Best softsynth ever, hits our shore's!

[mhschmieder]

Synth1 is an emulation of the Nord Lead 2, which in turn is more or less an emulation of the Prophet V (as is also the Yamaha PLG150-AN analog modeling plug-in board, but less so the earlier standalone AN1x synth). As it is Windows-only, I haven't checked in detail whether it also models the moog filters alongside the Sequential Circuits filters, as both Clavia and Yamaha at least partially attempt to do in their emulations.

My originals project (on hiatus due to two babies/infants), used Synth1 as the main synth on the most recent album. As I'm on the Mac and my songwriting partner is on Windows, it was a challenge porting the project files back and forth between our computers, as there was little overlap in sound sources.

Another well-done freebie is Crystal, which is available for Mac and Windows. We used that on the album as well, but I haven't touched it in ages as I have come to distrust free and cheap plug-ins due to how many errors they get during Audio Units validation phase. As I am extremely dependent on the Waldorf soft synths, I am really hoping they work once I go to DP6 and an Intel Mac, as they consistently just barely pass validation in DP5 on the PPC Mac.

[monkey man]

David, thank you for taking the time to share that review man; I appreciate it very much.

[DMac]

...hehe, and thanks to you all for what feels like a much more normal sounding board discussion here : P Not that I miss it at all, but every now and then it's nice to hear a wee bit of argument creep in.

And the more I read here (I don't spend all that much time), I am really amazed at how many of you actually have professional credits and are earning $$$s (err, euros perhaps) doing actual scoring for commercials, films, etc., sound design, etc., etc., etc.!

Sigh, soundmaster may be at one end of the 'age' spectrum, I'm sadly at the other. At the ripe old age of 52, I've not a lot of time to get the skills and rep to reach the promised land

[Dave Bourke]

For the professional musician and composer, dance is just a small town on the vast continent of music. A continent that didn't just suddenly spring into being in the 21st century.

To believe that dance is the only music worth making is no different from believing that English is the only language worth speaking, chocolate the only food worth eating, or Mickey Spillane the only writer worth reading.

From week to week, professional composers are called upon to write choral, jazz, rock, folk, mediaeval, orchestral, ethnic, metal, sci-fi soundscape – and, yes, even dance.

An obscure novelist whose name I can't remember right now was once asked why he wrote. He answered, "Because I love the company of words." And this is so for the composer, too – he loves the company of notes. The true musician plays the instrument, not the genre.

While it may indeed be arguable (and I for one would argue against it) to maintain that Sylenth 1 is the only synth to consider when making dance music, it obviously wouldn't even merit consideration if I was asked to produce an orchestral or an ethnic piece.

Unlike certain other boards which I will not name, we're not all dance clones here. Many members are professional composers and musicians earning their living from music, all kinds of music, produced in Digital Performer.

So while I genuinely applaud soundmaster's enthusiasm for the dance music tools he so passionately espouses, I would like to point out that there is a vast and wild world of music outside those pumped-silly clubs, and it is a world in which those particular tools are not terribly useful.

As I've said before in this thread, horses for courses.

Kind regards.

[soundmaster]

very true Dave, and i appreciate everything you just said.Whatever ones genre of music is, i have no problem with it whatsoever. Your passion and what tunes you like are entirely personal. just go hard i say.

someone here asked me what i use to make phat sounding tracks. All outboard and hardware is the answer, until i get my knew quad core iMac running DP6.
DP6 has a few problems with bugs at the moment, so i'm quite happy to sit back and wait for the quad core iMac's to come out, which should pretty much co-incide with a 95% bug free DP by then.
For anyone who's interested. The new generation of intel chips are going to have a completely new architecture which will be as follows:
-Memory controller on chip (ala AMD, ie-no more slow clumsy frontside bus)
-L3 cache (for the first time in an intel chip)
-SSE 5 instruction set
-Native quad (not just two dual cores tacked together)
-hypertransport and interconnect processing pipelines

[tobysan]

My overall evaluation is, Sylenth is very good, with a nice, transparent sound to it and lots of filter and modulation options. It has an analog-ish character to it but if you want more realistic analog emulations, I'd go with Arturia or the "real" analogs like the Moog or Dave Smith products. It is all subtractive synthesis-based, which leaves it behind more flexible synths such as Zebra 2, Absynth, and Chameleon which employ multiple synthesis types including granular and wavetable. The effects are bog-standard and none of them are multi-fx.

If you're looking for something that could really "blow you away", I'd say hold off until Spectrasonics gets Omnisphere released. Sylenth is a good product, but certainly not the "best synth ever" that I've come across.

Thank you David, great review, very helpfull for me, i am looking for a Virus style softsynth, did you tried Predator and Nexus? it is possible for you to give me a brief comparison of the 3 of them ?
really apreciated that.

thank you.

[David Polich]

My overall evaluation is, Sylenth is very good, with a nice, transparent sound to it and lots of filter and modulation options. It has an analog-ish character to it but if you want more realistic analog emulations, I'd go with Arturia or the "real" analogs like the Moog or Dave Smith products. It is all subtractive synthesis-based, which leaves it behind more flexible synths such as Zebra 2, Absynth, and Chameleon which employ multiple synthesis types including granular and wavetable. The effects are bog-standard and none of them are multi-fx.

If you're looking for something that could really "blow you away", I'd say hold off until Spectrasonics gets Omnisphere released. Sylenth is a good product, but certainly not the "best synth ever" that I've come across.

Thank you David, great review, very helpfull for me, i am looking for a Virus style softsynth, did you tried Predator and Nexus? it is possible for you to give me a brief comparison of the 3 of them ?
really apreciated that.

thank you.

Haven't tried any of the Rob Papen synths, or Nexus. For a "Virus" type sound you may want to check out Native Instruments "Massive" or a number of synths inside Native Instruments "Reaktor 5".

[tobysan]

great, I will... Thanks

[psycho43142]

Rob Papen's Albino has that Virus type of sound, or you could add a TC Powercore card and run a real Virus on it.

[Armageddon]

I have both Albino and Predator, and while they're both geared towards dance/electronica, they address all kinds of synthesis. They also killed my need to snag MX4 or Absynth. Predator, especially, has an incredibly fat sound for a soft synth, and if you have to pick one, go with Predator. Most of my soft synths are vintage reproductions, like the M-1, FM8, WAVESTATION, Minimonsta and ImpOSCar, and I'll eventually dip my toe into some Arturia stuff, probably Analog Factory, or just snagging the Prophet, Yamaha and Roland emulations. My dream job, at this point, would be to do a completely retro 80's-style synth score for a feature.

[mhschmieder]

I sold my three Rob Papen soft synths early this year, but only because I felt they didn't work into my musical styles enough to justify keeping them. I don't like the presets due to the electronica bias, and felt I didn't have time to master yet one (or three) more unique synths. These are deep synths and really demand custom programming IMO. And all three sound very different from each other.

One thing I will say is that the one that is based on LinPlug definitely didn't sound as full and detailed or three-dimensional as the two based on Papen's own engine. I forget whether Blue or Albino is the one -- probably the latter, as Blue is the FM synth. I kept wondering if Papen would redo it on his engine, now that he has full control over distribution of that one along with his newer plugs.

For the Virus vibe, I would personally suggest Predator, amongst the three Papen soft synths. Massive has similar capabilities to Virus (moreso than Predator), but I'm not convinced its character is as much of a match as it's missing that "darkness" that Virus and Predator have in spades.

You might also check out Waldorf Largo, which has a wide timbral palette. But of course it has that Waldorf sound, which is different from the Virus sound. Less dark, warmer, dirtier.