Your opinion on software synths...

[Casshern]

I went from hardware, to software, and recently, back to hardware, and more than ever before. You tell me?

Do note however, that YMMV on this, and each has their own that works for them.

[krushing]

Originally Posted by mpabisz

Am I the only one that thinks this?

Ever visited the electronic music forum here?

[gravyface]

I think it depends. There are some really good classic electric piano VSTs and Kontakt instruments out there. Do they sound as good as the real thing? To some yes, to others, no.

[donsolo]

I think there's a lot of workflow, total recall etc issues that are resolved by Soft Synths.

For Rompler stuff, I prefer software for obvious reasons. For analog modelled, analog def SOUNDS better, but there are costs.

1. Tuning
2. Total Recall/rarely are presets savable.

Now, where I'm on the fence, are digital synths. Hardware synths like an DX7, it's a weird call between that and FM8 because DXs are extremely hard to program and you want to save all of those amazing settings you create. You can use a Sysex librarian and maybe Unisyn to program but it's not free and Motu dropped support for it.

So, FM Synthesis, Additive synthesis, wavetable synthesis, it's a tossup. But analog synthesis, it's hardware when I can.

[heyokay]

When I use software synths or instruments, I normally re-amp them to make them sound a bit more meaty, and makes them a bit more alive and real (I'm sure you've all tried this technique!). But that being said, I'm not a synth snob - if it sounds good, it sounds good. And I don't mind if it's software or hardware.

[CPhoenix]

Capability-wise... I don't see much that hardware can do in terms of "sound" that software can't. Especially when you look at synths like Sylenth, Gladiator, Zebra... even Omnisphere.

However... I think it's all about the programming. I would argue it's easier to programm a hardware synth over software, just because you physically have the knobs in front of you. (Unless you have your midi controller setup to every paramater in your plugin and you've mastered how to control it as though it were hardware... which is difficult to do since you usually only have alimited about of knobs on your controller)

That and I feel certain hardware synths just have better synth programmers creating their sounds in general. I just grabbed a Kaosillator Pro (which is high-end by no means lol)... but certain sounds in it i just extremely like, and I don't have to do much to fit it in the mix like you stated. But... i'm sure if I had enough time and energy I could reproduce relatively the same sound in a software synth, and it would fit in the mix just the same.

So... i think it's ultimately the programming that makes a difference.

[monads]

Hardware here. Just couldn't get into it with softsynths. I still think they're good for starting out as a feeler for something you want to pursue. 2k+ for a hardware synth is a lot of dough vs. a $200 softsynth if you're going to drop it 3months later.

[Fred.Kevorkian]

Software is different from hardware , but you can get pretty good results if you process your vsti properly

[RMS09]

Nod for nothin'...I dig the sounds I get with Reason....Better than alot of softsynths I've tried...the Korg stuff too....I guess it's just what your used to.....minimal experience with hard synths...some Moog stuff...FUN!!...but there are some soft synth tones I do dig...like Mark of Unicorn stuff

[ksandvik]

Sometimes I think it is strange that a really nice HW synth sound is processed to death with compressors and filters, resulting in a sub-par quality thing compared with using a SW synth in the first place.

[mpabisz]

Like mentioned above, I do find hardware synths easier to program. What's also nice, playing live I find much easier too.

[John The Cut]

a sine wave is a sine wave no matter where the **** it comes from.

[DTake]

It all depends on what you're going for and what kind of music you produce. Personally, I like to use both but for some reason always tend to lean towards the modeling capabilities of vsts.

[Cloudwalker]

"Oh, you think softsynths are your ally, But you merely adopted the softsynth.
I was born in it, molded by it. I didn't hear hardware until I was already a man.
By then it was nothing to me but DEAFENING!"

[donsolo]

The thing that I find easier about softsynths is that the UI is usually easier to work with than on physical units. On Software, you can fill your screen with parameters where on my Korg M3r, I have a 2 line LCD display and have to awkwardly navigate around, same with my Kurzweil AX1000, my Yama DX7, my TX81Z, building a sound is a heck of a lot easier in software unless you're talking about real analog systems like a MiniMoog or Polysix, MS-20, etc. Then, you have great tactile feedback, but for all of my menu-based synths, I like the sounds they make better than their software counterparts but they are a nightmare to program.

This whole notion of "a sine wave is a sine wave no matter where it comes from" is not really good information.

Analog filters sound considerably different than their digital counterparts. Also, a digital sine wave is not actually a sine wave, but a series of steps at a particular resolution. A real sine wave coming off of an analog oscilator doesn't have overtones that are introduced by digital. So, like my previous comment: Analog > Softsynth Counterpart.

Now, compare that to say the Korg Wavestation. That actually sounds better as a softsynth than it does as a keyboard. Because you're dealing with sample-based stuff, you get to use higher-quality DACs and not then reconvert to digital like you would with the actual keyboard. This results in a smoother, less grainy sound. And the Wavestation is a smooth machine.

Now, compare that with the Korg M1, it's a tricky call, the M1 does sound fatter for whatever reason but the software is far clearer sounding.

I prefer to attempt real orchestral sounds from Kontakt over my Kurzweil because the sample library is massive comparatively but there's something charming about that ol 2U box that needs a new LCD backlight.

I have both and when time is a factor, I go software but when I have the ability to sit back and audition sounds endlessly, I much prefer hardware. For most projects that I do for pay though, time is a concern (I charge by the hour) so software gets you where you need to go a lot faster.

[sms]

i prefer my nordlead to softsynths - more immediacy/expression in programming and playing - a knob/button for every option with no latency.

drum sounds: softsynth all day

[Play]

If you have good source sound, a good sound base, you can pass any sound off as coming from the same world, just use them to your taste. Run them through analogue filters, use re-amping, sampling, recording to tape.

Before I had an analogue setup, I wasn't so confident but I still used software, some awful presets and things which came with the DAW but if you bounce the results to audio and process, you can take them pretty far, into an almost virtual analogue realm.

[chevybusa]

For me personally being 100% ITB is the only way to go, I used to have a ton of hardware synths and rack units, but for me it started with Reason, and now I haveLogic Pro 9 with tons of various softies, and control them with what's in my sig, and I personally find that they sound way better, are much easeier to program and record, and I can do a lot more in a lot less time with them, but again that's just my opinion....

[draven5]

There was a time long before soft synths .... when musicians bonded with their instrument.

With hours, days, months spent practicing the musician began to know and feel out every way to get the best performance out of the instrument therefore making a bond.

To me that gets lost with soft synths.

Having a stable simplified way to connect emotionally with the instrument "the interface" is important. Too complicated of an interface gets in the way. Having to deal with a computer interface blocks me from that. I know some of you might say you can map out everything on a midi controller but you still have to do a large amount with mouse clicks.

Just my opinion.

[mpabisz]

Like I said, I have a wave station. I also tried the vst version after owning the real thing thing. All I gotta say is that I played with the vst for 5 mins and never used it again, jumping right back on the real thing. Maybe I'm still inexperienced in mixing and mastering? I just find that the real thing has more shape, and more "oomf".

[filipv]

any "hw synths vs sw synths" argument inevitably leads to silly generalizations.

except analog synths, all hw synths ARE sw synths

[Dr.Wu]

you have tried the wrong ones-check Zebra, Diva, impOSCar2 and Omnisphere!

[sfere recording]

Funny...I made the mistake many years ago of believing and tauting that soft synths could replace all my hardware. I sold it all....a decision i've regretted ever since. That is until quite recently where I went out and purchased the hardware versions of the my favorite vsti's and some of my previously owned units. I can without a doubt tell you...there is NOTHING like Hardware...NOTHING. Hardware sounds wayyyyyy different. Playing with the OP-X(a very commendable emulation mind you) is nothing in terms of sound quality, girth and stereo width/field at all like playing with a real OBX. The instability of an 8 voice Obx's Oscillators. Each voice being slightly out of key +/- a few cents and all it's individual filters idiosyncrasies..it's just not realistically recreatable by software...Impossible. It's like owning a life-sized picture of an OBX that somehow plays mp3 files of your oscillators knob positions....nice to look at and on the surface you scream it's black to everyone you know who's not informed but in the end it's still blue when it comes down to it. A picture of the real thing. Vsti's to me sound plastic-ky, a bit boxy in terms of spatial detail and in general it doesn-t feel at all "alive". They all mostly feel like somethings not right.

While I applaud the efforts of developers, U-he's Diva and Sonic Projects OP-X are amazing for vsti's to name a couple, It's my honest opinion that we are still a VERY long way off.
Now I didn't always think so, quite honestly, as I was touting vsti's from the get-go but after purchasing all these hardware synths and plugging up my MPC's i'm like Huh? WOW!!! It's true ...what you don't know won't really hurt you when it comes to making music with vsti's...but i've been around a bit and I know way too much to be bamboozled..Again and again and again. lol!

I also feel/believe that buying vsti's lead to a lack of personalization/intimate knowledge with all of your "instruments". If you can call what we hoarde nowadays instruments. Our computers are much more instruments to me than a plug in is...but that's a discussion for another post. LOL. Leading to what I believe what ills our music industry in general. Disposable merchandise because of non-personalization. Last I looked I had like 30 vsti's LMFAO!! And I had intimate knowledge of only maybe 5....i mean wtf?!! I'm as guilty as the next of trying out a demo..saying wow...and then when the cash presents itself...oh let me buy it. Arrrrrgghh! So you start off with the purchase price of a vsti then add up how many upgrades to this new version for only(blank $?), you get the "btw this version is no longer supported by your old O.S.", "Btw this version is no longer supported by your new O.S.", "...this Version 22 gives you the best under the mixing desk blow job ever!" and well let's be honest here.....How much have you spent after you tally all that up over the years? The equivalent of purchasing 4 amazing Hardware synths that would've covered almost every base I needed in order to make records. Synth's that I have that are over 20 years old and still work!! How many of us still have the same plug ins we were using in 2002? Show of hands here please? pfffff.....Never mind the fact that I've gone through 3 mac's..and 4 pc's in that period. (yup 3yrs is a long time for a computer in our biz).

End of rant and as always....
Just my .02 and YMMV

Dennis Ferrer
OBJEKTIVITY

[dxavier]

Originally Posted by Fred.Kevorkian

Software is different from hardware , but you can get pretty good results if you process your vsti properly

Yes, you can get good results from a VSTi, but the context you saying it in is wrong. You are saying it, as though it could be considered alongside the hardware, but for me it can't, not from what I have heard. If they were cars, the soft synth would be a Toyota, reliable, dependable, comfortable, easy to run, gets you from A to B, but with the Hardware, it would be a Ferrari. Sure, not that practical, maybe not even reliable and sometimes downright unruly, but hell, when it works, it will give you something nothing else can. There is a difference. I am not talking about a subjective different either. Have two alongside each other and you will hear the difference immediately.

Other day, was with a friend in the studio using some Arturia synths. Sounded good, no doubt, but then a friend was nice enough to lend her an Arp Odyssey MKII he wasn't using much. The difference in depth of sound was amazing. We were getting bass and leads out of the ARP and nothing in the Arturia could come close. Again, as a synth, the Arturia stuff sounds good, but when you get your hands on the real thing, you hear that there is another level. Straight after, she bought the ARP off him. It was a no brainer. Press one key on that thing and you have something that sounds great immediately. No EQ, compression, effects needed. Straight off, you get the sound that you want.

Fair play though, recall is a mutha on these things and yes, the ARP can sound different, depending on it's mood!!! Still, when it sounds good, it's the money shot every time.

[dxavier]

Originally Posted by Dr.Wu

you have tried the wrong ones-check Zebra, Diva, impOSCar2 and Omnisphere!

Sorry Doc, respect and all, but even though Omnisphere sounds amazing, an in the flesh Jupiter 8 or ARP odyssey is something else.

I have soft synths and frankly, I use them MORE, because the recall, ease of use and reliability is laughably good, so I am not a hater by any stretch, but when I can be asked to switch on the hardware synths, warm them up, tweak some settings with one hand, whilst crossing the fingers with the other that I can get the same sound as before, hell they sound incredible.

Again, I have soft synths and I have UAD/Powercore cards/plugs for covering outboard duties, but I still have 8 physical synths and still have several pieces of high end outboard, for when I am looking for "THAT" sound. When the softsynths and plugs recreate my hardware perfectly, the hardware will go, but that moment hasn't come yet

[draven5]

Originally Posted by dxavier

If they were cars, the soft synth would be a Toyota, reliable, dependable, comfortable, easy to run, gets you from A to B, but with the Hardware, it would be a Ferrari. Sure, not that practical, maybe not even reliable and sometimes downright unruly, but hell, when it works, it will give you something nothing else can. There is a difference. I am not talking about a subjective different either. Have two alongside each other and you will hear the difference immediately.

You missed some of our points. Not only the sound but it's about the interface experience. And I don't mean to start a war in any shape or form with you but I don't think your analogy is a good one. And I respectfully say that.

I would put it more like this....

It's more like what CG is in movie to practical sets and effects.
It's like CG fire to real fire.
CG blood to real "set blood".

CG is convenient cheap, you can do anything you dream up pretty much ...and excuse me for saying at times lazy resort. Practical takes more work and effort but the payoff is better. Sometimes slightly but for some of use doing it in the real world makes us happy.

There are CG artist that love what they do too and that's cool.

Your car analogy doesn't really work. Both are cars and get you to point A to B. One is not a virtual car.

If you want to use a better analogy for cars it would be like one is "Grand Turismo vs "driving a race car on a track for real"

Or as someone said long ago in a thread "It's like internet porn" vs "sex with a real hot chick" Ha! That was the best analogy I've heard!

But I respectfully say those of you who want to make "CG" music are happy and that's cool. We do what we all want. But if someone brings up connivence softsynths over the inconvenience of analog I would say that seems like.... well yeah it takes more effort and work. But that's not a bad thing. Some of us like that time it takes. The effort many times makes us more creative. The process makes us happy.

[donsolo]

I think your CG analogy is about right.

Now, with all of these new methods for sampling in the digital world, I think we're finding ways that we can use SoftSynths in ways hat are just not feasible in the analog realm. Some of the wails I've heard in the limited amount of dub step I've listened to just aren't available in the analog realm.

I think of it like drums. You can tell what era a recording is from based on the drum tone primarily. I use Harry Nilsson as an example. If you made that music today with identical arrangements but more "modern" recording techniques, you'd wind up with roughly the same result. Compare that to Simon and Garfunkel and you see how dated their drums sound. It plagues Paul Simon's Graceland with all of that gated reverb on the snares and toms. Change those tones and you'd have a modern sounding record. 80s drums primarily have a sound the way 70s drums, 60s drums, 90s drums etc. do.

Now, synthesizers, for better or worse also date music very heavily. The sound of that E. Piano on a DX7 in place of a Rhodes or real grand, screams 1985 to me. I think this is because from a production standpoint, innovations are primarily made in drums and synths. A hit comes along with a new and hip tone and everyone goes home and copies the tone. There's more smart musicians and producers who can reverse engineer tone than there are innovative ones with the resources and bravery to come up with the next great thing.

So, I think the reason this debate is so common is twofold:
1. There are a lot of smart home producers who like what's hip or even dated and ride the wave as cheaply as possible because they're traditionally amateurs with a by definition, limited budget.
2. The professionals are essentially about maximizing time to maximize profit because why make a hit in 6 months when you can make one in a matter of days by throwing money at problems? Software allows you to throw money at the problem of: we need a good synth without having to find, maintain or rent the real deal which doesn't allow for total recall and the flexibility of alteration at a later stage of production.

I think that software is the great unknown for innovation but too many people use it in ways that are far better served sonically by the real deal.

I don't think that the MS-20 or Minimoog are dead due to innovation, production is really a blending of traditional techniques and innovation to taste but the great advantages of software are so rarely explored and exploited for production, it's like we ran out of new ideas with Autotune. Now, we're just saying things like "60s vocals with an 80s Bass, Modern Drums and 70s synths."

Personally, I love it when people try new and daring things technologically, it's what drives my interest in synthesizers but how many more Minimoog leads, synths, basses can we come up with before we're just producing like its some kind of paint-by-number system?

I'm personally not interested in how to make a SoftSynth sound like the hardware it's emulating, I'm interested in how you can use that software in ways that are just not available in the original hardware? For example, there really aren't any parameters you can change in realtime either by knob or LFO on my DX and TX, but I have FM8 which is a reasonable facsimile and built around the same idea with a similar workflow. With this new ability, how can you make sounds that fill the musical spaces of the original but with a unique twist?

Add in the vast array of sound shaping plugins as well as analog options like reamping, analog flters, traditional mixing equipment and the new possibilities are endless.

Or, flip the coin and now you can take that traditional hardware synth and do all sorts of new things to it, like over Autotune, spectral manipulation etc and your results just got crazy.

So, all points are valid.
1. It takes time to really learn your instrument
2. The real thing sounds better than the imitation
3. When you've learned your instrument, it's easier to achieve the result you want with the hardware (exceptions being the UI for certain, menu driven synths) but this is probably due to the spiritual bond between you and your synth vs a disposable and intangible piece of software, workarounds the workflow exist.
4. Total recall is easier to achieve on software.
5. Less time is spent intimately with an individual SoftSynth than as physical unit.
6. Both have been used on hit records.
7. There is no "right" and "wrong," only preference and justification.

[draven5]

Fantastic way to look at soft synths. I totally agree, but the way I see it is to take the idea you have and still see what we can do with the classic synthesizers we own. I'm always trying to find new things to do with my old analog synths. They only sound dated if you design patches that way. You can also design patches that sound fresh..even on a DX7. Fm8 can do things the dx7 can't but the dx7 kicks its ass sonically so I'd rather find new ways with the hardware than the software. But that's just me. I still think what you are saying is a great way to look at using out synths.

[Gnu]

I agree; the problem with softsynths (both their makers and the people who use and compare them) is that we're too busy expecting them to sound like whatever they're supposed to be emulating. (Just as much could be said for plugins in general, especially compressors.) Yes, I enjoy my hardware, but the softsynths I use the most are ones that aren't based on anything physical. And don't give me that line about intimacy; anyone with a decent controller can become just as familiar and immediate and twiddly with a softsynth as they can with anything else. Heck, there are a few recreations (the M1 comes to mind) that are a hundred times more real-time controllable than their real world counterparts.