Favorite or recommended synth VIs

[Jim]

I'd thought I'd report on the VIs I bought this year and my thoughts after using them for a while.

I have way more synths than I need, many of which are great, but two stand out, and two others are honorable mentions.

My favorites by far are Thorn and Hive 2. They seem the most versatile and best at cutting through mixes. Both can mix subtractive synthesis with wavetable and a smattering of FM.

My honorable mentions are Chromaphone and String Studio by AAS, primarily because of their different approaches to synthesis. Chromaphone is designed for melodic and atonal percussion. String Studio, as its name implies is based on plucked, hammered, and bowed string sounds.

I have most of the Cherry synths, and the one that stands out for uniqueness is Harmonium. Several others are great at vintage synth sounds, and the price on all their line is competitive with other companies doing vintage synth recreations. A few of them are pretty heavy on the CPU. Speaking of that, I want to love Kilohearts Phase Plant for being so versatile and unlimited, but it can be so heavy on the CPU that even one instance of it and nothing else can cause CPU clipping in DP. Only Cherry's Sines also does that on my computers, rendering both less used than others.

Most disappointing synth purchase is the Twin 3 from FabFilter, as a poor value, IMO. I'm also displeased with Lion (Unfiltered Audio - for its crappy preset scheme), and the two UAD synths, Opal and PolyMAX. I thought Opal was nice at first, but Hive 2 blew it out. Two days ago, I found a site with over a thousand free presets for Hive 2, many of them very useful.

Effects: I don't regret getting FabFilter's Pro-Q 3 EQ. I picked up the UA "essential" bundle recently, and had it not been value priced, would have put it in the regret category. I've still not acquired a compressor I prefer to PSP Vintage Warmer, which I've had for at least a decade.

What about you all? Any acquisitions you either love or regret?

[cuttime]

I love Pigments. Very versatile with a great granular engine and easy to program. A close second is Vital. I thought Vital was very clinical and digital until I heard some patches from Mintona Audio (quite remarkable programming). I always liked Cypher 2, but I fear it may never be updated. Surge gets honorable mention, as it is sort of the Swiss Army knife of synths and you can't beat the price. It's always being updated.

[HCMarkus]

Omnisphere. "Still the one," rarely lets me down in a session.

[Jim]

Surge

Jeez, I had thought I'd done good research, but this one was foreign to me. It's remarkable, deep, feature-packed, especially given it's open source (free). 2800 stock patches!

It's a good thing work is slow at year end. I'm going to need a couple of days to poke around this thing. Thanks for the tip!

[Rick Cornish]

Omnisphere. "Still the one," rarely lets me down in a session.

+1 on this: Omnisphere is the most evolved and versatile VI out there. And if the 10,000 or so patches it comes with aren’t enough for you, there are **brilliant** 3rd party sound sets available from Plugin Guru (John “Skippy”Lemkuhl) and The Unfinished (Matt Bowdler), and more.

Beyond that, I’ve been very impressed with Falcon 2 from UVI (very deep, lots of content, and excellent built-in effects). Also, Kontakt is a gateway to gobs of 3rd party content. (Just getting some version of Native Instruments' Komplete probably makes sense.)

(And I own and use all of these.)

[Jim]

Plugin Guru (John “Skippy”Lemkuhl)

His Unify plug-in is remarkable, and a bargain at $79 (even though it's never on sale).

[HCMarkus]

Also, Kontakt is a gateway to gobs of 3rd party content. (Just getting some version of Native Instruments' Komplete probably makes sense.)

But of course!

[stubbsonic]

+1 for Vital, Surge,, Kontakt, Falcon 2, Chromaphone 2.

Reaktor is the front-end for so many fun "ensembles".

I LOVE LOVE LOVE Respiro and Pianoteq.

Sculpture has heft & character.

Honorable mentions: Klevgrand's Skaka, Ripchord (chord player) and BreakTweaker (drum sequencer thingy)

[Michael Canavan]

Of course the obvious ones in Kontakt, Falcon, all U-He etc. Anyway here are recent purchases I think are great!

I picked up Generate currently $49 which is a very very massive sounding cinematic synth, fun to program.
https://www.eventideaudio.com/plug-ins/generate/

Moog Music put out an absolutely fantastic bass and everything else synth, with Mariana. Also currently $49.
https://www.moogmusic.com/news/introducing-mariana

There's still a $49 package from Universal Audio, cool little analog synth Polymax in the bundle. Also $49!
https://www.pluginboutique.com/products ... ge-nosto-3

Pretty crazy amount of power for $147, two analog VI's and one super modern synth. I also picked up Airs new FM synth OPx-4 for $50 but that sale is gone.

A sleeper synth not Apple Silicon native, but just a cool take on Oberheims is OB-Xtreme.
https://www.alyjameslab.com/obxtreme.html
One thing I love about this is he's not worried about matching the exact sound of the Oberheims, and more about the recorded experience, so this thing has all kinds of built in panning and compresssion/saturation features that the Oberheims don't have outside the recording studio. Another huge sounding synth for roughly $60.

[daniel.sneed]

I get much use of Falcon, Kontakt and Pianoteq.

I miss my deep and reliable Alchemy (all of my grrrrr to Apple, for ditching it to a Logic only v.i.)

Slightly off-topic, but I get more and more use of my Waldorf Iridium (desktop), which is a stunning hardware virtual instrument.
This box does waveform, wavetable, sampling, granular, resonator and FM.
Many knobs, a tactile screen, on-board analysers, great filters and great FX.
What else? Huge sounds!
https://waldorfmusic.com/iridium-en

[monkey man]

Incredibly, I've yet to use a VI (long story) but started listening to demos and building my plugin collection some years ago.

Based on everything I've heard my top ones would be Omnisphere, Falcon and SynthMaster.

[mikehalloran]

I get much use of Falcon, Kontakt and Pianoteq.

I miss my deep and reliable Alchemy (all of my grrrrr to Apple, for ditching it to a Logic only v.i.)
…

Thanks to some California laws and Marketing being overruled by Tim Cook (who understands that inexpensive apps sell Macs), the Apple Pro Apps Bundle for Education is available to non-edu customers. Apple’s dirty little secret: All have telephone support.

https://www.apple.com/us-edu/shop/prod ... -education

Logic
Final Cut Pro
Main Stage
Compressor
Motion

The price is the same as Logic by itself and $100 less than Final Cut Pro X on its own. You get 5 install/registration codes via email on purchase and those you don’t need can be given away to others.

Never checked out Alchemy but it’s nice to know that I can. A number of my projects started elsewhere in Logic or GarageBand. That $200 has paid for itself over and over again.

[cuttime]

...and don't forget that the full version of Alchemy exists in MainStage. Also, I'd skip SynthMaster - probably my least used synth.

[mikehalloran]

...and don't forget that the full version of Alchemy exists in MainStage. Also, I'd skip SynthMaster - probably my least used synth.

I forgot about that — thanks for the reminder! If not purchased with the Pro Apps for Education Bundle, it's $29.99 on its own through the App Store.

When I purchased Pro Apps… I already had a Main Stage license so I emailed the new license code to my daughter in Texas.

There's a special field for these codes when you're logged in. Enter the emailed codes individually and they will automatically register and begin downloading — pretty slick. Additional VI libraries are downloaded from within the app but those are free. You will be notified of updates as Apple releases them.

[James Steele]

Anybody try Dune 3 here? I got it a while back on a sale and seems pretty cool.

https://www.synapse-audio.com/dune3.html