Hi there.

As a hardware "aficionado", or a freak if you like, I don't really want to spend a lot of cash buying a VST synth as I've a good hardware rig set-up which serves most of my needs.

However, I do use mostly VSTs for drums now or I sample my synth drum sounds into the SD3 for easy replay.

Therefore, I'd now like to use a good VST synth for white noise effects and have been comparing PSYN II and Pentagon I with the Superwave P8 as that's got a really easy GUI and similar to my Roland JP which I'm very used to!

I wasn't too impressed with the P8s white noise, especially when using the filter with resonance as I noticed some artefacts and it's definitely not as smooth sounding as the PSYN II.  Maybe because the P8 is made using the Synth Edit package (I'm not against that) but when I compared it with another free VST based on Synth Edit, it was almost the same!

I've also tried Pentagon I but that seems very processor hungry for what it's doing.

Therefore, has anyone got any good recommendations of any other free or low cost VST synths or would I be better sticking to one of the bundled VSTs in Sonar?

I know someone is going to say Sylenth 2 and yes, that's excellent but I'm not paying all that money for a synth VST at the current time.  I've also found the Z3ta synth GUI quite difficult so I'm not keen on using that unless someone thinks I'm really missing out.

Cheer guys for any advice.

If you only need to generate white noise, I'd try to stick w/ bundled plug-ins and freebies. Does Cakewalk still distribute the little Triangle synth? That may e an alternative to Pentagon. Can't remember if it had a noise generator, though.

As for inexpensive gems, pretty much anything from the Korg Legacy collection is worth more than the MSRP of $49. MonoPoly is my favorite synth to play (I mean playing the whole synth, knobs and switches and all). Pure fun and terrific sound.

I also wouldn't be w/o Steinberg's Retrologue, one of the best VA I've heard - $49 but better than synths going for 3 or 4 times as much.

Thanks Rain.

The Korg Legacy Collection does indeed look excellent but for what I need, I believe you've answered my question as Cakewalk do the Triangle II which is a Mono synth and indeed as you suggest, it does have a noise generator.

It's one of the RGC Audio synths so the quality should be really good and as it has less oscillators, polyphony and features compared to the Pentagon I, it should have a smaller CPU overheard!

It can be had here with another Cakewalk synth, the Square I:

http://www.cakewalk.com/products/triangle/default.aspx

http://www.cakewalk.com/products/squareI/default.aspx

The best news of all is that they're both free!

I've noted that Cakewalk do some other low cost synths on their online store so no need to look elsewhere unless you're looking for something specific.

More reasons to be a Sonar user - well done Cakewalk! 

Rick, you might want to check out Majken's Chimera.
It's free, based on white noise, and runs well on an XP platform.
I don't use it a lot, but when I want what it does, it's my first choice.

Thanks Robert, another great find - I'll give that one a go to as it looks interesting.

One thing though, having now downloaded Triangle II, I noted that it comes as both, a DXi and VSTi and also as a standalone program.

Does anyone know if you can get Pentagon I like that too as the one bundled in Sonar only comes as a DXi plug-in?

I have to say that after having turned my nose up at both these, how wrong I was because Pentagon even allows you to add your own waveforms and chain them together like a proper wavetable synth.  It's also anti-aliasing and the Triangle II is a mono-synth gem!!!  Once you've used them a bit, they are actually straight forward to use as the beauty is that there are NO hidden menus or controls.

It's a shame that in the European EDM world, a lot of producers turn their nose up at these and say you need Sylenth, Native's Massive, a Virus Ti, blah blah blah!!!  Well, apart from the lack of Super/Hypersaw, for other sounds, from what I can hear, the Pentagon I is warm and lush.

If I've the time, I may do a comparison between a Sylenth, my JP, a Novation, my Matrix, the MKS and the Pentagon, stick the results on Soundcloud and see who can tell which is which!

That'll be the real acid test...

Only the DXi version of Pentagon ships with CW products. There is a VST version but it is not free http://www.store.cakewalk...ductid=35-CWPG1.40-20E>

scook, I have both a P1DXi.dll and a Pentagon I.dll in my Shared DXi folder.

I also thought that X2 64-bit didn't support DXi ?


RickJP909 : "Once you've used them a bit, they are actually straight forward to use as the beauty is that there are NO hidden menus or controls."

I wouldn't say there aren't any hidden menus as I just spent a while trying to locate certain things that I was finally helped in another thread to find 'under' the Triangle or Pentagon logo :-)

There are quite a few DX plugins supplied by Cakewalk that run in 64bit SONAR. You can see all of them in the Plugin Manager in the "DirectX Audio Effect (DX)" and "DirectX Instruments (DXi)" categories. They are installed in the usual locations, "Shared DXi" and "Shared Plugins"

Thanks scook, I see what you mean, only DXi Pentagon I shows in the plugin manager.

However, going from this, I just moved the PentagonI.dll (in the shared dxi folder) to a new directory I created in Vstplugins and now I have a second Pentagon I that shows up in plugin manager as a VST instrument.

So it appears that I (and everyone else or is this maybe X2 Producer specific ?) has both but only the DXi version is loaded by default ?

Yes, that may be the case. Did you try to use the pentagon.dll? When I moved it and the supporting directory into the VST path and rescanned I could get the VST to load but it would stop the SONAR audio engine.