SynthEdit Survey - Breaking the Bias (?)

[Muff Wiggler]

OK, I put this thread in 'Everything Else' because it's about effects and instruments.

I've encountered enough people with an admitted bias towards plugins made in SynthEdit, and I cannot understand why.

It's my hope that if this thread hears from lots of the respected people around here, and that they are using SE plugins, it'll help to kill the bias somewhat.

Personally, I cannot imagine any reason not to use plugins just because they were made with SE. In fact, you are only hurting yourself if you think this.

First of all, there are enough excellent freebies in the SE realm, that unless you have really specific needs (or fetishes), you can pretty much get a complete full studio happening for free, using only SE plugs. You can save mountains of money, and still have incredible, life-long amounts of power at your hands. Tell me this isn't MOST AWESOME.

Second, if you step up to some of the commercial plugins, you'll be amazed at what you can get for SOOOOO cheap. For some reason, right now, being made in SE means a low, low price tag on the plugin. Awesome for all of us. Yet some of you still have the wierd old SE bias....wierd.

So here's the survey. Note I'm not asking about SE freebies, only 'paid for' SE plugs. I hope this will help generate a bit of respect for the work being done in SE. Please answer the survey honestly.

For me, I have some commercial SE plugs, and they are awesome.

First of all, the Topaz FX bundle. WOW This is a 'swiss army knife' for your VST studio, giving you a huge pile of essential bread n' butter tools. For like 25 bucks. I think it works out to lesss than a dollar per plugin. Again, WOW. These are all top-quality, very useful, and excellent plugins. You won't know how you got along without them, and there's nothing to question about the quality. These sit side-by-side with high-end 'coded' plugins, and hold their own just fine.

Next, there are the StudioSense plugins. BCG Monosynth sounds as good or better than a lot of coded bass monosynth plugins, and it's available for such a low price, you should all have one. People talk on and on about bassline synths and 303s, yet how many of you have demo'd BCG and considered adding the sound to your palette? If not, why?? Just because it's made in SE and has a price tag? Do yourself a favour and lose the 'tude, dude.

Finally I will talk about xoxos' algorhythmic midi plugins. All of xoxos SE stuff is free, except for this little gem of a bundle at 5 bucks. Yeah, 5 bucks, real bank-breaker there. Thing is, there's nothing at all like this that I'm aware of anywhere, coded, SE or otherwise. q2midi and arp2midi are simply brilliant, utterly unique, and super-useful to me. You wavesequencing and 'hold one key and get a song' crew should be ALL OVER THIS. And it's midiFX, it doesn't generate or effect sound, so even if you are some nazi-like sound purist, there's still no reason not to try these.

I've tried the demo for the M42 Nebula thingy (I think that's what it's called), and I'm astounded. Please, if you have the anti-SE bias, try this demo, and then tell me why you cannot justify using SE plugs.

There's great SE stuff out there, free and commerical. But there's people who won't touch it due to the SE label! Why, oh why? You are selling yourself short, for no reason at all. Look into this stuff, grow your studio for free or for pennies, and embrace SE for everything great it gives to you and the VST scene.

So let's hear from some of you who have paid for SE plugs, and let's try to change some minds.

Cheers

PS. If you choose the last survey answer, please explain why! Thanks

[Muff Wiggler]

wow votes come quick around here!

faster than replies anyway

please, if you choose the first option, reply as well. The naysayers out there may change their minds if they see their favorite 'kvr star' uses these plugins.

thanks

[topaz]

nice thread Mike.

there are always going to be SE Snobs im afraid.

same as those that say

"you cant use PC if your Pro"

or

"you must use NS10M's to mix"

the usuall argument is

"SE plugs are bloatware and use too much CPU"

old british saying. "shit sticks"


ps,

my plugs are now split into bundles and seperates
lots of new content since we last spoke

no more all for $25

topaz

[vurt]

i use a lot of se stuff some purchases and admittedly a fair few freebies

i know you wanted to keep it to paid for stuff but i dont see any bias there either ive had synths from synthedit devs for freebies(look at ians krakli stuff)and this is stuff i would pay for,also xoxos as you say has some very interesting pieces bot for free and dirt cheap.
the topaz stuff i have and am very happy with,as you say the bundle(now obsolete)you get so much stuff i honestly havent tried them all yet but thats because im havin so much fun with the few i have so far i want to get to know them and then get a few more out of the set and so on.
and yes of course the M42 Nebula thats a fuckin synth and a half.

i personally couldnt give a monkeys nut what synths are made in.i cant do it myself so why shouldnt i pay for someone elses time and skill?
ok if you havent foud a synth you like yet but if your scared of the SE label why not at least try a few demos or the freebies and you will see how good some of those synths are

[pheeleep]

I have no bias, but, every time I have tried SE synths, my CPU usage shoots to the roof. It's the only problem I have with SE plugins.. And Topaz, I think this is a valid argument. I tend to use a lot of sounds in my tunes and I can't have one patch using 50% of my resources.

I have to admit I haven't tried a new SE synth in a while because of this...

[bluedad]

I could care less how it's made; all I care is how it sounds.
ian makes some unique little items,
and m42, well, have a listen and make up your own mind.

[topaz]

yes, some do use a lot of CPU,

but so do some non SE plugs.

also, don't forget it's not only SYNTHS.

ie: my ChordworX free plugin uses a
tiny amount of CPU.

I have no bias, but, every time I have tried SE synths, my CPU usage shoots to the roof. It's the only problem I have with SE plugins.. And Topaz, I think this is a valid argument. I tend to use a lot of sounds in my tunes and I can't have one patch using 50% of my resources.

[shamann]

I selected 3, although I do have a slight bias. I rarely consider buying SE-made plugins, since I'm an avid SE user myself and rarely have I seen something that's inspired me to part with cash, that I didn't think I could do acceptably well on my own. But I'm also cheap.

One of things as an SE user, you become intimately aware of some of its limitations, UI stuff like the absence of right click context menus and limited patch handling, so that has an effect on me buying the stuff. Not fair of me perhaps, but why should my spending habits have to be fair to anyone else?

That said, some of the SE-made stuff out there is pretty cool. I'm especially impressed with some of the Midi stuff. The xoxos plugins are rather nifty, and Topaz's latest look interesting, Midichaos caught my eye just now as I looked over his site.

From a developer's perspective, SE isn't as flexible as lower level development platforms. Even with the ability to code your own modules, there are just some things you can't do in SE. But it isn't as hard/time consuming either, and it's a lot easier to make a good, useable plugin in SE than C++. I've seen some folk distinguish their plugins around here by insisting that they've been made with a programming language and not with SE, but then the plugin sounds like shite.

From a user/musician's perspective though, some of the SE-made stuff has an excellent sound. Some of EVM's plugins really sound quite lovely, same for Krakli and Ugo, and the much praised M42 can do some great sounding stuff. I've actually been surprised at some of the cool sounds people have gotten from M42 in stuff that has been posted in the cafe.

Also wanted to point out that BCG monosynth got a really nice write up in a recent issue of Electronic Musician, and SE was not mentioned once in the article. They just liked the plugin for what it was.

Cheers,
Steve

[hjack]

even to the ones who don´t ask for , should be given money
we have the privilege to assist to great synth developers borning (!) ... and growing , they need support ! ( if you don´t agree , that will be fine )
... i like great and big Guis too

[quincy]

I thought, on the recommendation of the laser guided muff wiggling one, that i'd download the demo of fat-ass BCG synth.

And i realised that its simplicity is its genius. A small number of parameters, simple to use, and capable of huge variety with a few tweaks and the built-in FX.

£15 - bargain!

[Lazlo Minimart]

One of my current fave plugins is Bionic Delay, a SynthEdit creation. Hard to fault the tools used to create something so undeniably useful.

However, I'm unlikely to purchase anything SE-created, only because I'm already invested in so many great plugs and most SE plugs are free (and that's likely to stay that way, I would imagine).

[kritikon]

It's not a bias as such - there are the odd one or two Synthedit thingies that are very good. I use e-phonic's Drumatic, Invader, and Superwave was pretty good. (too much CPU for me though, and I can make those sounds on other synths, so in the end I didn't buy it.)

But on the whole I don't find enough individuality in the sounds coming out of alot of Synthedit synths - I must admit I don't know many of the Synthedit FX - most of the FX I have I'm happy with - not in the market for any more for a while yet. There's nothing wrong as such with the filters on Synthedit, but they just sound too lifeless for me to want to buy most of the synths. Certainly the name Synthedit doesn't make me not want to buy a product, but when I try them out, generally the sound doesn't inspire me. I've had some in my folder for a while, but there are very few that stay there.

Occasionally a Synthedit synth comes out that has lots of potential in terms of sound creation, but invariably there has been either GUI problems, or CPU overuse, or just little glitches that reduce the overall useability for me. For example Superwave - good sounds but the CPU useage and then I couldn't sync things like sync sweeps or LFO cycles on restarting my host. Little things like that made it not my first starting point for any sound - possibly that may have been fixed by now, but initially there were enough (admittedly small factors) that just made me give up using it. There was another one - an FX this time (can't remember the name now) that was quite a decent sounding filtered delay, but every time I reloaded a song, the patch defaulted - it just wouldn't remember the patch - sometimes it even defaulted within the same session - again, it was just too glitchy to make me use it. There was a pad synth that I tried - it had a few megs of included samples, and I have to say, it made some very nice pads - it impressed me! Easy straight-forward GUI, smooth filters, very useable - but after my first use, for some reason it regularly crashed my host - if it didn't do that, then my host wouldn't recognise other synths that I tried to load up. I could use it sometimes, but unfortunately I couldn't rely on it - I wouldn't trust it when in the middle of a project...why keep going back to a synth when there's a 60% chance I'd have to risk losing any edits I'd made to my song because I'd forgotten to save - have to reload and start from scratch again all because one synth crashed my host. Too many bad experiences and too many "oh well, nothing new" experiences.

I've certainly not given up on Synthedit - I'll try new plugins as they arise, but I can only think of maybe 3 that remain in my folder because of those reasons given. And given that my personal preference is for distinctive sounding and characterful synths, there's not too much to choose from with Synthedit synths on the whole. My choices are things like XPhraze, impOSCar, Impulse, CS80v, Creakbox, Vnaguard, probably MS20, Wavestation etc. To my ears Synthedit struggles to come up with distinctive sound pallettes to compete with those synths.

I really don't care how a synth is made or coded - but it has to produce audible results. And a lack of results eventually makes you less likely to try out a brand when new products come out. In the same way that I don't care for h/w S+S synths - I tried out lots of them over the years, and most of them didn't particularly impress me. So eventually I just stopped trying them out....that doesn't mean that there aren't probably some good ones available nowadays, but it'll be a stroke of luck if I come across one because I generally pass them by in the shop now.

Same applies with Synthedit - no doubt there will be more and better filters coming out, but it's almost at the stage where the bread and butter ones have put me off listening to the new ones. My loss maybe.

I'm not quite at that stage yet though (but nearly) - e.g I'll try out the Nebula thingy - sounds like there are some good impressions about it.

And I'm not blaming Synthedit as such.....many of the problems are most likely down to faulty patching of the synths, because some Synthedit synths are very stable. But if even only 1/3 of Synthedit synths are badly patched, it really does colour your view on the others eventually. In exactly the same way that there are one or two devs that come up with badly patched initial releases for their own coded synths. You keep trying them because they come up with good ideas, but sooner or later you get tired of crashes, glitches etc because they rushed them out too soon. So you steer clear of that brand.

So....it really isn't Synthedit that biases me - it's badly patched synths, uninventive patching, uninventive sound capabilities that bias me. And the percentages weigh up in the end. So don't take it as a personal offence, any of you out there that patch up the good Synthedit synths - I know you're out there, but I just get tired of having problems with the poorer ones.

[Rock Hardbuns]

I use one SE creation, Quantum64 by cockagain. Its sound is unique enough. But mostly.. I dont even give SE creations a look these days, as soon as I find out its SE, I move on. Why.. well there is such a shit load of semi useful SE synths out there and unless one gets mentiond/recommended repeatedly over for a long time (like drummatic) I dont bother trying it.

I find even those that people do some shouting about, like superwave dissapointing. They are hard pressed to compete with Synth 1 (or three synth 1s in paralell, which is about what you get for the same CPU cost).

[philipc68]

Out of curiousity, are there any other modular synths out there which can include homebrewed C/C++ code? I don't think Reaktor or Vaz can do this, right?

Philip

[griels]

Out of curiousity, are there any other modular synths out there which can include homebrewed C/C++ code? I don't think Reaktor or Vaz can do this, right?

Philip

Not that I know of, but Bonneville CPS can output C++ code... http://www.bonneville.nl/cps/ .You can then optimise that code as you see fit, and of course compile it for platforms other than Win32. I wish SynthEdit did this. Will there be a 64 bit version of SynthEdit any time soon? How much easier would it be to just compile stuff for 64 bit with the Intel compiler? I know that you can include your own modules in SynthEdit, but the shell of the produced VST plugins is still proprietary to SynthEdit and cannot be changed. Also the lack of a C++ stage means its hard to do some high level optimisations... It all depends on where the bottlenecks are I suppose. Some are no doubt easy to eliminate just by restructuring your SynthEdit structures, others are going to be tougher.

That said, there are a few quality SE plugs that I consider are just too good to miss, misgivings granted, and that includes OrganIZED Trio and BCG Rack, as well as the Elogoxa and Land of Cockaigne stuff. Also Topaz does some very useful stuff which occasionally fills an unoccupied niche. OrganIZED Trio is definitely in the same league as B4 and I would happily have paid for it, had I not already bought B4. The sound quality of many of these plugins is stellar, and the old misgivings about inferior oscillators etc should be forgotten.