Hi, I'm not a synth expert but own Rapture Pro, Dimension Pro and a few others bundled with Platinum. Was wondering if there are any pre-sets in any of the synths that sound like the synths in David Bowie's "Heroes" or can be tweaked to sound like them?
 
Thanx, Frederick

From this Sound On Sound article:
 
https://www.soundonsound....cks-david-bowie-heroes
 
"David likes to do these backing tracks, he gets very enthusiastic about them," Visconti explains, "but we send the band away very quickly and maybe keep a person like Carlos for an extra day or two so that we can double-track some of his parts. With 'Heroes', on the other hand, we built the track over the course of an entire week of careful overdubbing. For instance, Brian brought his EMS Synthi with him, which is a synthesizer built in a briefcase, and it has no real keyboard — it's got a kind of flat, plastic keyboard which Brian very rarely used. He used the joystick a lot, and the oscillator banks, and he would do live dialling — they look like combination-safe rotary knobs on the three oscillator banks. Brian goes down on record as saying that he's a non-musician — he even tried unsuccessfully to have that listed as his occupation on his British passport — and, like David, he thinks very radically and from a completely different space.
"So, after recording the live rhythm section, everyone went home and a week later we came back to this track that was tentatively called 'Heroes', and Brian took out the EMS Synthi and got this shuddering, chattering effect by using oscillator 1 at a very, very low frequency rate — probably five cycles per second — and working the noise filter. He would slowly change the speed or change the intensity with other knobs, and he did that in a couple of passes of the tape, which by now had been edited down to just over six minutes. If you listen to the track now, this shuddering, chattering effect slowly builds up and gets more and more obvious towards the end, and that kind of set the mood.

Thanx, I think I've read most of those articles but can't figure out if I have the ability with Sonar's synths to make the same sounds. Considering Heroes was made about 40 years ago I 'm hoping that Sonar can create similar sounds in our seemingly much more advanced synth world of the computer age. Do you have any ideas about Sonar's synth presets that may match the sounds of Heroes' synths?

have you tried one of the various versions of the "muz3um" sound bank, which has sounds of that era on..
 
it's a free download..  http://patcharena.com/downloads/index.php?subcat=83
 
also grab synth 1 , by the japanese guy whose name I can't say.. and like 14000 patches.. something in there should sound simular
 
this is a link to 25000 of them.
 
http://techno-addicts.com...resets-for-synth1-vst/
 

haha! Only a few 10's of thousands to sort through. Thanx for the info but can you think of any specific patches in Rapture or any of the other Cakewalk synths that have those Heroes sounds (or any patches in those other synths you mentioned). I already spent hours going through hundreds of presets in Rapture/DimPro and never found a good match although several were close. That's when I decided to ask on the forums if anyone already knew where or how to get these type of sounds. Unfortunately I don't have the time or desire to go through thousands of patches.

The article on Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/...%22_(David_Bowie_song)
 

The basic backing track on the recording consists of a conventional arrangement of piano, bass guitar, rhythm guitar and drums. However the remaining instrumental additions are highly distinctive. These largely consist of synthesizer parts by Eno using an EMS VCS3 to produce detuned low-frequency drones, with the beat frequencies from the three oscillators producing a juddering effect.

 
Maybe try out the free version of IK Syntronik, with a sampling of numerous vintage synths, or demo Arturia Analog Lab, which also has a large collection of modeled vintage analog synths.  You could probably find something close in those, and if inspired, you could probably recreate it in Rapture or whatever.
 
The sounds produced by vintage analog synths are based on various sine, saw, square, etc., waveform oscillators, that are filtered and modulated to get the desired sound.  So it is fairly basic sound, used to good effect.

are you sure it's not a guitar you're hearing
https://originalfuzz.com/blogs/magazine/84621252-how-robert-fripp-recorded-the-guitar-line-on-david-bowies-heroes
 

and another link, wow this google thing is really cool http://www.openculture.com/2016/01/producer-tony-visconti-breaks-down-the-making-of-david-bowies-classic-heroes-track-by-track.html

pwalpwal
and another link, wow this google thing is really cool http://www.openculture.com/2016/01/producer-tony-visconti-breaks-down-the-making-of-david-bowies-classic-heroes-track-by-track.html

That track by track breakdown with the producer was very interesting!  Thanks for the link!
 
The track is very dense, and it is hard for my ears to isolate the synth parts from the guitars.  I could make out Eno playing the synth drones, but hearing the tracks isolated makes it much easier!
 
Plus the guitar tracks and the effects (Eno treated guitar!) are very 'synthy' sounding themselves. So in the mix it all blends together with David playing strings on an ARP Solina, and brass on a Chamberlain. 
 
It's amazing what they could accomplish with just 24 tracks on tape back then.  But then again you had Bowie, Eno, Fripp, and a talented producer all in the same room.  A lot of music IQ present, I would say! 

chris frantz shared a pic of talking heads' "remain in light" masters, which as well as the usual guitar, bass, drums, vox tracks all had 2 tracks of "eno treats"