Official Serum 2 thread!

[HOTF]

No CPU problems on a 13th gen i7-13700 (win 11, Live 12) .I mean it consumes a decent amount of CPU but not more than Diva or Pigments. Simple patches are lightweight and bigger patches are more heavy like expected. Some of you seem to have problems with way better systems than I have I don't know if it's a DAW, OS, or hardware thing.

[vitocorleone123]

No CPU problems on a 13th gen i7-13700 (win 11, Live 12) .I mean it consumes a decent amount of CPU but not more than Diva or Pigments. Simple patches are lightweight and bigger patches are more heavy like expected. Some of you seem to have problems with way better systems than I have I don't know if it's a DAW, OS, or hardware thing.

One osc.
16 voice unison.
16 voice polyphony.
Any cpu issues?

[Iores Pyadzee]

I am using Serum 1 most of the time, for me more intuitive GUI.

[nusound mind]

My take; Best sounding softsynth? The free update in very generous. It's user friendly, yet can get deep and complex fast.

It is cpu heavy, but on my relatively average set up, manageable on good mode for most patches. Comparable to Diversion, Thing & Plasmonic, all of which I also have to dial back poly, unison etc. to use comfortably. That said I'd certainly welcome & hope for future improvements in that dept.

For context, I've never used Serum before, and the OG Serum seems ok so far, but a lot of presets aren't really my style. I much prefer the sound and presets of Serum 2, which are among the best stock presets I've heard, both sound wise and in terms of usability.

So all that said, I envision this being my main synth now and look forward to seeing how it develops.

[Bartone]

I don’t think the Serum1 factory presets come with Setum2, can you get them if you buy Serum2 or only the factory presets for Serum2?

[Bartone]

KY - Delicacy is using only Wavetavle oscilators (3 of them).
And Filter 1 is MG Low 6 snd Filer 2 High 24.
Nothing extra special there if I understand correct?
FX sextion nothing but Chorus and Convolve (so not huge selection of effects either).

What makes this so heavy to play?

Edit: if I turn the Osc C off, then there is no problem even when playing 5 notes a the same time.
Seems the Osc C is making it very CPU heavy - why?

Oscillator C has 9 times Unison with two warp modes on.

Oscillator A is being FM'd by Oscillator B which is being PD'd by the noise

It also has a relatively long release which means the voice count goes up.

I did not noticed that/didn’t realize. I will try to lower the Unison and stuff if it works. Thanks

[PieBerger]

I don’t think the Serum1 factory presets come with Setum2, can you get them if you buy Serum2 or only the factory presets for Serum2?

If you own S1 they are imported into S2 when you first load it, AFAIK they aren't shipped with S2.

[kraster]

KY - Delicacy is using only Wavetavle oscilators (3 of them).
And Filter 1 is MG Low 6 snd Filer 2 High 24.
Nothing extra special there if I understand correct?
FX sextion nothing but Chorus and Convolve (so not huge selection of effects either).

What makes this so heavy to play?

Edit: if I turn the Osc C off, then there is no problem even when playing 5 notes a the same time.
Seems the Osc C is making it very CPU heavy - why?

Oscillator C has 9 times Unison with two warp modes on.

Oscillator A is being FM'd by Oscillator B which is being PD'd by the noise

It also has a relatively long release which means the voice count goes up.

I did not noticed that/didn’t realize. I will try to lower the Unison and stuff if it works. Thanks

For the fun of it I recreated the patch in Phase Plant. Three wavetable oscillators like Serum .I could only get up to 8 part unison on the first one.

I had 1 oscillator FMing another and that oscillator was being FM'd by a noise generator.

Release over one second and through a convolution reverb.

It was slightly below Serum but there were no warp effects on the Unison wavetable which would make a difference in performance.

There's also a bunch of modulations that I didn't replicate in Phase Plant.

Unison is a big factor for CPU particularly with long releases. It's effectively a voice multiplier.

The long release means that there are still voices playing when you play another note. It can get high very quickly and Serum is pretty open ended in voice count.

[VELLTONE MUSIC]

No way less to be more in anything music related - entire development of synthetic sound is in opposite direction.
Less is more is motto of lazy producers
Cheers

It's been in the direction of refinement, which means adding complexity where it's considered musically effective, and maintaining simplicity when it's considered musically effective. So as to the compromise of utility in UI, I see few people wanting more filters, because generally a single filter does the job of removing unwanted frequencies while imparting a character of choice. More filters might be wanted for e.g. a notch sweep, phaser or something. For a balance of streamlined UI long with sonic options it seems that two is a pretty well-received compromise.
In what configuration would you use four? Do you mean you're layering sounds and routing them to separate filters which require individual settings? That sounds like the kind of thing Rapid is useful for, i.e. basically having multiple patches in one instrument.

Filters do way more interesting job,than to remove unwanted freqs...
Movement of the filter in combination of osc reshaping is the sweet game
Cheers:)

[newbreednet]

I don’t think the Serum1 factory presets come with Setum2, can you get them if you buy Serum2 or only the factory presets for Serum2?

If you buy Serum 2, you also get a Serum 1 licence added to your Xfer account. After you install Serum 1, the S1 presets appear in S2

[Morty-C-137]

One osc.
16 voice unison.
16 voice polyphony.
Any cpu issues?

Just use the demo if you are eager to find out? The only way to know if your specific configuration will run into issues.

[zerocrossing]

My take; Best sounding softsynth? The free update in very generous. It's user friendly, yet can get deep and complex fast.

It is cpu heavy, but on my relatively average set up, manageable on good mode for most patches. Comparable to Diversion, Thing & Plasmonic, all of which I also have to dial back poly, unison etc. to use comfortably. That said I'd certainly welcome & hope for future improvements in that dept.

For context, I've never used Serum before, and the OG Serum seems ok so far, but a lot of presets aren't really my style. I much prefer the sound and presets of Serum 2, which are among the best stock presets I've heard, both sound wise and in terms of usability.

So all that said, I envision this being my main synth now and look forward to seeing how it develops.

That's been my basic take as well. It's CPU heavy, but it's compounded by having presets that seem to have been made on crazy fast computers working with very high buffers. I was just using a cool sounding preset called Zenatrope 02 that was set at high quality with 16 voices of polyphony, but OSC A was set at 4 Unison, B at 1, for a grand total of 80. Now, it's a pretty big and complex sounding bell patch with a long release, so you can hit that 80 number if you play a complex line of notes in quick succession... but would you ever? Not really with that sound, as it becomes a mess. I found that it still sounded great at Good quality mode, I could cut the release time by a lot if I added a long reverb, and half the polyphony to 8 and set the Unison to 2, and all of the sudden I had a great sounding preset that was light on CPU. Hell, I went back and increased the quality to High and it was still fine in terms of CPU usage.

So, I guess my advice to people having issues with high CPU usage, is to ask yourself if the sound is really using more than it needs. I feel like going through the new presets and releasing a "Serum 2 factory lite" pack that's all the presets but slimmed down to work on more modest computers.

[vitocorleone123]

One osc.
16 voice unison.
16 voice polyphony.
Any cpu issues?

Just use the demo if you are eager to find out? The only way to know if your specific configuration will run into issues.

I already bought it awhile ago. I was asking the person who said they had no issues to try something.

[swilow11]

Don't forget that the hyper part of hyper/dimension works as global unison. Because it's not per voice, it doesn't sound as rich as oscillator unison but for many sounds, it can be enough. Or even use the chorus. Decent workaround for high voice unison presets.

[Morty-C-137]

One osc.
16 voice unison.
16 voice polyphony.
Any cpu issues?

Just use the demo if you are eager to find out? The only way to know if your specific configuration will run into issues.

I already bought it awhile ago. I was asking the person who said they had no issues to try something.

ah, ok nvm then