What Is Your Favorite Soft-synth?, Soft-Synths Options

I am interested in hearing from the synth savvy liberace like musical masters out there...what do you think are the great, quality, analog quality soft synths out there? Would it be pluggo? reaktor? halion? fm7? i want to seperate the men from the toys so to speak. Some of the synths I have heard sound too campy and cheesy. What are the rich, thick sounding pro soft-synths?

[Synthetic]

well.. i think it really depends on what type of sound you are looking for... most of the synths you mentioned approach synthesis in different ways and you will get differences in sound just as if you were comparing a Nord Lead (real) synth to Moog Synth (real). I really haven't heard any "cheesey synths" from any of the major commercial manufacturers but it depends on what you like. Some really like the FM& because many like the edgy and clean sound of the 80's music which the dx-7 was popular in. Depending on how you use the sounds (dry, lead, rhythmic, or saturated with effects) determines how it will work in your music. I am true believer that with some good FX... almost anything can sound cool... even a cheap casio keyboard can sound 100% better with added reverb, chorus, flang etc.

But, from what I have heard... the FM7 is good choice, the Reaktor is good but very complex, Absynth has constantly been many people's favorite (it incorporates several different synthesis methods) and the ES-1 and ES-2 from emagic are fairly good. Reason is a good choice because it comes with several different synths now days and more. Pluggo... well I am not reall sure about it... it comes with tons of plugs for synths etc. but its mainly a shell for running plugs and don't know if I trust that their plugs that come free are truly all that impressive but I have not seen or heard anyone using it so don't know.

[Levon River]

One of the best things about the FM-7 is the incredible wealth of programs that can be found for it. The Yamaha DX-7 had more programmers making patches for it than Attila had Huns, and thousands upon thousands of those patches are freely downloadable from many places. If you want that FM thang, there's none better.

For the grittier synths, NI's Pro-52 and Absynth are both pretty outstanding and very programmable.

Of course their Hammond B-3 emulator, B4, is just an outstanding piece of work, but from what you say I take it you mean synthesizers, per se.

Not only am I not affiliated in any way with Native Instruments, I've been busy trashing them in other threads for how thoroughly they've managed to ignore OS X (a tossed-off few paragraphs of promises on their site notwithstanding).

But the people sure know how to do synths and samplers and emulators; you've just got to give them their due.

[filarion]

Cycling 74's products do the job for me. Max/Msp is heaven if you like complete freedom (well, SuperCollider would be COMPLETE freedom, but I ain't a programmer - osx version of SC3 should be out soon, btw). I don't own a lot of other softsynths, but I really like the stuff emagic puts out (ES2 and their physical modelling simulations). That new Steinberg softsynth really looks interesting though. Forgot the name

thx for the info.. I guess nobody out there was interested in posting their opinions/preferences in soft synths. Here are mine....hmmm...

I have personally over the last about 6 months got into reaktor (probably my favorite)...PPG (big library, some cool sounds), Plex has some interesting ideas if it just sounded a bit more authentic and...Reason 1 & 2 (im loving some of the Orkester and NN refills), and the Hammond, which is pretty amazing...if you want that specific sound.

As far as the cheezy sounds i was talking about???...believe me, they exist in my world. Some of the sawtooth and such 80's thomas dolby herbie hancock beverly hills cop sounds are very difficult to landscape into something contemporary...for me anyhow.

Thats why i love reaktor. It has truly new, strange at times, but interesting sounds. Any normal man would be a fool to try anything in reaktor short of just opening up the pre-made ensembles/instruments (im sure most of you know)

The great thing is, there are quite a few instruments available. Thats why i think reaktor is pretty insane. Reason2 is catching more and more of my attention for generating synths fast also. i dont have a keyboard, so i generate it all by composing notes in logic or reason...reaktor is a different story all together.

[Synthetic]

thx for the info.. I guess nobody out there was interested in posting their opinions/preferences in soft synths.

huh? well I guess I will refrain from responding to your future posts since my opinions don't seem to count towards anything as well as the other posted opinions

[lepetitmartien]

My analogue synths…

no cpu load

bollocks

no patch memory

no midi (hmm I'm cheating)

and

BUTTONS! %)

On FM7, I'd say, easy to do a soft synth of something completely digital at the beginning. I don't say it's crap, just that your have 0 and 1s living together all the time in a perfect world. Modelizing a "virtual" (hate that word) VCO, VCF is something completely different. Way out in space.

And I wonder all the time, why recreate something that already exists?

(niark niark niark)