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

I'm pretty impressed with SynthMaster. It's still a relatively young product and is still undergoing active development. The developer has hinted that he might be expanding in the wavetable/sample direction and has mentioned a possible sample editor and more sample content. At the rate he's going, SynthMaster may ultimately find itself in Alchemy/Omnisphere territory and become a truly do-it-all synthesis monster.

The $129 price tag doesn't hurt its case, either.


EDIT: so I downloaded the demo, but it mis-behaved badly. Notes would suddenly jump down an octave, or start playing the same note no matter which key was pressed. Audio would stop, which I expected for a demo version, but then wouldn't come back without switching to another patch. I uninstalled the demo. Maybe will revisit it down the road.

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.

Glyn Barnes

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.

FWIW, the chatter on GS indicated that the general preference was strongly for the WayOutWare ARP over the Arturia.  YGWYPF may apply.  Also, YMMV.  TTFN!
 
Cheers,
Eddie

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.

dmbaer


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. 
 

You're speaking of Retro Machines Mk2, which was a freebie I got when I bought Kontakt 5.  Pretty cool stuff, if not exact replicas of the real things ... but then again, exact replicas don't really exist, do they? 
 
Addendum:  to give you an idea of the malleability of the sounds in the RM library, here's how it was described in SOS:
 
"This chirpy assemblage of analogue synths, antique electronic pianos and string machines complements the existing Synth and Vintage categories, with the inclusion of some natty parameter morphing, chord sequencing and arpeggiator trickery into the bargain."
 
Cheers,
Eddie
 

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. 

During my quest I have identified yet another contender: Helix. ($149)

I am really enjoying the audio demos (there are a LOT of them), and if I skip over the EDM/trance stuff I hear lots of sounds that I'd likely find a use for. I hear pads that are comparable to Omnisphere patches in depth and width, and percussion possibilities that don't sound like a bitcrushed drum machine from 1979. It can apparently import sfz multisamples, which accounts for its broad tonal capability.

It does appear to be 32-bit only, though, and the last update I could find was from 2009. I hope that doesn't mean it's abandonware. 

Anybody using this one?

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.

Don't those require a dongle?

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