SONICALLY Best VST Synth

[vitocorleone123]

Personally, of the VAs I love Synapse Obsession, Model 84, Xils PolyKB and Diva.

For more modern stuff Zebra and Massive X.

Obsession sounds phenomenal and nails the Tom Sawyer Big fat rez (IMHO). However recently my copy, inepxlicably, has stopped responding to mod wheel inputs. Everything else works fine and the mod wheel works fine for all my other stuff. Weird

Only other thing i'd fix is to add a proper LFO.

What do you mean by proper LFO?

I have two issues with the LFO.

One is that it always retriggers with note on and secondly there's no way of syncing the regular non step sequencer LFO to host/midi clock.

That modwheel thing is weird. Does it do that when you route it via the Mod Matrix?

I just wanted a simple LFO i can sync to tempo. What we have is fine, but it's awkward when you just want a simple lfo for basic modulation, like syncing sample and hold filter effect to the BPM, rather than having to use the weird matrix and draw stuff in.

Yeah, I hear ya.

The Step sequencer is great to have but not being able to sync the regular LFO to tempo is kind of ridiculous.

Yeah - I bought Obsession when it was released and sold it about a year later because I never used it due to never really loving the sound of it and the overall poor usability (also sold The Legend as soon as I heard Softube Model 72). Dune never did "it" for me either, preferring Hive 2 - and now Opal over Hive 2 at the moment.

[zerocrossing]

Well if you go to several restaurants and end up with a favourite meal at a favourite restaurant, it usually boils down to subjectively what you like the best. What appeals to your palate the most.

I suggest, sonically best synth is exactly the same thing.. What pleases your ear the most.


Some people love Alchemy, Falcon, Rapid all which may have alias free whatever.. for me they are vanilla sounding and wouldn't ever come close to my sonically best sounding list.. But they very well may be the top of someone else's.

I propose it has to be a subjective analysis of what sounds best to your ear.
rsp

I agree with you, but I think it’s the answer to a different question. My father likes Maxwell House Instant coffee more than the freshly roasted and ground coffee beans I prepare for him using a pour-over drip method, but I don’t even think that he would describe it as the best coffee. Just the one he likes the most. I know it seems pedantic, but I think it’s an important distinction.

[ghostwhistler]

Seriously giving the Korg Opsix vst somethought. Anything I should know before I pull the trigger? It has a lot of options for FM (and more) sound design. I have the demo which, weirdly, doesn't seem to have any limits. I thought Korg demos ended after 20 minutes. Maybe I forgot buying it or something

[zvenx]

Well if you go to several restaurants and end up with a favourite meal at a favourite restaurant, it usually boils down to subjectively what you like the best. What appeals to your palate the most.

I suggest, sonically best synth is exactly the same thing.. What pleases your ear the most.


Some people love Alchemy, Falcon, Rapid all which may have alias free whatever.. for me they are vanilla sounding and wouldn't ever come close to my sonically best sounding list.. But they very well may be the top of someone else's.

I propose it has to be a subjective analysis of what sounds best to your ear.
rsp

I agree with you, but I think it’s the answer to a different question. My father likes Maxwell House Instant coffee more than the freshly roasted and ground coffee beans I prepare for him using a pour-over drip method, but I don’t even think that he would describe it as the best coffee. Just the one he likes the most. I know it seems pedantic, but I think it’s an important distinction.

To me likes the most would include features though, and for sure used the most has different criteria as well.

To me, your analogy would be what you use the most. Repro-1 doesn't get that much use here, at least recently, I haven't been doing projects suited for it, but yes it is still sonically the best sounding to my ears. (Tal J-8 does though, but Korg WaveState, Model 80, Repro-5 don't).. so I definitely differentiate between use the most rather than sonically best sounding.... Of my list it would be Tal J-8 and Diva that gets the most use...and look where diva is...
rsp

[liquidsound]

Serum always saves me from GAS but Massive X is quite impressive, superb.
For the past 2 weeks though, I’ve been totally immersed in Fors devises… man, very addictive gems.

[kraster]

Serum always saves me from GAS but Massive X is quite impressive, superb.
For the past 2 weeks though, I’ve been totally immersed in Fors devises… man, very addictive gems.

Chiral is one beautiful sounding synth.

Opal is amazing.

[liquidsound]

Serum always saves me from GAS but Massive X is quite impressive, superb.
For the past 2 weeks though, I’ve been totally immersed in Fors devises… man, very addictive gems.

Chiral is one beautiful sounding synth.

Opal is amazing.

Chiral it’s an endless beauty… through Boken and…and…and…

[martiu]

FartMan2 is the best sounding synth i ever heard, it sounds fat and with amazing depth

[kraster]

FartMan2 is the best sounding synth i ever heard, it sounds fat and with amazing depth

Lovely bottom end.

[grandmasterbird]

FartMan2 is the best sounding synth i ever heard, it sounds fat and with amazing depth

Lovely bottom end.

[pierb]

The one plugin that I find consistently performs the best on all of those fronts is MSoundFactory. You need to set it for high quality, but it really outperforms almost everything.

Can you post a demo?

Tried it a couple of times but wasn't blown away by the sound. I will admit that I was very turned off by the GUI and the workflow and never digged deep into it.

[zerocrossing]

The one plugin that I find consistently performs the best on all of those fronts is MSoundFactory. You need to set it for high quality, but it really outperforms almost everything.

Can you post a demo?

Tried it a couple of times but wasn't blown away by the sound. I will admit that I was very turned off by the GUI and the workflow and never digged deep into it.

I haven’t done a demo, but I’ve made a bunch of presets and used a lot of the included presets and “instruments.” It’s not overly obvious, but there are several ways to boost the sound quality, all depend on what you’re doing. Simple sounds can go with the default and sound good, but once you start using the filter drive features, oscillator sync, etc, you not only need to set the global quality to higher, but you also need to set the plugin oversampling up. The panel for this is hidden by default, which I think makes people miss it. There’s also a built in limiter which can be helpful. So, if you are trying to do a Prophet 5 style synth emulation and you don’t boost up the quality settings, it’ll sound only OK, especially if you’re doing the usual taxing stuff, but crank up the global setting to “extreme 8x” and then “oversampling 8x” (I’m not actually sure what the difference between these two settings is about) and all of the sudden you’ve got a awesome sounding analog emulation, though not really any analog that’s ever existed.

There’s two ways you can use it. Run its instruments and use them to make presets or use its presets, or make your own patches. I find making your own patches is actually very simple once you get the structure. The LFO’s are so damn sophisticated, it’s amazing. You can actually do oscillator sync and PWM on them, as well as other transformations. They also run at audio rate and track the keyboard. It’s insane.

[EnGee]

I think Halion 7 might be the only synth that I can live with! It has many synth engines, so it might be cheating a little bit, but after doing my first preset (classic pad in the Analog synth), I really begin to like it a lot! It isn't that difficult as I imagined, but I watched several (excellent) episodes of this tutorial before I delve into it!


First impression is great as I explored how flexible are the envelopes and how easy to get that beefy pad! It is also light on resources! such pad with unison and reverb is less than %10 inside Ableton Live (Windows). That's impressive!

[zerocrossing]

I think Halion 7 might be the only synth that I can live with! It has many synth engines, so it might be cheating a little bit, but after doing my first preset (classic pad in the Analog synth), I really begin to like it a lot! It isn't that difficult as I imagined, but I watched several (excellent) episodes of this tutorial before I delve into it!


First impression is great as I explored how flexible are the envelopes and how easy to get that beefy pad! It is also light on resources! such pad with unison and reverb is less than %10 inside Ableton Live (Windows). That's impressive!

I really want Helion 7, mostly for the spectral stuff, but I’m holding out for polyphonic aftertouch support. Gotta have it. Seems like a good instrument, though.

[EnGee]

I bought it mainly for the FM Lab (which is great and much easier to program than my MODX), but I found myself falling in love with the subtractive synth! It's similar to Retrologue but more flexible especially when it comes to modulators. Those envelopes are killers! I have never seen something like that! Similar to FM8 envelopes, but more functions (like the speed).