Are there any soft synths that can compare in sound quality to a real synth? I tried the Edirol VSC that came with sonar three and wasn't very impressed. I'm trying to get more out of the computer with less outboard equipment.(Lack of room)
ARF!

I tried the Edirol VSC that came with sonar three and wasn't very impressed.

you can say that again

Well, I have both the "real" Korg Wavestation SR and the "virtual" Wavestation and to my ears the virtual is every bit as rich and warm. Plus it has every soundbank korg released for the WS series and I can instantiate as many as my CPU will power. Woo Hoo!

There are those that will say NOTHING beats a "real" analog synth. I would say some are damn convincing. It depends what you need...general midi sounds? Look at ROMplers like Dimension Pro, the IK Multimedia thingy, and that Colossus thing. For synth emulations, check out Arturia, (Moog, Minimoog, ARP2600, CS-80) or Native Intstruments (FM7, P-53, etc) or for some innovative stuff checkout Virsyn, Cakewalk's Rapture and z3ta+, etc. Of course there are plenty of good freeware synths like SynthOne, Crystal, etc. All of these sound WAY better than the VSC. If you have Sonar 5 PE check out the Pentagon synth. Anyway, check out www.kvraudio.com for info on all these and more.....Good luck

Applied acoustics systems make great physical modeled synths like tassman 4, string studio,lounge lizzard, and ultra analog.Their stuff is warm, rich,expressive etc I also like the synths in propellerheads Reason 3.0. And i like many of the synths jinga8 named like dimension pro, rapture etc There are alot of great software synths on the market, enough to suit the taste of most musicians, I definitely believe good talent will make any of these very good synths shine.

If you're waiting for Motif, Triton, or Fantom soft synths--keep holding your breath. Someday they'll arrive. Right now, you'll have to settle for analog emulations or 2nd rate emulations of the aforementioned synths.

Emulator X is pretty good though. It's identical to the hardware (E4 series). Real Guitar is a good one dedicated to acoustic guitar.

I'm gonna step out on a limb here and say that "someday" is gonna be way sooner than you might expect. Yamaha, Korg, Roland, etal...know a potential market when they see one. And, brother, they see one.

That would be nice. There are a lot of great soft-synths out there; but you have to spend a bucketload of cash to get the variety of sound types that come in a top-tier hardware synth. You'd think SOMEBODY could make a comparable soft synth. After all, the WAV ROMs in those hardware synths are REALLY small, compared to most soft-sampler libraries. As for true synthesis....well, you can't tell me that my X2 4200+ box can't out process/synthesize a MOTIF ES, Fantom, or Triton!

I've only seen one company so far that is pursuing the full-workstation soft-synth paradigm (i.e. something to replace a MOTIF, Fantom, Triton, etc.): http://www.luxonix.com/home/en/products.html?id=purity

If I've missed something...somebody tell me.

I don't thinks it's in terms of them recognizing market share. They've been at it longer than all of the softsynth manufacturers. I think it has something to do with what's technically feasible. Thus, that's why there is an over-abundance of analog emulations and GM sample playback synths. The softsynths Korg are making are of older less CPU demanding synths. Yamaha was making the SYXG50 years ago, long before the softsynth craze.

Again, I am sure the big three are working on their "soft" Tritons, Motifs, and Fantoms.

ORIGINAL: rockdawg

Are there any soft synths that can compare in sound quality to a real synth? I tried the Edirol VSC that came with sonar three and wasn't very impressed. I'm trying to get more out of the computer with less outboard equipment.(Lack of room)
ARF!

Yes, Yes and More Yes. I reviewed TimewARP 2600 for Recording Magazine a couple months back (Feb, 2006). I did an electronic music project using an almost new ARP 2600 when I was in college (1975). I'd been into subtractive analog synthesis about 3 years by then so I understood the importance of keeping accurate patch sheets for use in ever being able to get a sound back (remember, there were no patch memories back then). I used about 15 ARP sounds in the project and had 15 documenting patch sheets. I also took the time to record each of the sounds for a minute or 2 (longer for slowly evolving patches) on a 15 ips Revox A77 1/4" 1/2 track tape deck on Ampex tape. In the early 90s, I transfered the analog tapes to DAT (48K). When I did the review, I used the original patch sheets to recreate the patches on the soft synth and compared them to the DAT tape through my Behringer board.

Here's what I wrote in the review

"...any emulation of a classic synthesizer is only as good as the extent to which the emulation preserves the functionality and sound quality of the original. In these regards the TimewARP 2600 far exceeded my expectations. To use the term uncanny to describe the faithfulness of the sound emulation would not be inaccurate...The results were astonishing- every nuance of the original patches was reflected in the TimewARP emulations."

So, at least for the TimewARP 2600, the answer to your question is yes. I brought a refurbished 1975 MiniMoog into the studio and compared it to both the Arturia MiniMoog V and GForce MiniMonsta. While neither softsynth was perfectly capable of sounding exactly like the Moog based on the switch and pot settings, I was able to get extremely close to identical sounds out of the MiniMonsta after adjusting things for a while. The Arturia was not as good (don't even ask about my impressions of the Arturia 2600 v which I also have).

I have heard thet the IMPOscar is a good emulation of the Oscar, but I only actually touched a real Oscar once so I couldn't validate that claim. It'd been a long time since I had a Prophet 5 in my studio, but the NI emulation seems pleasing to me, although I was never an poloyphonic analog fan, myself. About a year ago I reviewed the original Korg Legacy collection for Recording. Korg did a very good job in emulating their classic monosynth the MS-20 and their polysynth the Polysix.

Then, there are the synths that are actually ports to a different platform but, because they were digital, the ports are identical to the originals with improvements. Such is the case for the Korg WaveStation and M1, featured in the Digital Legacy Collection. Again I reviewed this set for Recording (upcoming Aug, 2006). Both the WS and the M1 are faithful re-ports with lower noise floors, more dynamic range, and a whole host of improvements (both synths got controlable resonance filters, for example), and the multimbrality and polyphony of both synths was exponentially increased. The same thing can be said for NI's FM7, which really is a DX-7 on steroids. The neat thing about all of these digital synth ports is that they can use sysex patch files from the original instruments. For the M1 the FM7 and the WS that means about a million patches available from various internet archives.

Steinberg's Waldorf Wavve 2.0 if a very faithful replication of the Wave 2.0, so if you want to do some Thief/Exit era Tangerine Dream, it is the perfect synth. Similarly, the MTron IS a Mellotron because it is basically a simple sample player playing back digital recordings of original Mellotron tapes.

Of course, todays soft-samplers can do anything that the old hardware models can, and them some. Personally, I'm still waiting for a good emulation of a EMS Synthi-AKS/VCS3 and an EML 101 (the two synths I cut my teeth on in the early 70s). It would be nice to see a soft Kurzweil 2600 (my favorite synth in recent history), also.

So there you have it.