The State of Serum in 2017

[Armagibbon]

... I'm using Filtershaper 3 on a few synth tracks and it completely changes the tonality. (I'm sure others like Volano 2 or The Drop would be great as well.)

I'm sure it won't You want, most certainly, to say tone colour or timbre, not tonality (which is a different thing).

You kidding? I use plugs to change tonality all the time like I use diff amps to change the timber of my guitar. Sometimes gotta be rosewood, sometimes maple.

[p4tz3r]

... I'm using Filtershaper 3 on a few synth tracks and it completely changes the tonality. (I'm sure others like Volano 2 or The Drop would be great as well.)

I'm sure it won't You want, most certainly, to say tone colour or timbre, not tonality (which is a different thing).

(Opens Wikipedia....) Doh! Yep, timbre is what I was trying to discuss.

[fmr]

... I'm using Filtershaper 3 on a few synth tracks and it completely changes the tonality. (I'm sure others like Volano 2 or The Drop would be great as well.)

I'm sure it won't You want, most certainly, to say tone colour or timbre, not tonality (which is a different thing).

You kidding? I use plugs to change tonality all the time like I use diff amps to change the timber of my guitar. Sometimes gotta be rosewood, sometimes maple.

You may use plug-ins to change tonality, that's for sure, but those are not filters And it's timbre, not timber. OTOH, you may use timber (like rosewood or maple) to change tone colour, or timbre (again) of your guitar

[pdxindy]

mode audio has some great presets for Serum, not EDM but soft stuff.

That is some of the more interesting stuff I have heard from Serum!

[p4tz3r]

You may use plug-ins to change tonality, that's for sure, but those are not filters And it's timbre, not timber. OTOH, you may use timber (like rosewood or maple) to change tone colour, or timbre (again) of your guitar

My tamboreen's timber affects its timbre and my effects temper and tamper with the timber's timbre as I tune its tonality to taste.

[pdxindy]

The other negative for me is that wavetables aren't interpolated during modulation. It's always a hard 'jump' between one frame and the next. While I've only noticed popping artifacts with 'difficult' wavetables I crafted specifically to test Serum's abilities in this area, it's maybe something to think about if you're interested in the whole 'ambient journey' thing wavetable synthesis is usually good at. If your modulation is slow enough and the differences between frames large enough, you'll hear 'stepped' changes rather than smooth motion. Something like Massive's Carbon wavetable, which shines when you contrast very large against very small modulations, just wouldn't meaningfully work in Serum. Xfer use spectrogram images in their marketing to show how clean their oscillators are compared to competing wavetable synths, but I'd be very interested to see how those spectrograms look with wavetable modulation engaged. I expect the picture wouldn't be quite so flattering.

+1, it's a problem for me too. All kinds of pops and glitches and stuff. Hurts my ears. Could they fix that?

Other than that, I don't like the LFOs. Draw a shape and use it. No way to alter the shape, morph between shapes (PolyKB comes to mind), no LFO 'Gain' parameter... The result is precise and clinical in a cartoonish way.

Filters from the cookbook.

Etc........

The LFO's have no phase control either... and only rate is modulatable.

[pdxindy]

Going back to the cold/sterile issue, I was experimenting with effects outside my synths and holy heck can you alter the character with different filters. I'm using Filtershaper 3 on a few synth tracks and it completely changes the tonality. (I'm sure others like Volano 2 or The Drop would be great as well.) Interesting to try different components (altering filters, changing reverbs, using other delays) to alter the tracks. Maybe deconstructing and changing elements will help isolate where each instrument derives aspects of its final sound (oscillators, filters, or effects).

I can hear people saying, "well then you're not really using that synth." True enough, but back to the guitar analogy -- it's fair game to change amps and effects to alter a guitar's sound to fit the purpose. (Maybe also think of a VST synth in a more modular fashion rather than a take-it-or-leave-it monolithic instrument?)

Big downsides, of course, are things like losing much of the single-interface workflow, envelope modulation, and patch saving (and maybe others I haven't though of).

The biggest downside for me with putting a filter after the synth is that it is not per voice.

[MorpherX]

Regarding Serum in 2017:

Normally a good wavetable synth don't need much filtering, the point here is the quality of the wavetables and what you can do with it.
Also important is the resynthesis quality.

Both aspects are very good realised in Serum, at least I have very good results.

If someone really needs special filtering or tonality he or she could use "Filterscape" or "Ubiks" from U-He, but with the included effects in Serum you can achieve already good results in smoothing the sound.

But the factory presets in Serum are the most worse I have ever heard and they don't reflect the character nore the sound possibilties of this synth.

[Russell Grand]

Regarding Serum in 2017:

Normally a good wavetable synth don't need much filtering, the point here is the quality of the wavetables and what you can do with it.
Also important is the resynthesis quality.

Both aspects are very good realised in Serum, at least I have very good results.

If someone really needs special filtering or tonality he or she could use "Filterscape" or "Ubiks" from U-He, but with the included effects in Serum you can achieve already good results in smoothing the sound.

But the factory presets in Serum are the most worse I have ever heard and they don't reflect the character nore the sound possibilties of this synth.

+1

[exmatproton]

Regarding Serum in 2017:

Normally a good wavetable synth don't need much filtering, the point here is the quality of the wavetables and what you can do with it.
Also important is the resynthesis quality.

Both aspects are very good realised in Serum, at least I have very good results.

If someone really needs special filtering or tonality he or she could use "Filterscape" or "Ubiks" from U-He, but with the included effects in Serum you can achieve already good results in smoothing the sound.

But the factory presets in Serum are the most worse I have ever heard and they don't reflect the character nore the sound possibilties of this synth.

+1

+2

[Armagibbon]

... I'm using Filtershaper 3 on a few synth tracks and it completely changes the tonality. (I'm sure others like Volano 2 or The Drop would be great as well.)

I'm sure it won't You want, most certainly, to say tone colour or timbre, not tonality (which is a different thing).

You kidding? I use plugs to change tonality all the time like I use diff amps to change the timber of my guitar. Sometimes gotta be rosewood, sometimes maple.

You may use plug-ins to change tonality, that's for sure, but those are not filters And it's timbre, not timber. OTOH, you may use timber (like rosewood or maple) to change tone colour, or timbre (again) of your guitar

smh cmon was a joke man. Like how's an amp gonna change what wood my guitars are made from? F*ck my shitty sarcasm why do I even...

[pdxindy]

Regarding Serum in 2017:

Normally a good wavetable synth don't need much filtering, the point here is the quality of the wavetables and what you can do with it.
Also important is the resynthesis quality.

And yet lots of highly regarded wavetable synths have a variety of filters... Waldorf Q, Q+, Largo/Blofeld all have diverse filter options including analog filters on the Q+. The upcoming Waldorf Quantum has 2 analog filters per voice plus a bunch of digital filter types as well.

So your point is contradicted by the evidence...

[Ingonator]

Regarding Serum in 2017:

Normally a good wavetable synth don't need much filtering, the point here is the quality of the wavetables and what you can do with it.
Also important is the resynthesis quality.

And yet lots of highly regarded wavetable synths have a variety of filters... Waldorf Q, Q+, Largo/Blofeld all have diverse filter options including analog filters on the Q+. The upcoming Waldorf Quantum has 2 analog filters per voice plus a bunch of digital filter types as well.

So your point is contradicted by the evidence...

Not to forget that the PPG Wave 2.2/2.3 (hardware), Waldorf Microwave 1 and Waldorf Wave had analog filters too.
For example the original PPG Wave synth would have sounded hardly the same without the analog filter.

The Q, MicroQ, Blofeld and also Largo got the Waldorf Comb filters for which especially the Q seemed to be quite famous.


FWIW Tone2 Icarus has more than 60 filter modes and having a selection of good filters indeed makes sense with a wavetable synth.
In theory you could get a proper soudn just from wavetables but in practical use doing everything with the wavetables only is a big PITA which is evn more difficult when doing modulations of the filter.
With more complex filters than a simple LPF or HPF replicating the result only with wavetables will not really work anyway.

[zaphod betamax]

To me, on the Blofeld, I try to create as many wavetable patched with the filter disabled, and have all the timbral articulation done with slowly undulating random modulation of the wavetable position.

[garryknight]

Will be? Man serum just got an update with scaling gui. You try it out yet?

Thanks. And thanks to everyone else who replied.