bitflipper


An ARP2600 emulator would be fun to have. But at $250 it's at the high end of what I can justify spending.

.

There is this one at $99, its been tempting me.
http://www.arturia.com/evolution/en/products/arp2600v/intro.html
The Arturia have dropped their prices recently. I think they need a dongle at one time, but that is no longer the case.

bitflipper

I despise sampled analog synths!

The lines are becoming hazy in this area.  With the latest Kontakt technolgoy, a lot of new sampled libraries come with filter and other modulate-able timbre altering controls.  Look at the Music Lab Machines libraries, mentioned earlier in this thread, for example.  So don't write this sort of sound generation off as boring inflexible imitations of the real thing.  To a certain degree it's the best of both worlds: rich sloppy analog wave forms with real time modulation possibilities in a convenient digital form.
 
And there's a new(ish) bundled set of sounds that came with the latest Kontakt offering a collection of vintage synth sounds.  I don't recall the name of the library, but it's got an obvious name.  I've haven't explored it deeply, but I was extremely pleased with many of the sounds there.  I don't recall off hand the degree of modulation that's possilbe, but the basic sounds are quite good.
 
As for Synthmaster, I was very impressed with everything there in the instrument, but not overly excited about the bundled presets.  However, the new line of classic synth sounds by Nori (discussed in another recent thread) are a delight, and are fairly inexpensive.  If you go with Synthmaster, you'll surely want to give those a look, I think.

I don't think that Kontakt is ever going to be a suitable substitute for real programmable synthesizers, but who knows? Omnisphere and Alchemy both do an impressive job of straddling both worlds, even if neither of them is ever going to be anybody's go-to general-purpose synthesizer.

After being initially impressed by SynthMaster, I've since set it aside, at least temporarily. The presets I listened to weren't a very effective advertisement, being heavily EDM/trance-oriented. I'd have tried more of them but the synth went all wonky on me and wasn't responding properly to MIDI input. 

Bit, have you tried Steinberg's Retrologue and Padshop Pro that Rain mentioned a while back? Yeah, Steinberg I know, but they are pretty well priced for US customers and have fully functional 1 month trials available. I thought they seemed pretty versatile for the price.

yep padshop pro does. not sure if my cubase 6.5 license has the retro thing included.. but more than likely it does want an elicenser.

but padshop and iris are similar in ways

Eddie
A few years ago I purchased Kickaxx from Way out where - it turned out to be almost unusable - totally unstable. 
I think it was originally a Mac only program which they ported to windows but NEVER got it right. I do believe they just dropped it and this became YET ANOTHER member of my software cemetery!
If you look at this website now, there seems very little in the way of activity - I would just check they are still in business before even risking looking at another of their products!
Cheers
Nigel

I do have a good laugh though when a synth has been out 5 minutes and it becomes somebody's "Go To"

Or when an old one's been declared to now be unusable :)


I did try Charlatan once, when KVR had chosen it for their One Synth Challenge. Wasn't for me. I'm more of a Fender Precision kind of guy, and more likely to use a standup acoustic bass sample than a synth for bass parts. 


Of all the synths I've heard over the past few weeks' research, my favorite so far has been Helix. Unfortunately, it appears to be abandonware. But at $149, it's not being sold at abandonware prices.

bitflipper


Don't those require a dongle?

I just ran the demos with no problems - maybe different if you buy ? They've only just run out, so I haven't done anything about it yet, but I thought that certainly at US prices they represent reasonable value even taking into account Steinbergs reputation. Tone 2 Saurus is quite nice too - the demo is time limited in the sense that it turns off after so long and has save disabled, but you can just fire it up again straight away if you just want to play with it and it does come back on as you left it while you are still in the same project. Bit more expensive than the Steinberg ones though.

 Hi Dave, thanks for making the different synths little clearer. If I understand correctly the EDM synths are the basic ones that sound like 80's Casio sounds. Yea, I have no use for them. Most of my synths that I have are sample based.
 I do have one synth that I have 14 hours of the trial Access Virus that I think fits your bill but it is currently a powercore only plug I think. I don't think it's sample based but I'm completly overwhelmed by the sounds it has in it's presets. I've never heard anything like it and I'm pretty sure the devil is going to make me buy it before long. Hopefully they go native soon.

As an owner of almost every Virus (hardware) model ever made, I would say that it's one of the most versatile synths on the market, but certainly wouldn't be considered a non-EDM synth.  The Virus is bred for EDM and that is what most associated with.  As I said, it's packed with features, very very versatile and can be used for a wide variety of styles, but I think that the are far more suitable and cheaper options on the market, most of which have been mentioned already, for someone seeking a non-EDM synth.

Zo


Bit , you should really consider Diva , it's excellent , easy to tweak and dammm it has a sound !!
 

I have to agree with Zo about Diva.  She is gorgeous, absolutely delightful and delicious, but very demanding.  I have been playing with the demo; can't stop, she is addictive.  Definitely not EDM.  I will be purchasing this one for sure.  She is the perfect complement to M-Tron Pro (sorry G-Force, Minimonsta comes in second when Diva takes the stage).

JClosed

Rain


The copy protection for Retrologue and Padshop Pro is Steinberg's soft eLicenser, IOW, a virtual dongle.

I had originally downloaded both, and tried both but focused mostly on Retrologue - not that Padshop Pro isn't nice but I instantly ended up digging Retrologue so much that I bought it almost on the spot - and just couldn't put it down since. 

I've also got a copy of Cubase on the way, so I'll have the option to further try the included Padhop and upgrade it to the Pro version in the near future if it works for me.

So - you also got the cheap offers from Steinberg? ;-)

I upgraded first from LE to Artist for half the price, and a few months later to Cubase full for -again- half the price.. So, I got the full version of Cubase for less than € 300,-. Still - I like Sonar X1 (and soon X2) more than I like Cubase, altough Cubase has better notation possibility's. 

Anyway - The upgrade from Padshop (the version present in Artist and Cubase full) to Padshop pro is only about 10 euro's (don't know how much in dollars), and for that price you get an extra 3-band parametric EQ, an Algorithmic reverb, 50 new presets and -most important to me- the possibility to import your own samples to use as base for the granular synthesis. I have been playing around with pro, and it is extremely funny to take ordinary sounds and turn them in spooky atmospheric gems. I love it...

  Another nice synth is Amber from the FXpansion DCAM trio (Strobe, Amber, Cypher and the combiner - Fusor), that is circuit-modelled from old synths. This gives a nice analog sound. The other two synths are more trance/dance orientated, but also have some nice rich sounds. All synths are very programmable, but because there are a lot of possibilities it can be a bit intimidating. Combining the synth's in Fusor gives very rich old-school sounds, but will be beating your processor because you need a lot of power to run it smoothly. However - it works without an hickup on my (slightly older) test system with an Intel Core i3 540. 

I've never been much of a Steinberg fan mainly due to their attitude towards their customers - but some of their products I like. Even though I can't say that they've earned my trust, they've been good to me lately, and I feel like maybe they're adapting and figuring out that they have to listen to their customers, like other companies (Waves for example). Still, I can only go as far as mentioning checking out a product - and even then, I feel like giving the "buyer beware" every time. 

That being said, I'll have no issue justifying the upgrade to Padshop Pro at such a price. I can't wait to really give it a try.

electronic dance music


which like "electronica" is a term I hate with regard to DnB or it's older versions (which sampled off old records analog style, so not the same IMHO) . just the copyright hunters made it near damn impossible to sample 1 or 2 seconds of a record without being chased down and "served" for doing so.. although it's more funny when major artists do it adversely and think they can get away with it (no names, but some are well known for getting caught out)

p.s. thank goodness for the amen break :)

I'm with Dave regarding sampled analogue sounds I'm afraid and I would never use such a sample.

I've been into "synthesisers" since I could afford my first ever which was a weird plasticy affair called a Wasp.

Since then I've owned a Multi Moog (which blew up else I'd still have it now), a Roland Juno 6, a Roland SH101, Bassline and Drumatix. They were from the true analogue days.

My current arsenal of VA synths are a JP-8000, an OB-12 and a Novation Nova.

The reason I'm telling you the above is because I'd like to express how much I know, and indeed love synthesisers, especially of the analogue type.

I never got into the likes of the FM synths and I just hates the DX7.


Anyway, onto soft synths.

For quite a while now I've been into Absynth and I got into that at version 3 and currently use 5. I hardly have any projects that do not have at least one instance of Absynth.

I used to enjoy Pentagon but I've given up on it now because I got fed up of remembering to run Sonar as administrator.

Very recently I discovered A|A|S and their suite of VST instruments. I eventually bought one of their bundles and my favourites are Chromaphone, UltraAnalog and both of the Strum modules. I have Tassman too, of course, but unless I can find a preset I can tweak I don't really use it that much. I'd rather spend more time composing that sound design. I think that's where UltraAnalog comes in, because you still get some of the great Tassman sounds but with a traditional analogue synth interface.

Chromaphone is one of my favourite percussive synths. And by percussive, I mean anything that can be struck or plucked. I would normally turn to Absynth for that duty, but Chromaphone fits the bill perfectly for me.


And one big thing I've learned over the years is that there is no such thing as one killer synth. For me it is very much a matter of choosing the right horse for the right course.


Oh, I don't do EDM by the way. At least not on purpose. I prefer old fashioned synth music as was created by early Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk. If I wanted popular then I'd listen to a bit of JMJ. So that is the kind of stuff that I like creating myself.

Thanks for posting the original thread, I enjoyed reading through all the posts :-)

I demo'd Diva, and while it sounded wonderful and the controls were nicely laid out, it was just too CPU-hungry for my modest rig. Sadly, Diva fails to qualify as a contender until my next system upgrade.