Since theres been a lot of discussion here about filters, what are some folks here’s thoughts regarding analog synths with the best sounding (no aliasing at least, and preferably with curtis etc snap to them) either freeware or payware?

I just don’t have time to audition hundreds of plugins to find out that the osc alias or that the filters are too polite

Funkster

http://www.kvraudio.com/get.php efx > filter section

I know about KVR and I know their reviews dont go into much detail and I know there are thousands of synths and filters on KVR.

I’m asking WHICH OF THOSE, users on this board, think have an authentic natural analog synth sound with nasty/curtis filter distortion (but not relying on bit crushing etc)

Funkster

-Frantic Filter Frantic is an analogue sounding dedicated filter and is modelled after such famous analogue legends as the Korg MS20, Oberheim Xpander, OSC Oscar, Sherman Filterbank and the classic Moog Filter.

-overloud VKFX - Vintage Keyboard FX Suite >> http://www.overloud.com/vkfx.php?idarg=84

-also u can try fabfilter plugins u can also use plugins like Korg MS-20, Arturias for efx insertion

....antares filter ...Ohm Force........

-Audio Damage has introduced 907A Fixed Filter Bank plug-in for VST and AudioUnits hosts. This plug-in is a recreation of the Moog Modular Synthesizer’s 907A module, and it creates a variety of tonal effects by passing its input signal through eight band-pass filters, one low-pass filter and one high-pass filter.

right i’m familiar with ohm force antares etc…

Myself as a keyboard player I’m more interested in soft synths..I’ll check out overloud thanks.

People rave about synth1, oatmeal, etc but I never was impressed by the filters… Most of the prophet emulations have severe aliasing that i’ve tried.

So if anyone knows good ARP/Prophet/OB8 etc soft synths feel free to add to the list

Funkster

so do u like Frantic Filter ? ))

I haven’t tried it—but if it’s not a synth it wouldn’t be that much use to me.....

I can try it but in terms of phat filters I’m looking for them to be attached to oscillators....more than using them as “production” (drums/bass/guitar)

EG I want to use them for pads, leads, and bass (synth/midi).

What I’m looking for is mono or polysynths with great sounding osci and filter sections…

I have a pretty good JX8P emulator but I havent found any really good prophet or Oberheims so curious

Funkster

You get what you pay for.  The Arturia products are somewhat processor intensive, but very good.

It;s pointless to rely on other people’s opinions of what “sounds good”. If you read through many of the posts over at KVR, you’ll come across complaints about every single virtual synth or hardware synth there is. As far as I have been able to determine, here’s the consensus of views at KVR forum:

Dave Smith Instruments stink.

Omnisphere stinks, Trilian isn’t realistic enough, Eric Persing stinks, Spectrasonics stinks.

The only good VA synth in the world is the Access Virus.

All virtual analog synths are lame.Only old vintage hardware analog synths are acceptable.

You can’t get a goood bass sound - out of anything.

The only good samples are free ones you can download.

Anyone who does sound design for a living is a “dev” (developer), and therefore prejudiced and their opinion doesn’t count.

The only DAW’s worth using are Reaper, Reason, and Ableton Live. But you should have a copy of Sonar because everyone else does.

Macs are for loser fanboys.

Digital Performer - what’s that?

No one has ever heard of BFD or uses it.

And so on and so forth…

Here’s the best way to try out any VA synth - demo downloads. Native Instruments offers free, limited demos of all their synths, as does Arturia and fxPansion. Many other companies offer free time-limited demos as well. I recommend you try these out for yourself.

I have demoed just about every synth out there which has a demo, some I have purchased following the demo, others I tossed after a few minutes of use. Personally I have an extremely low opinion of some synths which people at KVR and Gearslutz rave about. So rather than give you a list of what’s good, I recommend using your own ears and try them out.

Yes I agree DCP but trying them all out at this time would require trying out hundreds and I have finite time.

This is the old farts club. We’re mostly dinos here.

This is diffent than KVR.  People here are still using SR-16s!

They know what it old school should sound like.

I used to own a real prophet—I know what it sounds like.

To get to this club you have to have bank and that makes it the old farts club.

So I think here, one MIGHT be able to get a little more relevant opinion about what really sounds classic vs the typical KVR fanboi posting.

KVR doesnt even have a sort by ratings let alone ratings IIRC...it’s odd but that’s the way it is.

KVR folks listen to MP3 and think aliasing is dope. The Dino’s listen to FLAC and hate aliasing.

Everyone raves about Synth1—it has a great GUI—and no aliasing— but it’s no Prophet, even if it has the identical layout. It doesn’t lay the smack down but it pads prettily.

So, I’m interested in the Dino (old skool) opinion when I post something like that here.

Just to put some perspective on it, since some people say I’m a whiner or need an easy button—

1) If it took 10 mins to locate, download and evaluate a VA (pretty quick actually)

2) There were 100 VA to evaluate (a conservative number)

3) That would be 1000 minutes or 16.7 hours

Really it would be more like 20 mins and become 32 hours hence my questions

I just think esp as old farts go there is really 3 things the old farts care about: Prophets, Oberheims and ARPs.

So if the goto Prophet is X, the go to Ober is Y and the go to ARP is Z I’d love to hear what those are for the current vstis.

Funkster

Funkster - 05 September 2010 04:00 PM

Yes I agree DCP but trying them all out at this time would require trying out hundreds and I have finite time.

This is the old farts club. We’re mostly dinos here.

This is diffent than KVR.  People here are still using SR-16s!

They know what it old school should sound like.

I used to own a real prophet—I know what it sounds like.

To get to this club you have to have bank and that makes it the old farts club.

So I think here, one MIGHT be able to get a little more relevant opinion about what really sounds classic vs the typical KVR fanboi posting.

KVR doesnt even have a sort by ratings let alone ratings IIRC...it’s odd but that’s the way it is.

KVR folks listen to MP3 and think aliasing is dope. The Dino’s listen to FLAC and hate aliasing.

Everyone raves about Synth1—it has a great GUI—and no aliasing— but it’s no Prophet, even if it has the identical layout. It doesn’t lay the smack down but it pads prettily.

So, I’m interested in the Dino (old skool) opinion when I post something like that here.



Funkster

Okay, here goes - Synth 1 is lame to my ears. It sounds like badly sampled analog waveforms - like old Korg Triton samples. The filters may not “alias” but they whistle unpleasantly when you turn them into self-oscillation.

I also couldn’t get into Sylenth. But you’ll find people at KVR raving about it and saying it sounds way better than Omnisphere.
Check the prices between the two - that will tell you why they say that.

If you want the best freeware synths, go buy a copy of Computer Music. Every month they include a DVD with a huge number of free synths, as well as free sounds for softsamplers like Kontakt.

Kontakt Player 4 is free from Native Instruments, and comes with some free content. Can’t go wrong with that. Head over to NI’s site and get it.

Arturia’s Jupiter 8V demo can’t save or load new presets - but it never times out. Same with NI’s Absynth - it times out after 30 minutes, but all you do is remove it and then relaunch it again.
FM8, same thing.

G-force Minimonsta (minimoog) can be downloaded in demo form and the demo starts to degrade after several continuous hours of use. What that means is that if you ue it for several minutes, the minutes are deducted from the “clock” - but it takes literally months to run out this clock. As soon as I find a Minimonsta sound I like, I track it as audio. I’ve had the demo for a year.

If you want an opinion on the best sounding virtual analog synth available in “payware” form, then I recommend Steinberg’s Halion Sonic. I was part of the programming team for that. I’d buy it just for the synth section, it’s to my ears the best VA VSTi out there, even better than fxPansion’s D-CAM synth squad. But see, I’m a “dev” (developer) and when I posted this at KVR I got flamed for being someone whose opinion doesn’t count.

Must-have payware - Stylus RMX, Trilian, Omnisphere, BFD2. I don’t know anyone who does music production for a living who doesn’t have those.

Must have hardware - (and this really is my list) - Motif XF, Dave Smith Prophet 08, Moog Minimoog Voyager. A Korg CX3 if you want a hardware organ clone. People rave about the Nords but I really don’t like any of their stuff...and I’d catch a lot of flak for that. Regarding the “other” classic reissue, the new Rhodes, I’d say you’re better off saving money and buying a used old one and refurbishing it.

So you wouldn’t go for the Poly Evolver over the P08? It seems that for a few hundred more the evolver would be a superset of the 08...they had an 08 at GC but it was never hooked up so I never got a chance to try it.

What ever happened to reality? I dont remember how the filters sounded on that but was gonna email DSI and see if they had any plans in that area ....

Well BFD2 I think is cool but somewhat expensive ... I’ve talked to angus and skot a few times..back in the dr-008 days. But that gets me into the low latency I/F thing since I’d like to play BFD in real time (from pads)....

Even a little bit of latency causes flamming between the pads and the sound...I asked AFH about that but he didnt have anything particular to recommend for low latency interface..

EG, I dont get paid to produce music so if I spent $300 for BFD it’s because I want to beat it out on my pads regardless of tracking :)

But I appreciate the list and will check out omni and arturia and DCAM...I assume those have p5/ob(x)/ARP etc in them?

I agree that the nord sounds flat; I’m pretty impressed with Motif Leslie emulation compared to any of the VST I’ve tried.. (which is one reason I’d like to route audio through the Motif digitally).

Funkster

Funkster - 05 September 2010 04:21 PM

So you wouldn’t go for the Poly Evolver over the P08? It seems that for a few hundred more the evolver would be a superset of the 08...they had an 08 at GC but it was never hooked up so I never got a chance to try it.

What ever happened to reality? I dont remember how the filters sounded on that but was gonna email DSI and see if they had any plans in that area ....

Well BFD2 I think is cool but somewhat expensive ... I’ve talked to angus and skot a few times..back in the dr-008 days. But that gets me into the low latency I/F thing since I’d like to play BFD in real time (from pads)....

Even a little bit of latency causes flamming between the pads and the sound...I asked AFH about that but he didnt have anything particular to recommend for low latency interface..

EG, I dont get paid to produce music so if I spent $300 for BFD it’s because I want to beat it out on my pads regardless of tracking :)

But I appreciate the list and will check out omni and arturia and DCAM...I assume those have p5/ob(x)/ARP etc in them?

I agree that the nord sounds flat; I’m pretty impressed with Motif Leslie emulation compared to any of the VST I’ve tried.. (which is one reason I’d like to route audio through the Motif digitally).


Funkster

The PolyEvolver is 4-voice, the P08 is eight-voice. I’d have an Evolver too but made the choice for the P08. I had a Prophet T8 and Prophet 600, and a Pro_one, I think the P08 really does sound like the old ones, and so does Dave Smith himself. However, that has been disputed by the superior intellects over at KVR, who apparently know more about building synths than Dave does, even though they don’t actually do it for a living.

You mean Seer Systems Reality? That went the way of the dodo years ago. I don’t what happened to the code writers for that product b ut I assume they moved on to other endeavors.

I run all my VI’s on a separate PC, triggered from my Mac/DP setup via MIDI, so I don’t have any latency issues.

Arturia;s synths include a Prophet V and ARP 2600. The only software Oberheim emulation is Sonic Projects OP-X, which is an emulation of the OBX. It’s a little thin-sounding but has good filters. D-CAM Synth Squad doesn’t emulate any particular vintage synth.

Thanks for the info :)

OK Well if you run VI on “seperate” PC what sort of latency are you getting? Are you using RME or MOTU? PCI or FW/USB?

64 samps = ~1.5 ms @ 44.1

Most cards I see these days are 128 or higher...some go down to 32 but never seen it work in practice..

Funkster

Mac has a MOTU MIDI Timepiece AV. The PC has its own M-Audio Delta 1010 with a MIDI IN and I ran a MIDI OUT from the MIDI Timepiece to the M-Audio. Analog audio outputs from the M-Audio are routed into my hardware mixer and bussed back into an 828 MK2 and thus into Digital performer.

I don’t have any latency “issues”. Whether I have actual latency is not the question, maybe there is some, but not enough for it to bother me. I can play “around” it.

So you play VSTi out of the 1010? PCI?
I have a 410* PCI but one of the spdif connectors broke off and maudio cant tell me the part # to order.

Anyway the maudio can get down to 32 (PCI) but I havent seen any modern ones (esp FW or USB) that do....

Well latency is really a biggest issue with drums since you haer the flamming of the stick hitting rubber and then the sound...whereas on keyboards etc....2-3 ms isnt a really big deal.

It’s also a big deal on guitar, i can NOT monitor wet with latency it drives me crazy since it flams the pick attack.

Yamaha has a drum brain that you can load bfd samples into but I havent tried it

Funkster

* See it’s the dino club :) We all have all our old hardware and keep using it… Cept I sold my P5 cuz it wasn’t velo sensitive but I’m glad I did now that the P8 is out...thanks for the tip re evolver 4 voice.