the basic components of the synth. You can't do comparisons that way. Presets vary a lot due to the taste of the sound designers and the decisions made about how the synth is to be marketed. If you don't do your own sound design and just use presets, that's fine. But the raw components of the synths aren't as different from synth to synth as people seem to think, unless you are comparing something like a regular subtractive synth with something additive like Harmor or Razor. Then the differences are significant.

Everything you said is so true. I have Legend (which everyone loves) and MiniV (which everyone shits on) and I'll take an awesome sounding preset in Legend and recreate it in MiniV and normalize the volume and it sounds exactly the same (to my old ears).

[Spring Goose]

I recently got Ana 2 and one of the first things i thought was "wow! Ana 2 can really do some nice acid".

I think also: Ana 2's arpeggiator is perfect for composing an acid line. (& great fun)

[SamDi]

Everything you said is so true. I have Legend (which everyone loves) and MiniV (which everyone shits on) and I'll take an awesome sounding preset in Legend and recreate it in MiniV and normalize the volume and it sounds exactly the same (to my old ears).

Yes, IMO it‘s a big mistake from Arturia to keep the average loudness that low, two preserve headroom for the pretended dynamic of the presets (which I do not see). Putting a limiter behind Arturia‘s synths and cranking it up for 6-10 dB make the factory presets sounding better around factor two (surprise, surprise)...