Anybody tried this?
 
http://www.syntorial.com/
 

I posted this while back...got no response...

Cake was promoting it...

http://forum.cakewalk.com...yntorial-m3061438.aspx

ahh, I must have missed it.  Anyway, I'm going to check it out.

The demo is pretty generous and the product is very very good

Yeah, I started the demo last night, so far I'm happy with it.  It really makes you think about the sounds and how they are created.  I will probably end up giving this a go.

Question, did you go through the whole product, how complicated do the later patches get, do they really teach you how to make complicated stuff?

I'm doing the course now. It is very good. I thought the basics would bore me but it turns out I had a couple of gaps in my knowledge even about envelopes and filters. The best part of it (the whole part?) is the tests. It has you trying to copy sounds on the Syntorial synth and it rates them for accuracy. Starts off very simple but quickly gets hard as more parameters are involved. The aim is to get you listening to sounds very closely and identifying the characteristics, so that you'll become proficient at translating the sounds you hear in your head (and on records) to your synth of choice. I think it does a great job.

I don't think it gets too advanced - this is basic subtractive synthesis, but it is very thorough. I have a feeling they will add more lesson packs in the future. They've already released a free Z3TA+2 addon.

So all in all I'm very impressed so far and have been enjoying it. However, I will say this - it is overpriced. I think $75-80 would have been fairer and tues probably get a hell of a lot more sales.

I only went through demo but I'm very impressed

I'm a student right now, so I think I will probably give this a whirl once I submit my proof of id.
 
I agree with the tests being hard, and it really gets you thinking about what sounds like what.  I can "usually" get the right sound, but it often takes a lot of trial and error.  Hopefully by the time I'm done my ear will be a bit sharper.  And I will immeditatly know how much pulse width modulation etc is occuring.

I'm hoping it's going to give me enough proficiency and self confidence to really master some of the synths I use all the time, like Element, Massive, Monark and the like. It doesn't cover everything that's on those synths, but I think it will give me the skills to approach my experimentation in a more intelligent, controlled manner - instead of twiddling without really understanding what's going on. It's like I've learned the basics before, but never fully made the leap from theoretical to practical. Syntorial seems like the ideal way to bridge that gap. 
 
Of course what it's never going to do is teach me how to use highly complicated and unique synths like Prism, which no matter how many times I read the manual I'll never understand until I have a degree in digital audio (and probably physics & math). Although given that I can't find one single complete tutorial  for that synth except the short overview video that Native Instruments put out, it seems that I'm not alone on that score 
 
Another very helpful course is Sound on Sound's "Synth Secrets" series of articles. It's absolutely huge and goes into the nitty gritty of synthesis (including the math & other advanced synth topics) in great detail. I got about 25 articles into the series before stopping for some reason, and I've just reminded myself that I really need to start reading those again. You can find the first part here: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may99/articles/synthsec.htm and just Google for part 2, part 3 etc....