Sampling vs Synthesis - do i need synths?!

[quincy]

Good afternoon.

I've been taking my sweet time in trying to build a small but focused set of tools so i can start producing tracks again, after a long break due to getting pissed off with the whole thing!!

Anyhoo, i posted here at KVR recently about drum machines, and then seperately about "workhorse" synths. I got some great suggestions about synths to try, and i've demo'd a fair few. There are some excellent sounding creations out there, with top marks from me going to Filterscape VA and Toxic, 2 wonderful sounding synths each with their own character.

One of the suggestions in that synth thread(can't remember who made it) was to look at sampling as an alternative. I pretty much dismissed it at the time, but now i sit here knackered after going to the gym(holy shit i'm unfit ) i thought i'd look at the sampling options.

I guess my real question is(after lots of rambling as usual) - do i really need one or more synths, or would one decent sampler and a good supply of single cycle waveforms etc be a realistic alternative?

I've had a quick look at the site for Shortcircuit and depsite it being over my allocated budget i was going to spend on a synth, it looks like it has enough depth so that i could use it for synthesis, drum machine, beat-slicer and the obvious multi-sampled "real" instruments.

Am i on the right track here, or has staring at my monitor too long made me crazy? It seems to me that i could do A HELL OF A LOT with one good quality sampler, so why waste time trying to find a "jack of all trades" synth when one probably doesn't exist? Or possibly end up buying several synths which i won't have time to learn in depth, and a seperate drum machine, and a seperate sampler for acoustic sounds and so on....

If you have bothered to read this far, thanks a lot

Opinions appreciated. I intend to take my time in choosing my tools this time round, not just download/buy every single tool i can and become pissed-off, frustrated and broke like i did a year or 2 ago!

Cheers

p.s. also gonna have a quick gander at directwave over at FLStudio site. No reviews here, any comments from anyone?

[M'Snah]

Re: DirectWave: It's still FL only, no VST yet

EDIT: I should have read the question more carefully before recommending synths

[ugo]

you definitely can write entire cds worth of music with just samples. some arists have made careers out of it. hell, just look at how much music was written with hardware samplers and romplers.

so the only question is whether or not you want to do it all with samples. samples kick ass, but like anything else, they have their strengths and weaknesses. however, as a do-it-all solution, a powerful and flexible sampler is hard to beat.

-ugo

[ugo]

Regarding your other question: Did you look at Wusikstation?

WS is cool, but it cant properly do some of the jobs that he mentioned, in particular, the drum/loop stuff.

-ugo

[quincy]

Thanks a lot fellas.

As for Directwave VSTi not being available yet, well thats just f**king silly! As far as i can tell it should have been available in january. That'll teach Arguru to sign his work away to the flstudio team

Such a shame too, because from the specs and screenshots on the flstudio site, it looks like a very capable tool at a decent price. God damn it, why does it have to be so complicated?!

[pHz]

if youre willing to put the hours in then shortcircuit CAN cover all those needs (though of course not being a full specialist at any of them besides sample mangling it sometimes takes a little more work than using a dedicated tool would) ...

... single cycle waveforms can be problematic but there are loads of free synth multisamples around if you look for them (or can stretch to the odd copy of CM or FM) and shortcircuits filters and effects are MORE than enough to mould them how you want ...

slainte rob

[M'Snah]

Thanks a lot fellas.

As for Directwave VSTi not being available yet, well thats just f**king silly! As far as i can tell it should have been available in january. That'll teach Arguru to sign his work away to the flstudio team

I assume he doesn't regret it, but sells a lot of licenses this way... Just not VST licenses.

[dasdeck]

most of the synth have their own filter, wich let them sound unique. a sampler has only a fixed amount of filters most of the time, so there there are many colors and styles you cannot get from only one sampler, but it may be enough. i for one are often bored after hearing the same charachter of some equiptment again and again, also if the synth sound varys very much, most of the time each pice of gear has a charachter to it.

but again, it may be anough for you.

but dont expect the sampler to be able to emulate all kind of synth just you have the same modulation possibilitys or the same waveforms.

i would suggest to buy a goot sounding sampler, shortcircuit does the job here i think, vsampler sounds good too. you can get some really nice sounding synth for free, but i don't now of a decent free sampler, soundwise and or feature wise.

D3CK

[Lunatique]

Depends on what kind of music you make. If you do a lot of stuff that requires realistic sounding instruments, then a sampler is a much better choice. Look at it this way--you can use a sampler to do electronic music easily, but you can't use synths to do anything that needs real instrument sounds. If budget isn't an issue, you really ought to have both, but if budget is an issue, a sampler like Kontakt 2 is pretty much all you'd ever need to create any kind of music. There are tons of electronic sound libraries out there for samplers--all sampled from top-of-the-line synths and drum machines. Coupled with the kind of amazing audio mangling tools we have today, a sampler is really all you need. (On the other hand, I hate loading samples. Some sounds take a long time to load and eats up lots of memory--not to mention hard drive space. But synths have their own problems with CPU overload.)

Also, like others said, there are some amazing free synths out there like Crystal, Synth 1..etc. But there really aren't any amazing highend free samplers out there (or highend free sample libraries). So it appears it's a smarter choice to spend your money on a good sampler/sample libraries, as you can get pleny of amazing free synths.

[DevonB]

I frickin' HATE samplers for synthetic sounds, most of the time (there are several notable exceptions, like Atmosphere, and Ultra Focus, for example). Synths do a much better sounds for synths, just like violins do a much better job of doing violins. The right tool for the right job kinda thing. Synthesizers take static waveforms and maniuplate them.

My personal way of doing things? I like to have one of the best of each type of synthesis, at minimum. One good VA, one good FM, one good Additive, etc. While it's next to impossible to have one synth to rule them all, you can have a pretty cut down collection and get the job done.

What type of music do you want to write though?

Devon

[quincy]

I frickin' HATE samplers for synthetic sounds, most of the time (there are several notable exceptions, like Atmosphere, and Ultra Focus, for example). Synths do a much better sounds for synths, just like violins do a much better job of doing violins. The right tool for the right job kinda thing. Synthesizers take static waveforms and maniuplate them.

My personal way of doing things? I like to have one of the best of each type of synthesis, at minimum. One good VA, one good FM, one good Additive, etc. While it's next to impossible to have one synth to rule them all, you can have a pretty cut down collection and get the job done.

What type of music do you want to write though?

Devon

Cheers for your thoughts Devon. I am keen on producing breakbeat(chunky dance stuff not nu-jazz type!!) and a bit of DnB and maybe even some more experimental electronica.

As for your opinion about samplers sounding shit for synthesis, i kind of figure that wavetable/sampled-based synths are just samplers with synth waveforms, and a lot of them do a good job. It seems to me that the raw material is the essence of how thick/fat/juicy/glassy/etc the sound is, depending on what you want.

With these more "creative tool" samplers such as shortcircuit, i am very much interested in using it to create my own sounds as opposed to use pre-built patches multi-sampled from classic gear. If that makes sense. Much like layering oscillators anf using filters/envelopes in a synth.

I can understand you perspective about haveing "one of each" with synths, but cost is prohibitive for me and i really want to be streamlines here. Out of sheer curiosity, which "one of each" for VA/FM/additive etc do you use?

[OzoneJunkie]

I'll throw my 2 in, and agree with some of what's been said here. Sampler for real instruments. And I too dislike samplers for synthetic sounds.

I have a Kurweil K2000, and haven't sold it yet because of a few reasons. For one, even though the orchestral ROM sounds are light years inferior to its software sampler counterparts such as GPO and EWQLxO, I don't have to worry about RAM/CPU overload.

I also really like the fact that the Kurzweil has a good synth engine, so you can push samples through and get some crazy results. I'm sure there are VSTis out there that can do this as well (anyone want to drop some names?) - but I'm betting that the CPU load is big.

That being said, I do consider occasionally buying a good orchestral soft sampler set, since I tend to use orchestral sounds over other real instrument sounds.

But, my point here is, I can't imagine being without a sampler for real instruments. Kontact seems like a good thing, with its mix of sampler and all the other mangling stuff it can do.

For non-real sounds, personally, the way I work often on the Kurzweil is finding a crazy sounding patch, and throwing different wave forms at it. On the software side, I tend to build stuff more from scratch. But often that means taking a sample of something, mangling it to high heaven, THEN throwing it into a patch and doing more damage with the processing engine...

[birrbits]

quincy,
I am in a similiar situation as you, slowly building up the toolset but not breaking the bank.
Like the other posters here, I don't think you can necessarily find an all-in-one solution.

My approach has been to purchase a few recommended synths after demoing them (in my case WS and Sytrus),
one drum sampler (DK+ for its bang-for-buck value) and only now am I considering that a full-blown sampler purchase is inevitable for realistic sounds.

I have been "getting by" with sfz (free) and soundfonts (some free, some purchased from my sblive/awe32 days). But, I am beginning to realize that I need more than a simple player as I have a large sample collection of my own samples. For my needs I don't think a "one-shot" free/cheap sampler will cut it (such as the XT or FL built in samplers), but I would rather have something that I can build my own libraries with and import various formats.

What is somewhat ironic is that I have a plethora of sample editing tools; Adobe Audition 2, BeatCreator and SeamlessLooper. That being said I still don't want to spend a gillion hours in the sampler building these libraries, nor >$200 on the sampler itself. These seems to cut my choices down dramatically, to ShortCircuit, Directwave, sfz+, or VSampler (the priciest).

So anyway, now I'm also slightly host bloated (FL, t2, and XT) and I too wish that Directwave VSTi was out of beta. Just downloaded the beta VSTi and I'm gonna try to decide if it is worth the wait.

[quincy]

Directwave.....Just downloaded the beta VSTi and I'm gonna try to decide if it is worth the wait.

Let me know

[birrbits]

will do