Thanks for mentioning these. I have had Synthmaster for a while now and really love the sound of it. I decided to get Volumes 1 to 4 of the Nori Ubukata Historic Synth Giants. These are great presets and really show this synth off very well. I am very happy with that purchase and it was not much anyway.
I love the fact that so many of them are recognisable. I think you can still use the sounds any way you want and that includes modern fresh ideas too. They are very tweakable though. You can really dig in and fine tune the patches well.
I am partial to the Jupiter 8V or Matrix 12V from Arturia. Might jump when they become the special. I think Jupiter is on right now.
Update I did invest in Jupiter 8V and I am glad I did. Here is some info about it for those who are interested:
I have got the Sonic Projects Oberheim but only wanted one other vintage analog synth and I chose this one. It does sound good. Very good indeed. Tons of character. I think V Collection 4 would be a fantastic investment.
The V Collection 4 demo I heard at the Synth Expo here used all 10 of them at once! It sounded pretty amazing. That was a real eye opener for me. They had the Arturia guy come out from where they are based and do a great demo of the whole V Collection 4. The computer ran all 10 synths easily. Did not break a sweat. He pulled a big track out though one
synth at a time just building up layers until it sounded immense. Nothing to stop you installing say 4 Moog Modulars if you want and get them all setup up with different sounds and parts etc..
They have gone further than what the original Jupiter 8 did which is pretty cool. So in classic its all the same but you click to reveal an extra panel and it is pretty impressive. It has a sequencer with three out channels and can do many steps
and be very cool indeed. All synced to your host of course when you need it to be. Many parameters can be changed on each step. Sequencer steps can be easily changed in a sweeping motion while all on the fly. It will generate random sequences for you and many of them are rather cool. Excellent springboard for ideas.
They have added effects and they are nice sounding and simple to use and easy to understand. Interesting thing here is that two of the effects can be put in series at the end of the signal chain (Patch effects) as you would expect and they can add a lot of character to the sound. The two other effects processors can be patched in two places within the synth itself. (Voice effects) One spot is between oscillator and filter and the second is between filter and the VCA output gain amplifier that is controlled by the amplitude ADSR envelope of course. There are 5 voice effects block types and
any of them can be selected in the effects positions. They are ideal for doing things in between the stages they are patched. The patch effects are different and well designed for those types of effects too. Nice. Like 9 effects blocks all up and can be used all over the place.
They have this extra thing called the Sound map. This is bit interesting too. All the presets in your Jupiter are represented by things like (different looking) stars in a large night sky. It is a way of being able to navigate around in a massive library. Up to 4 sounds can be selected and put onto a special morphing type map. Then what is called the Compass Morphing
Interface is placed over your map with 4 sounds on it. Your own patches or factory sounds can be the patches. Movement around the compass will change the sounds accordingly and when in between presets you are getting mixes of all the various patches. Movements can be recorded and edited of course. You can get multiple LFO's controlling the compass as well and they can be locked to your host tempo too.
Now all that sort of takes it into another dimension. It still has all the other basic stuff such as a great arpeggiator and all the various modes of operation including unison modes where you can detune things nice and make big floor shaking deep notes, drones and textures.