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Hello Everyone,

I think I need to get a good VI Synth for doing moving, complex ambient pads (mostly). I have spent the day researching on the web and looking at YouTube videos, and I think if I were to get one, I would get Absynth 5... (Zebra was not far behind, but the control ability, and scope of creativity of Absynth seemed terrific).

I do not own any VI synths, apart from what shipped with DP. Is the NI stuff stable and good to work with? I am on DP 9.02, soon to go to 9.5 once I get my converter upgraded in a week, or so.

Any thoughts or suggestions are welcome.

Thank you, I appreciate the help.

~Shea

You're likely to get a lot of opinions here (but that's what you asked for!). Personally, I find Absynth rather dated sounding, and the effects are lackluster. I'm going to go out on a limb and predict the most votes for Omnisphere. The biggest cons are that is is relatively expensive, both on the wallet and the CPU. My personal recommendation is Alchemy. To my ears it has the freshest, most original sounds that pretty much blow everything else out of the water. The price is practically free ($29.99). The biggest con, and it's a big one, is that it is only playable through Apple's MainStage 3. There are many workarounds for piping the audio and controllers through other applications (they have been discussed in detail in these forums). Personally, I feel it is worth the effort.

Absynth is a great synth,a classic in the softsynth world but as Cuttime mentioned it's been around as is for quite awhile,many users are begging for it to be updated.

Unless you're using Logic as your DAW imo as great as Alchemy is,it's not worth the the hoops you'd need to jump through to work with it presently.

Myself I have turned into a U-he fanatic,Zebra2 w/the Dark Zebra add on is an amazing Synth bundle. Dark Z used U-he's Diva filters it just sounds gorgeous.
Presently Z is about to be updated to Zebra 2.8 and anyone who purchases Zebra2 with Dark Zebra will get Zebra 3 when it's released for free.
Zebra 2 w/DZ sounds amazing and it is easy on the computer resources.

Diva as well is one of the best soft synths out there,a ,it;s my personal favorite, it sounds so damn analog!

They are just about to release Repro 5 (Prophet poly)bundled with Repro 1(mono),pre-release price for both is $99,it sounds truly amazing!
It sounds like an ANALOG SYNTH not a V-synth,it might be my new favorite,lol.



The U-he team has a strong presence on their KVR hosted forum,Urs(founder lead developer) and Howard(programmer) are always answering questions,totally helpful, they and the U-he team listen and respond to their user base.
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=31

Good luck!

Thank you for the info. However, I probably won't deal with the Alchemy route, between the aforementioned hassles and not having Logic.

Omnisphere is maybe more than I needed and is double the price of the others... However, I need to check it out a bit better to see if it is worth it. I mostly want it for ambient, lush moving soundscapes that I can create and manipulate/design. It looked more like it was more limited in it's approach? I am looking for more of an organic sound palette (like what the access virus, or some modular analogue synths seems to be able to do). Can Omnisphere do these?

Thank you again for the info.

~Shea

Given the Access Virus baseline, I'd say maybe Omnisphere, even though there is a patch library (which I own) for Alchemy that is based off of Virus samples.

I probably use Alchemy the most, and still use the final update to the AU/VST vs. exporting MIDI to Logic to re-render with what MIGHT be an improved sound engine. Maybe I'll try that soon, but I seem to recall having already done it earlier and finding the results don't match due to envelopes.

Absynth layers well with itself, which is saying a lot. That is, I don't get the usual frequency build-ups when using the same synth on more than two or three tracks on the same composition.

On the other hand, there's always AAS Ultra Analog, which I find has the warmest sound of them all and perhaps the broadest palette. It's especially good for blip and glitch sounds, but perhaps not as convincing as Absynth for SUPER_long evolving textures.

I owned the DSI Evolver keyboard for a few years, but eventually tired of its overly dirty sound, in spite of loving its programmability and evolving pads (mono synths can be great at this).

I found that the Evolver dominated no matter what, so had to pull back from it and also avoid using it on more than one track per composition.

Not owning anything other than the two re-Pro products from u-he, I can't comment on Zebra etc., but PERSONALLY have never liked any of the audio demos, which is why I haven't bought them.

You might be surprised at how well a polymoog works for evolving textures. The new PolyM emulation from Xils-Lab is my favourite new soft synth product of the past two years. Mind-blowingly good. Also great for pads in general, as it sounds so organic, warm, and no issue with frequency stacking or dominating a frequency spectrum.

As versatility is probably your main concern, probably Alchemy is the best bet, but so many caveats due to the current situation. I bought ALL of the libraries before the company sold it to Apple.

Although I own Omnisphere, I rarely use it, and almost always phase it out in favour of something more current that sits in the mix better. I also wasted money on a couple of add-ons that really do nothing to extend its breadth. I suppose it's a good catch-all starter for someone who has nothing, but my feeling is that it has too much of that baked-in sound going on throughout. Pricey too!

Longtime Absynth user, but I'd probably be the first one to say look elsewhere. It's an absolute DOG to program. The presets sound amazing, and if you can find one close to what you want and tweak it, great, but have fun trying to create your "own sounds" on it. Thankfully, certain aspects of it are really simple to tweak, but others (like the modulation section) is just plain ridiculous. Also, by default the presets have an absolute motherload of controllers setup, and numerous times I've bumped a slider on my MIDI controller only to find the sound has changed significantly, and I have no idea how to get it back.

I've been told that Apple Sculpture is brilliant and similar, but once again... Mainstage/Logic only, and I HATE having to Soundflower patches into DP.

Kontakt and Massive are absolutely phenomenal VIs that I use daily, but I stay away from Absynth unless I just want to find a nice pad preset, or have A LOT of time on my hands. I guess I use it more than Reaktor, but that's not saying much.

Need to check out Zebra too, I haven't delved into U-he's catalog yet.

My 2¢: Omnisphere is my go-to synth for ambient music. It now comes with 10,000 patches (!), so there’s almost always something close to what I’m looking for and the GUI makes it easy to tweak. If you need more, there are a number of excellent third party patch libraries out there (PlugIn Guru, The Unfinished, Ilio...). Absynth is solid and—though it may be starting to grow whiskers—it’s still useful. There are a few third party patch libraries out there for Absynth, as well, that might freshen-up the sound for you. I don’t have any of the U-he synths, but hear good things. Good luck.


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Thank you Everyone for the responses. This is all great info.

Much appreciated.

~Shea

If looking for something interesting, unique and on sale, you might want to take a look at Izotope Iris 2. $49 through many resellers including Sweetwater:

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Iris2

Although described as sample based, it really is a sample manipulator and you can do it with anything including the 11g of included samples and patches. The included samples are merely starting points—you never use them straight. It has been described as a sample based re-synthesizer, a description as accurate as any I can come up with.

There's a 30 day demo:

https://www.izotope.com/en/products/cre ... /iris.html

The original version of Iris had add-on libraries you could purchase. These are now included in v.2.

Rick Cornish wrote:My 2¢: Omnisphere is my go-to synth for ambient music. It now comes with 10,000 patches (!), so there’s almost always something close to what I’m looking for and the GUI makes it easy to tweak.

+1

If I only had 1 synth, especially for ambient styles, it could only be Omnisphere. It's just so fast and easy to get good results. It has many of the sounds ported over from Atmosphere, one of the great early ambient pad/texture/dreamscape synths.

It is expensive, but otoh you would have all your bases covered.. it's a "desert island" synth.

Alchemy was my first choice, by far.
I did love the sound and feel of that VI, but Apple ruined that, right after I paid for many libraries...
Until now, playing Alchemy in DP thru Soundflower has been a nightmare to me.
Maybe I should spend some more time trying to sort it out.

IMHO, Absynth is still a good choice for evolving pads.
Some third party libraries add fun and depth to it.

Iris2 has its own personality, which may fit your taste, or not.
It's more about sample treatment. Unusual treatments.
But beware of the CPU load, its heavy.

Falcon is another option. Different, but as deep as Absynth, IMHO.
Comes with many non-sample patches.
BTW, sample based libraries for Falcon shows up in a wide choice. Not as wide as Kontakt, though.

I forgot about Iris, which I own! I need to check into it more, as I have gotten interested in balancing the spectral content of my music to be more "natural" (like the jungle), based on research by Bernie Krause and others, and Iris is oriented towards that sort of thing.

I own several excellent add-ons for Absynth and DO use (and tweak) presets, unlike on most synths where I tend to program my own. The ones from Camel Audio were especially good, but likely are no longer available due to the sale to Apple. In particular, those by BioLabs, who also works for other vendors.

Personally, I consider the sounds in Omnisphere FAR more dated than those in Absynth, but especially when considering available add-on packs for both.

I’ll divert from the majority opinion here and say
get Absynth 5. I love it!

If you just browse presets, sure you’ll come
across many patches that sound similar. Thats
true of any synthesizer (and Absynth is a true
additive synth). But once you decide to take
the baby shoes off and learn Absynth, you’ll be
astounded at how drastically you can alter
sounds, and at how many parameters there are
to change.

Plus the ability to draw your own
envelopes (for everything), waveform drawing,
and the hundreds of different waveforms
available...I’ve had Absynth since version 2,
and I still havent explored everything in it.

It is definitely not a “dated” synth by any means.
If anything, it was and still is ahead of its time.
Is there any other synth that has a preset like
“Vulcan Berimbau” or “Vampires in the Pipes”?
Not that I know of.

sayatnova wrote:I think I need to get a good VI Synth for doing moving, complex ambient pads (mostly). I have spent the day researching on the web and looking at YouTube videos, and I think if I were to get one, I would get Absynth 5... (Zebra was not far behind, but the control ability, and scope of creativity of Absynth seemed terrific).

I do not own any VI synths, apart from what shipped with DP. Is the NI stuff stable and good to work with? I am on DP 9.02, soon to go to 9.5 once I get my converter upgraded in a week, or so.

Any thoughts or suggestions are welcome.

Thank you, I appreciate the help.

~Shea

For ambient pads there are many options, here are a few I've looked at:

For me, Omnisphere is at the top and has quite a lot of third party patch support. It's fairly expensive, but it's a high quality instrument.

I have Absynth as part of the Komplete package, and is also quality. Going further into the Komplete package, there are many option including Kontakt libraries that do ambient very nicely.

Izotope has Iris, and while Izotope is probably better known for their mixing and mastering tools, the VI is definitely worth reviewing.

IK Multimedia also has some options, such as SampleTank and Syntronik.

U-He has several great synths, as does Arturia (the latter has excellent emulations of classic hardware synths).

Moving, complex patches?

Omnisphere. Expensive, and worth it.

I use Absynth as well, but if I'm creating ambient textures, I try Omnipshere first.