Sonic Academy ANA 2

[PieBerger]

Not the best interface ever but certainly not the worst. Could maybe benefit from drag and drop type modulation and more mod visuals.

I can't think of a synth this complex with a better interface.

Phase Plant. It is more complex/capable and everything is laid out/visible on a single page, all of the time, no tabbing around. Yes, complex patches can get a little messy and confusing, but if you were to add the same no. of modules as there in ANA, neither the generator section nor the lower mod panel, would become crowded/unusable.

I might save an ANA2 style template as a preset for myself actually as it would be nice to have a decent VA synth voice pre programmed/routed for those days where I just want to make patches without having to design a synth first!

[sihoja]

Love how ANA looks...but skins are welcome

[Echoes in the Attic]

Not the best interface ever but certainly not the worst. Could maybe benefit from drag and drop type modulation and more mod visuals.

What I love about it is that it does really good classic analog sounds but then can also can into nasty digital stuff, in a good way. With the sampling capability it's pretty well rounded. Though I'd prefer timestretch for samples to multisamples in this case. Great presets too.

Yeah we've looked in to the time-stretch thing a couple of times... possibly licensing zynaptiqs stuff... its not unreasonable what they are asking but we would have to figure it out.

would def open up some interesting possibilities.

By the way a lot of time when people talk about timestretching they are talking about high quality stretch, giving the ability for example to play a drum loop or musical phrase and preserve most of the quality at different speeds. From what I understand this is what zynaptiq is good at. But when it comes to synthesis, you can get by with a lot less, like a basic granular solution for example, which can also give some creative sound design options.

[hurricaneaudiolab]

Love how ANA looks...but skins are welcome

I've always found it curious how Slate does more with this than Sonic Academy. I think Slate is up to 10 different ANA skins now. And their customized expansions (which go with the skins) are pretty cool. Wish Sonic Academy did...something.

[twal]

I would like more skins, preferably ones that change the look of the fx section, but it's not a big deal. What is disheartening is that if I want anything cool I have to get a Sub with Slate. I love the skins and I love the preset libraries. I tried the free trial and tried to move the presets to a different computer and they didn't work (I think they wouldn't unzip) and I don't know why. I didn't want to download the installer on my newer laptop. Never ended up trying the presets on the old computer I just wanted to dl on the old one.

Maybe I'll bite one of these days and download (again) the annoying installer and spend the time downloading all of the stuff. I just hate the idea of a sub. If I could give a flat rate for the skins and presets I would of done it by now already, and I wish Slate could do some kind of partnership where this is possible. But, for now I make my own patches and will pick up some of the SA banks later down the road.

BTW when I used third party skins they were buggy, one wouldn't allow any importing (or was it not allowing patches that had samples load them?) of samples with one of the newer versions and had to stop using them.

[BONES]

It is more complex/capable and everything is laid out/visible on a single page, all of the time, no tabbing around.

Instead you have to scroll. You're just robbing Peter to pay Paul and complex patches can be much harder to navigate because things will be in a different order on every patch. It lacks the consistency of other synths, which goes against it in my book.

Yes, complex patches can get a little messy and confusing, but if you were to add the same no. of modules as there in ANA, neither the generator section nor the lower mod panel, would become crowded/unusable.

I dunno, I think 6 oscillators would have you scrolling a fair bit.

I might save an ANA2 style template as a preset for myself actually as it would be nice to have a decent VA synth voice pre programmed/routed for those days where I just want to make patches without having to design a synth first!

That was exactly why I bought PP - to set up a couple of simple V/As for those quick jobs you just need to get out of the way. The stupid thing is, I've never used it like that because the original filters weren't really up to it and by the time Kilohearts put the other filter in, I'd kind of moved on. So now it's mostly a preset machine for me, although I normally go through a patch and remove all the modules that contribute nothing to the output sound. Sometimes I can get rid of half of them without affecting the sound noticeably, which is another big negative for PP's workflow. Mind you, I find the same thing with a lot of patches in other synths, too. e.g. A lot of patches in DUNE that use multiple layers sound exactly the same with just one layer, only a little bit quieter. Patch programmers don't seem big on tidying up.

[PieBerger]

It is more complex/capable and everything is laid out/visible on a single page, all of the time, no tabbing around.

Instead you have to scroll. You're just robbing Peter to pay Paul and complex patches can be much harder to navigate because things will be in a different order on every patch. It lacks the consistency of other synths, which goes against it in my book.

Yes, complex patches can get a little messy and confusing, but if you were to add the same no. of modules as there in ANA, neither the generator section nor the lower mod panel, would become crowded/unusable.

I dunno, I think 6 oscillators would have you scrolling a fair bit.

I might save an ANA2 style template as a preset for myself actually as it would be nice to have a decent VA synth voice pre programmed/routed for those days where I just want to make patches without having to design a synth first!

That was exactly why I bought PP - to set up a couple of simple V/As for those quick jobs you just need to get out of the way. The stupid thing is, I've never used it like that because the original filters weren't really up to it and by the time Kilohearts put the other filter in, I'd kind of moved on. So now it's mostly a preset machine for me, although I normally go through a patch and remove all the modules that contribute nothing to the output sound. Sometimes I can get rid of half of them without affecting the sound noticeably, which is another big negative for PP's workflow. Mind you, I find the same thing with a lot of patches in other synths, too. e.g. A lot of patches in DUNE that use multiple layers sound exactly the same with just one layer, only a little bit quieter. Patch programmers don't seem big on tidying up.

I had a go at this last night and with 6 wavetable/va (I forgot that ANA has a sub osc per primary osc too) and 3 sample generators and yes it's a bit of a scrollfest, on a laptop screen at least. If you group the algorithmic and sample generators into groups and minimise either or, depending on the use case AND you're working on a hi-res monitor, you might just about squeeze everything into a single view, but that's not a strong enough supporting argument for it being better overall.

I tend to work with a smaller number of generators with a focus on modulation and use of (modulated) FX, so for me personally it's much closer to a single page workflow, thus I am evidently biased towards thinking as such.

If stacking oscillators is the name off the game then ANA takes the win and it's clear they had this in mind when designing the UI. I know that you're not the biggest fan of Hive, but personally I think it has the edge, because it has the benefits of the same fixed architecture, low/no scrolling workflow as ANA2 but without its mod matrix being buried behind a tab. Assigning modulation is the basis of synth patching and I always find it frustrating when its hidden away like this.

I don't use presets a lot myself, but due to PP's semi-modular nature, tweaking/reverse engineering will be more difficult compared to synths like ANA. Each preset is essentially its own synth and you have to understand that first, before unpicking the patching itself.

The strength of PP, is in the wide variety of generators and its modular nature; you can combine many flavours of synthesis with lots of routing possibilities and patches can be as simple or complex as you like. If this approach to synthesis isn't all that appealing, PP won't be all that exciting to use and there better options out there, with a more instantly gratifying sound, like ANA.

[BONES]

What annoys me about Hive is that, like DUNE, they put stupid things in the centre screen, like the ARP, instead of putting them where it makes most sense (along the bottom in lieu of the keyboard). To me it feels like Hive (and DUNE) shoehorn things into the centre screen that don't really fit, where ANA feels like they made the screen the right size to fit what's in it.

At the end of the day, though, Hive doesn't sound as good as ANA so it doesn't matter about the workflow. It sounds better than Pigments, though, so there's that. My bandmate uses Hive a bit but I usually replace it with something betterer.

[PieBerger]

What annoys me about Hive is that, like DUNE, they put stupid things in the centre screen, like the ARP, instead of putting them where it makes most sense (along the bottom in lieu of the keyboard). To me it feels like Hive (and DUNE) shoehorn things into the centre screen that don't really fit, where ANA feels like they made the screen the right size to fit what's in it.

At the end of the day, though, Hive doesn't sound as good as ANA so it doesn't matter about the workflow. It sounds better than Pigments, though, so there's that. My bandmate uses Hive a bit but I usually replace it with something betterer.

Well if we all liked the same things, life would be very dull

[Dr.Gunjah]

Sorry for thread necromancy, but this seems like the right place to ask. The current sale puts ana2 at a very competitive price tag. However I've read here that ana2 and dune are similar in sound. Do you guys think ana2 would bring anything new to the table if you already own dune 2 (probably upgrading to 3.6), zebra, diversion, thorn and a few others that I barely use (komplete stuff mainly)?

Since I'm more of a preset user/tweaker than a sound designer I'd also be interested in opinions about available soundsets. I listened to the factory presets, but while I like a lot of them there definitely is overlap so I think it would really only be worth it if I could expand the range of sounds without diving deep into sound design myself.

[SLiC]

Sorry for thread necromancy, but this seems like the right place to ask. The current sale puts ana2 at a very competitive price tag. However I've read here that ana2 and dune are similar in sound. Do you guys think ana2 would bring anything new to the table if you already own dune 2 (probably upgrading to 3.6), zebra, diversion, thorn and a few others that I barely use (komplete stuff mainly)?

Since I'm more of a preset user/tweaker than a sound designer I'd also be interested in opinions about available soundsets. I listened to the factory presets, but while I like a lot of them there definitely is overlap so I think it would really only be worth it if I could expand the range of sounds without diving deep into sound design myself.

I demoed yesterday (based on the £40 price and one of the few popular VSTs I don't own!) and deleted about 1/2 an hour later. Its a perfectly good synths, but didn't sound any better or do anything differently to what I have. Personally prefer PP, Dune, Rapid , Pigments etc...

[Phil Sonic Academy]

Sorry for thread necromancy, but this seems like the right place to ask. The current sale puts ana2 at a very competitive price tag. However I've read here that ana2 and dune are similar in sound. Do you guys think ana2 would bring anything new to the table if you already own dune 2 (probably upgrading to 3.6), zebra, diversion, thorn and a few others that I barely use (komplete stuff mainly)?

Since I'm more of a preset user/tweaker than a sound designer I'd also be interested in opinions about available soundsets. I listened to the factory presets, but while I like a lot of them there definitely is overlap so I think it would really only be worth it if I could expand the range of sounds without diving deep into sound design myself.

CMD (chord memory device) Arp and Multi-sampling capabilities are pretty uniqe to ANA2. Also we have a bunch of free tutorial videos if you ever did want to go a bit deeper in sound design.

What sort of music are you making?

[Dr.Gunjah]

@Phil: I'd use it mainly for trance (more classic than modern) and techno. I also do house and dnb/jungle but I'm mainly using sampled content for that (kontakt)

@SLiC: I can totally understand that. I'm demoing several synths currently and tbh 90% of the presets seem to overlap anyway so it's hard to decide without diving deep or listening to dozens of soundset audio demos which tends to trigger fatigue quickly.

[Phil Sonic Academy]

These are our 2 best trance and progressive preset packs. We just did a big Trance takeover event on our site with Sean Tyas, Protoculture and James dyamond. and all the presets in the first pack below are heavily influenced by recent tracks on ASOT and the bigger Anjuna stuff. The second pack is more chill, based on deeper Anjuna stuff and Silk music artist like Shingo Nakamura etc.

We have a deep history of trance at Sonic with me (Coast 2 coast) and Chris (Agnelli & Nelson). ANA 2 was designed with a massive emphasis on trance... we spent a bunch of time on the super saw, making it as huge as possible with the least internal phasing. The built in reverb algo is based off the lexicon plate which was heavily used in all the classic trance stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pv2ESEh149E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKw8Kpa5MpM

[Dr.Gunjah]

I actually like the first one a lot and I think besides the preset quality the single sound showcase is a big factor. Unfortunately most of the other expansions only have those "demo songs" where it's hard to tell how good the single sounds are.