I WANT to love it...

[ChristopherWD]

I guess Ultra Analog VA-3. I think it's a wonderful sounding synth but a single instance takes so much RAM (almost 1GB per instance) I tend to question its need compared to other synths that can do a similar sound. If they could lower the memory usage on their synth I think it'd use it far more.

[DCrown]

Arturia Synths, at first they sound nice, but never get some use in a project, too clean, too thin, too unspectacular with too long time 4 loading.

Pianoteq, they pretended to come close to real pianos since V1 and with V5 they are still far from sounding like a real one, even the support by Steinway or Bluethner did not convince me. Every sampled piano plugin blows Pianoteq away imo

Btw I know what a real piano sound like,
played a Bechstein for many years

[bmanic]

Definitely Falcon for me. It's user interface is atrocious. So many mouse clicks and various pages needed for rather simple things. It's the "Linux" of software synths in my opinion. So powerful and capable yet ultimately completely uninspiring.

[zerocrossing]

Agreed on the Arturia interfaces. Most of them feel clunky and unwieldy to me. To demonstrate the poor use of space I blanked out everything on their Juno except the controls (I consider the unhideable keyboard to be a waste of space too). So much screen real estate used up for the sake of skeuomorphism...

What adds insult to injury is that they are actually using unique images for every knob, button and key to maintain a realistic perspective, which really contributes absolutely nothing to the sound or usability, and just chews up memory.

I am one of the people who love the sound of the new Arturia stuff. To say it isn't nailing the analog sound is wrong, IMO. Prophet 5 V can sound scarily like my Prophet 6, even doing audio rate modulation. Charlie Clouser posted his Prophet VS comparisons to Prophet VS V and the difference was almost impossible to hear. I don't have a MS-20 or CS-80 around, but I imagine they're of similar quality. Of course, it's impossible to perfectly emulate an instrument which has unit to unit variation and is constantly degrading to some degree. It could literally be that Arturia made sure they did a full rehab to the units they used for emulation.

I used to be a pretty harsh critic of Arturia. Their emulations mostly sounded kind of dead, and at best could be spruced up with some effects to get some decent sounds. I don't really obsess over accuracy in an emulation, though. I'm more interested in if I like the results, and in general I do. I can't wait for them to give the same treatment they gave to Prophet V to the remaining legacy plugins.

[vata44]

DIVA

I bought it and wanted to love it because everyone says it's SO good, such an authentic VA, blah blah, but I am so not happy with its sound and GUI. I really can't stand it honestly. I dislike programming it, the presets are bad, the reverb is not cool.

Obviously, this is subjective.

[BBFG#]

Pianoteq, they pretended to come close to real pianos since V1 and with V5 they are still far from sounding like a real one, even the support by Steinway or Bluethner did not convince me. Every sampled piano plugin blows Pianoteq away imo

You do realize the current version is 7.5 with much anticipation on what V8 is bringing?
Sampled pianos generally fail in the softer velocity ranges and while I want to love samples, they always ultimately disappoint me with "velocity holes". Playability has been consistently superior in Pianoteq for me.

[Echoes in the Attic]

For Arturia V collections I like the idea of the variety of those classic synth emulation but when in use they just all sound thin, too clean and uninspiring to me(except for Ms-20, CS-80, DX7 and Buchla), on top of that I really don’t like their GUI and load time. GUI taken up too much unused empty space for the sake of making them look like the hardware they emulate. I much prefer the approach of U-he, Gforce and TAL.

Agreed on the Arturia interfaces. Most of them feel clunky and unwieldy to me. To demonstrate the poor use of space I blanked out everything on their Juno except the controls (I consider the unhideable keyboard to be a waste of space too). So much screen real estate used up for the sake of skeuomorphism :

ArturiaJuno.png

Definitely true of some of the Arturia synths, especially the Juno and organs. However some of the digital ones have a nice interface with good use of space, like the SQ80, DX7, CZ, Synclavier etc.

[zerocrossing]

Definitely Falcon for me. It's user interface is atrocious. So many mouse clicks and various pages needed for rather simple things. It's the "Linux" of software synths in my opinion. So powerful and capable yet ultimately completely uninspiring.

To UVI's defense, it isn't a synth for simple things. If you want a fair degree of complexity, the cost is always going to be a more complex interface. When I first got Falcon, I was feeling like you, but I put in some time and properly learned it, and it was well worth it, but I'm not going to it to create a simple wavetable synth sound. That would be like learning to fly an F16 to go to Disneyworld on vacation. Now that I know it well, I can't really imagine a more clear way to implement all the features. It is a great tool but it's for specific kinds of sounds.

[whassup]

Everything with great marketing like cool sounding and looking videos that gets me interested but has:

- Plugin "install-overshadow-we-care-for-you-and-mostly-us" software managers

-ill-lock

- "have to be online to function"

- Small UIs that I can't make B I G

- Poor preset managers. I want to effortlessly categorize, tag and comment presets. Then FIND presets based on these things.

- Poor presets. Wanna have great presets that are usable to me. Tons of. Why not. I can tweak later. Wanna get inspired and stay in the flow when creating.

- Ugly interfaces with strange and/or to me un-logical workflows.

The fact that this list includes most synths more or less doesn't make it easier.

[jamcat]

I don't particularly want to love any synth. I use them as unitaskers.

My view is every noteworthy synth is good at exactly one thing. So I try to have emulations of as many noteworthy synths as I can get, and then when I want a particularly sound, I use the synth that can deliver it. If I don't want its sound, I don't use it. I don't have a burning need to shoehorn any particular synth into a song. Most of my songs have between 0 and 1 synth sounds, give or take.

The only VSTi I have that isn't either a model of a classic synth or a physically modeled acoustic instrument is Pigments. I bought it only because it was $25, and I've never found a use for it. So maybe it would be that one, except I didn't expect to love it, so I'm neither surprised nor disappointed that I don't.

[jsp1979]

Pianoteq, they pretended to come close to real pianos since V1 and with V5 they are still far from sounding like a real one, even the support by Steinway or Bluethner did not convince me. Every sampled piano plugin blows Pianoteq away imo

You do realize the current version is 7.5 with much anticipation on what V8 is bringing?
Sampled pianos generally fail in the softer velocity ranges and while I want to love samples, they always ultimately disappoint me with "velocity holes". Playability has been consistently superior in Pianoteq for me.

Absolutely BBFG#. Piano player here for 35+ years, and playing Pianoteq "feels" more realistic and natural than any sampled piano I've played.

I could probably list dozens of sampled pianos that sound much, much worse.

[the_eraser]

zebra2

[bmanic]

Definitely Falcon for me. It's user interface is atrocious. So many mouse clicks and various pages needed for rather simple things. It's the "Linux" of software synths in my opinion. So powerful and capable yet ultimately completely uninspiring.

To UVI's defense, it isn't a synth for simple things. If you want a fair degree of complexity, the cost is always going to be a more complex interface. When I first got Falcon, I was feeling like you, but I put in some time and properly learned it, and it was well worth it, but I'm not going to it to create a simple wavetable synth sound. That would be like learning to fly an F16 to go to Disneyworld on vacation. Now that I know it well, I can't really imagine a more clear way to implement all the features. It is a great tool but it's for specific kinds of sounds.

It's not that I don't understand Falcon, I do, it's that I just can't gel with the interface. There's just something extremely uninviting with it and I've put probably around 100 hours by now in trying to gel with it.

Complex synthesis is exactly what I want from it, it's why I bought it. It's slightly frustrating when people think I don't know my way around synths and try to use that argument as a reason for me not liking Falcon. I'm recently passed 35 years of experience with synthesizers and as you at least probably know, I dive deep. I deep learned Kurzweil VAST in the beginning of the 90s for crying out loud. I'd wager I go deeper in editing synthesizers than most people. Heck, I made a semi realistic grand piano sound for FabFilter Twin 2 in 2009, which could have been better if I hadn't run out of all it's modulation slots (it only gave like 45 connections until no more were available).
What I'm trying to say here: I know what I'm doing. Please all, stop assuming I don't. It's not my know-how of synthesis that is my problem with Falcon, it's the UI I don't gel with.

As an example of another rather horrible UI but still manageable: I have an easier time navigating Melda SoundFactory through it's deepest levels. I can do a preset that has tons of modulators modulating modulators etc, I can create the custom UI and abuse the oddities of the various macro knobs to do some cool shit and I can modify everything with the various transfer functions. And all of this is more accessible and quicker to use than Falcon. MSoundFactory! That's saying something.

[chagzuki]

I find Falcon pretty fast to work with. I was seriously disappointed when I first got it for obvious reasons, lack of drag and drop, having to switch pages etc., but I've settled into it... I guess I've figured out my bag of tricks that I tend to use repeatedly, and setting up modulation generally seems fast to me.

[BONES]

Everything that requires installing additional software on my computer is a red flag for me. I just want plugin and not your stupid product manager.

I'm the opposite, I love plugin managers. PA's is the best - because it's all set up with my custom paths, I just hit a few checkboxes for the products I want installed and leave it to do everything for me. Those things save me hours and hours of time when I'm setting up a new machine. They also make it much easier to keep track of updates.

I bought it and wanted to love it because everyone says it's SO good, such an authentic VA, blah blah, but I am so not happy with its sound and GUI. I really can't stand it honestly. I dislike programming it, the presets are bad, the reverb is not cool.

Expectation can definitely make it hard to love something that doesn't live up to the hype. I think all U-He synths suffer from that - they get hyped through the roof by the fanbois and fail to live up to all the superlatives that get heaped upon them.

My view is every noteworthy synth is good at exactly one thing.

I'm the opposite - I think any given synth should be able to do any kind of thing I want from it. To me they are pretty much all interchangeable, or should be if they are worth using.

So I try to have emulations of as many noteworthy synths as I can get, and then when I want a particularly sound, I use the synth that can deliver it. If I don't want its sound, I don't use it.

I don't get this attitude, either. You could listen to any song on any of our albums and have no idea which synth is doing what, even if I'd told you which synths I'd used. They are synths, by their very nature they are capable of sounding like anything you want them to sound like. Or they should be if they are any good. If a synth is only good for one thing, then it's probably not worth having at all.