Best modern sounds software synth

[systematika]

Originally Posted by Dysanfel

U-he Zebra2 the only softsynth I still use.

Zebra 2 is a fav of mine as well along with Vaz Modular. You can get ANY sound you want with just those two softsynths.

If you want analog sounds and you are on PC, seriously just go get the demo and check it out.

http://www.vaz-synths.com/files/VazModDemo304.exe

[FuzzyKeys]

The Omnisphere 1.5 update announced at NAMM and coming out in November is going to be pretty huge.

I'm happy with my collection at the moment. Omnisphere, Trilian, Massive, Zebra, Alchemy, and FM8 definitely afford ample firepower and more sound design options than anyone could ever exhaustively explore alone but......

ACE...

This last week or so I've started to get that itch that I've been successfully keeping at bay for quite a good while now. I'm going to have some time next week to demo it properly. Any thoughts on how it might fit with the rest of my lineup?

I'm using Trilian and Massive for bass sounds most of the time these days and I do think they complement each other very well for pretty straightforward reasons.

I use Alchemy for morphing background sounds and sample manipulation. I generally find Omnisphere to be the most rewarding sound design tool even if I'm only using it to make percussion sounds for a given track or cue. Both of these synths are invaluable to me as film scoring tools, especially when deadlines are really tight.

I really dig the Zebra oscillator "section" a lot though. I don't really use anything else for melodic lead sounds that occupy the tricky midrange ~900-2k anymore. In that sense I feel like I can shape it into the right "vocalist" for the track as opposed to programming these lush leads that I then have to continuously thin out and push back in the mix. I'm a keyboardist and expressive lead sounds have always been important to me. There's playing one-handed piano on a lead sound (which is fine sometimes) but then there's also the Herbie Hancock side of the coin as well.

Any thoughts?

[anguswoodhead]

No ones mentioned Reason - is it not a contender for these types of sounds?

[007]

Originally Posted by anguswoodhead

No ones mentioned Reason - is it not a contender for these types of sounds?

It is, simply that no one mentioned it until now.
And more will follow with "I can't believe no one has mentioned _______ synth!"

Any half-decent synth can be used for this or any sound with a bit of clever programming. If it's just running through a gamut of presets hoping to find the 'a-ha there it is!' moment, well, we could browse through every soft-synth ever made scratching our heads wondering where the holy grail is. Playing with the envelopes and filters, creative use of effects, etc., is a big part of it.

I bet if one would hear any of these current pop tunes bare, say with no vocals and all the tracks broken down, they would be amazed to hear the simplicity of it all. It's more about knowing what sounds will emphasize a certain part of the song, the punctuations, the breakdowns, that extra little quircky synth on the second verse, etc, then, with a bit of programming and more importantly, layering different sounds one atop the other is also a big part of the process.

Bottom line is, the sounds themselves are not that hard to find, it's what you do with them. Once you already have a decent song taking form and your arrangement is in order, the rest sort of falls into place.

[Yoozer]

Originally Posted by anguswoodhead

No ones mentioned Reason - is it not a contender for these types of sounds?

It's not something people consider a synth, more a special kind of DAW.

Oh, by the way - pop sound sources

[anguswoodhead]

I mentioned Reason as I own it already.

[OurDarkness]

Nexus comes along with a great variety of sounds - it's hard not to find something that will trigger an idea or do the job IF you have the time to search. In my latest compositions, one sound of Nexus is present in the majority of the tracks.

Sylenth1 is, for me, the Virus of softsynths. I use it quite often.

For some strange reason I love DiscoDSP's Discovery.

Also Alchemy is a powerful vst - lots of crazy stuff in there.

The softsynth which I use almost always is Battery 3. Prepare a sample, load it into Battery, and then I program the drum patterns in Cubase. I love this way of working. If ever NI comes with a hardware version of it, that works bi-directionally and without flaws with Cubase, I will definitely get one.

Also I like Arturia's Minimoog V. It gels nicely with the Voyager by providing complementary timbres.

For some unknown reason, I don't use Omnisphere quite as often as it deserves. When I do, it's almost always for pads and almost always these pads are replaced by the Andromeda or I end up with a dual layer Andromeda/Omnisphere, lol. Don't know why.

[AJ Reynolds]

Originally Posted by anguswoodhead

I mentioned Reason as I own it already.

why don't you use it then?

[anguswoodhead]

Actually I am trying out Massive and we could have a winner. thumbsup

[RRCHON]

Originally Posted by anguswoodhead

Hi Electronic music type slutz,
Haven't searched sorry.
I am about to start producing a dance / pop album for a client.
I need some cutting edge synths - you know all those great modern sounds.
Lot's of classic analog synth sounds right?
But I want them in an easy to use. 'preset' type synth that I can 'tweak' and 'modify' to make my own.
YouTube - Britney Spears- Hold it against me (REAL VERSION FULL) NEW song 2011(HQ)
I love the sounds used in this new Britney single.
What do you suggest I get?
BTW - I'm on ProTools HD
Thanks in advance.

Anything will multiple oscillators will work, but the sounds you hear on that track have been bumped around a bit.

The pumping you hear on the bass synth is just a side chain, it's a pretty common thing to do on dance tracks to side chain different tracks and have them compressed by a beat track - creates that pumping you hear.

Hardware you can go with any of the headliners Virus or V-Synth GT, Jupiter 80, Dave Smith's Polyevolver, or Korg's Kronos. Chances are you probably already have one of these in your rig.

Software - Alchemy or Reason get something lightweight cause what you are looking for isn't going to come from 10000000 gigabytes of crap wavetables, samples and loops.

The higher tone pads and sparkles are pretty easy and will probably be titled as Trance Chords or something along the lines. The bass lines and degradation filers on them as well as the glitches are going to take a bit more work. You could OPT out of the tedious stuff and just get a sound designer or a DJ that does this kind of music depending on your budget might be worth it because of the amount of time it can take to get into this sort sound manipulation.

If it was easy people like Dave Getta / Diplo and Erol Alkan would never make a dime, most of them have DJing background which is always a great place to experiment with these things. Hiring someone to work over a semi-finished product would give you much better polish and might even give you something fresher and more amazing that what you can come with on your own, might be cheaper too.

Addendum.

You can hear what kids are doing with these sounds and get a better idea of what is possible now by heading over to Soundcloud and taking a dip in the Electro section. You could also hop over to ChemicalJump Nate always has an interesting selection of what is hot and sometimes not so hot in electro on there.

[ksandvik]

Listening to the current trend of synth sounds I think TAL's NoiseMaker should work well; even better it is free.

TAL - Togu Audio Line: TAL-NoiseMaker

Now, dubstep is crawling into more and more productions so NI's Lazerbass would be good (or get the whole NI Komplete 7 kit with Massive et rest.)

PS: You could get Virus wavetables installed into Zebra if you really want that sound.

[m_lameiro]

With Ni Komplete 7 a kore controler with some kore packs and machine you do anything. i Agree also with omnisphere too but absynth can be a contender tooo for it.


mdb Audio
www.mdbaudio.com

[nznexus]

i would say this..........................

why not load up a rack of thor from reason and rewire into pro-tools and you get some good sound

and please do not buy into that omnisphere bullshit!!!!
its only good for layering sounds.

sylenth is good but its not ..enough, um sorry.

[nznexus]

Originally Posted by 007

I bet if one would hear any of these current pop tunes bare, say with no vocals and all the tracks broken down, they would be amazed to hear the simplicity of it all. It's more about knowing what sounds will emphasize a certain part of the song, the punctuations, the breakdowns, that extra little quircky synth on the second verse, etc, then, with a bit of programming and more importantly, layering different sounds one atop the other is also a big part of the process.

.

yes this is true! most of the sounds in solo, without vocals, as track only are very very very simple! but when combined together, correctly and mixed down professionally its hard to tell how such basic sounds can transform into something big...

[Mardi Gras]

edit: nevermind :p

[mfx]

u-he Zebra2.5/ACE

Spectrasonics Omnisphere/Trilogy

Lennard Digitals Slyenth1

NI Reaktor

NI MAssive

XilLabs PolyKBII

Korg Legacy Collection


....list goes on...

[jaroo]

If you are going software then I suggest you put on the thinking hat.
Most of the well known brands do deliver the goods, and it's all about how good you are at using them in the correct context.

Like mentioned before it's all about how you stack up your sounds and sequence your arrangement. Not about how heavy and phat each sounds is. Layering overly phat and heavy sounds is the recipe for a muddy and overcrowded mix, if done wrong. (Obviously situational)

I would say some of the top notch softs I have been in touch with has to be:
Sylenth1, Zebra2, z3ta+, Legacy Cell, Discovery, impOSCar, Massive...

The list could obviously go on, but those have been my fav. Currently left with syl and Zebra 2 tho.

Find some synths you like the sound quality of and learn that inside out so you can tweak any sound you want, rather than getting tons of presets that you will get tierd off really quick.

I would advise to stay away from Romplers like Nexus as they will make you lazy. Better to learn how to manipulate sounds to fit, though some sounds were never ment to co-exist.

[Whalez]

hey guys, i havent tried very many other than demos cause i don't have any freaking money lol, but the ones i do have are Sylenth and Massive and i think they are awesome sounding. i'm not sure i could say one was better than the other. the next one i want to buy is omnisphere cause in the week ive been reading things here and from what my brother has told me it's probably one of the best it seems.

[mavano]

The guy said he's on PT HD -> Access Virus Indigo TDM. The iLok licenses go on ebay for like $50-$100... It's just about mandatory for anyone on HD looking for a synth.

It's identical to a virus B and the Powercore Virus. Just a different color scheme GUI.

[zvukofor]

Zebra, Reaktor, Massive, FM8, KLC.

[Greeg]

I would say that current "modern" pop / dance music is more about production ("technical") skills rather than just sounds. Good producer can make even the simple Saw wave sound great.

So it really doesnt matter if you pick Synapse Dune, Waldorf Largo, U-He Zebra, Sylenth, Massive, Komplete, Nexus etc.....

After all, everything is heavily processed, sidechained...

More important question is that - can you tweak presets, can you create new presets. If you can, that's great. If you can't then you need a synth which offers plenty of presets (or expansions) that suit the genre you're interested in. Or spend some more money for additional third party presets which is not a bad idea. I like to create presets but at the same time i buy some third party presets. Why ? Because you can find presets focused on certain genre, not factory "bread & butter" stuff.

If you're into these all dubstep like wobble sounds (or leads like Dj Fresh - Louder) then I would say Massive will be the best. For leads - everything is good

Remember that quite often it's about chords too. Some presets, sounds are rather simple and sound nice only when played certain chord.

[atma]

NI Razor