Finding my Ultimate Flagship Wavetable Synth

61 posts

Finding my Ultimate Flagship Wavetable Synth 2023-03-15T10:45:49+00:00 The Quest to Find my next Flagship VSTi Wavetable Synth (As of march 2023) Primarily focusing topics: Workflow - Sound Quality - Options Pigments 4, Massive X, Phase Plant 2, Synthmaster 2, Surge XT, Vital, Serum Introduction: First of all this is one mans opinion with some input from friends. What synth one might favor may differ a lot, as with anything. Still I tried to operate as fair, honest and unbiased as I could. Students and folks on a low budget will have a blast with Vital and Surge, and to even be on the list with these monsters as free options is a statement! Because of the extreme demo time limitations on 4 of the 7 synths (15-20 minutes on the 3 worst) it was impossible to do a full shootout off all their functions. Blame the synth companies for that. It was actually hard enough just with my simple preset build: a saw osc, a filter, two lfos and a bit of FX. Multiple times I would lose everything just before I got time to record it. However using just 1 simple saw osc makes it much clearer anyway to differentiate between the filters, fx etc. Those looking for a full list of futures can find it in any other review or at the companies own website. This shootout is not about that. All these synths are super flexible with almost endless possibilities. This is a personal quest to find the next big synth workhorse (to replace Virus Ti and some vsts) for the following 10 years as an active producer. Its about sound quality and workflow foremost, but I hope others can find some use or entertainment out of this as it was fun to compile. If you have specific technical interests you have to look up each synth on their respective websites. (Higher is better. Priority elements gets higher numbers) Sound quality of filters (1 to 5) 1 - Vital - - - - - - - Clearly the least favorable of the bunch 2 - Surge - - - - - - Just slightly better then Vital 2 - Synthmaster - Crisp filter overdrive, but they sound thin 3 - Phase Plant - - Vanilla but decent. A step up from the previous 3 - Pigments - - - Well rounded filters, entering the top 3 4 - Serum - - - - - Very good filters, clearly better and more diverse then Pigments 5 - Massive X - - - Best in class zero latency filters Overall sound quality (excluding fx section and filters) (1 to 5) 1 - Vital - - - - - - - Its ok but falls slightly behind the best 1 - Surge - - - - - - Slightly better but the least favorable FM 2 - Synthmaster - Better FM then the previous two 3 - Phase Plant - - Decent but very limited options 3 - Pigments - - - It has some crispness with its osc modifiers 4 - Serum - - - - - The old industry standard, a true Virus Ti re-placer 5 - Massive X - - - Its the new standard, lots of options Functionality/Workflow (1 to 5) 2 - Synthmaster - Needs a gui workflow update in my opinion 4 - Massive X - - - Missing visual LFO waveforms. Layout similar to Pigments. 4 - Surge - - - - - - One of the first true workflow synths 4 - Serum - - - - - The old workflow benchmark 4 - Vital - - - - - - The challenger for free 4 - Phase Plant - - The modular challenger, but gets cluttered after a while 5 - Pigments - - - The winning challenger Layout Overview (1 to 4) 1 - Synthmaster - - Only 1 LFO at a time, requires 2 mouse clicks to view the next 2 - Vital - - - - - - - Only 1 LFO at a time, one mouse click for the next 2 - Surge - - - - - - Only 1 LFO at a time, one mouse click for the next 2 - Serum - - - - - Only 1 LFO at a time, one mouse click for the next 3 - Phase Plant - - See 3 LFOS at the same time, but needs to scroll if also Envelopes 4 - Pigments - - - See 3 LFOs at the same time 4 - Massive X - - - See 3 LFOs at the same time Sound quality of the FX section (1 to 4) 2 - Phase Plant - - - Its ok, nothing stands out. Option to purchase more FX 2 - Synthmaster - - Slightly better then Phase Plant, more parameters 2 - Vital - - - - - - - Similar to Synthmaster but great visual feedback 2 - Surge - - - - - - Nothing that stands out on sound quality, but it has a great FX library 2 - Pigments - - - - They are ok, but again just typical vanilla synth FX 3 - Serum - - - - - Great FX 4 - Massive X - - - The best FX. Its Native after all. Overall Functions (1 to 3) 2 - Synthmaster - Decent amount of options 2 - Serum - - - - - Most of what I need every day is here 2 - Vital - - - - - - Decent amount of options, great speech synth 2 - Pigments - - - About as good as the others 2 - Surge - - - - - 12 multi modulators (lfo/env/step/draw) 2 - Phase Plant - Fully modular but less functions then the rest 3 - Massive X - - Fully modular with great set of functions Wavetable shaping options (not counting pitch and unison) (1 to 3) 1 - Phase Plant - - While remap is amazing it has only 1 modifier 2 - Surge - - - - - - Has 5 shaping options + remap function 3 - Massive X - - - Has 10 shaping options + remap function 3 - Synthmaster - Has 17 shaping options + remap function 3 - Pigments - - - Has 17 shaping options + remap function 3 - Serum - - - - - Has 22 shaping options 3 - Vital - - - - - - Has 21 shaping options + remap function Code/Resource efficiency (1 to 3) 1 - Massive X - - - - - Eats 1.5gb of your drive even without presets 1 - Vital - - - - - - - - Its a bit heavy 2 - Serum - - - - - - - Its ok on new computers but not the best 2 - Phase Plant - - - Its ok 2 - Pigments - - - - - Its ok 3 - Surge - - - - - - - Great efficiency 3 - Synthmaster - - Great efficiency Community & manual (0 to 2) 1 - Pigments - - - Ok community, great manual 1 - Massive X - - - Ok community, great manual 1 - Synthmaster - Ok community, decent manual 2 - Serum - - - - - Excellent community, decent manual 2 - Phase Plant - - Great community, decent manual 2 - Surge - - - - - Great community, great manual 2 - Vital - - - - - - Great community, decent manual Demo mode timeout (0 to 2) 0 - Synthmaster - - The worst. Only 15 minutes demo mode 0 - Pigments - - - - Just 20min, had to remake 3 times before I had time to record it 0 - Serum - - - - - - Just 20min, also here had to remake 3 times, never got polished 1 - Massive X - - - - 60min. Enough to build my preset, not enough to try all the options 2 - Phase Plant - - 10 days! Its fantastic. More then enough time to demo all its features 2 - Vital - - - - - - - Its free so no competition there 2 - Surge - - - - - - Also free Final score! 31 - Massive X 26 - Serum 25 - Pigments 4 24 - Phase Plant 2 22 - Surge XT 20 - Vital 18 - Synthmaster 2 Additionally for those on a budget Cost of purchase score! (0 to 2) 2 - Vital - - - - - - - Free 2 - Surge - - - - - - Free 1 - Synthmaster - $129 (frequent big discounts) 0 - Serum - - - - - $189 0 - Massive X - - - €200 0 - Pigments - - - - €200 0 - Phase Plant - - €200 Audio examples: Pt. 1 - Plain saw osc, band pass filter and 2 lfos Pt. 2 - Same but with onboard FX, unison etc. Sequence: Surge, Vital, Synthmaster, Phase Plant, Pigments, Serum, Massive x It repeats one more time with onboard FX You can download or stream the uncompressed wav files here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/aije1hvuy15hjev6v4uyp/h?dl=0&rlkey=sv23p1srcgkmk2bg3xgrbqjew (If you want to hear the often subtle differences of the filters I recommend using the best pair of headphones you can find!) Technical: Shootout was done on a MacBook Air m2 with Audeze LCD-1 headphones. Preset recipe! The grandfather of this sound is the classic funk rhythm guitar with wah wah pedal. It is a classic psy-trance rhythm lead sound. We call it a “Knirk” in Norway. (The squeaky sound of an old door) In English it is called a Squelch. Ingredients: Key note at E2, typically very short rhythmic 16th notes, but a few notes slightly longer 1 Clean Saw oscillator 1 Bandpass 12/oct filter, some resonance, and overdrive to taste (if the filter has it) 1 Sine LFO, Unipolar, modulates from about E2 to G#3 (16 semi) at 4khz/0.25ms Speed 1 Sine LFO, Unipolar, modulates BP cutoff from 100hz to 3khz at 1khz/1ms Speed Very short ENV volume release 25 to 50ms, no attack *Massive vs Massive X: We feel they have nothing in common and we are confused by the use of the same name. Massive has large visual lfo waveforms. Massive X has none! We highly miss that. Everything else is different. *The Phase Plant interface colors stood out as not optimized to me, so I modified it with more contrast. My friends call it comedically the High Definition preset. The plug looks much better with it in our humble opinion. If you want to try it out here is the file and the instructions: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/aije1hvuy15hjev6v4uyp/h?dl=0&rlkey=sv23p1srcgkmk2bg3xgrbqjew I tried some Serum skins as well. There’s a ton if you google it. *The reason Hive is not included in this shootout is that it is not really a true big wavetable synth. Compared to the others it is very limited and its wavetables are more like an add on. It does sound good though, like all U-he synths.   I left out some others too that was not of interest to me, but might be for someone else. While amazing, Omnisphere is just way too heavy for my laptop ssd space, and the GUI really does not appeal to me personally either. This review only includes those synths I personally could live with as a go-to main workhorse for daily use. But if you think I missed some please let me know! *If you are curious about my music productions you can check it out here: https://yggdrasilrecords.bandcamp.com/album/hutti-heita https://youtu.be/yWxTJlEp5pw Sleepwalker https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=10644

boothmultimedia boothmultimedia https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=540856: KVRer; 4 posts since 3 Dec, 2021

Post by boothmultimedia » Sat May 13, 2023 3:00 am

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I commend you for a nice start. Hopefully someone else hasn't already mentioned it but MPE compatible is a big thing for some peeps these days.

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