Advice on direction of synths

[echoseason]

As a previous poster mentioned, if synth1 is what you are familiar with, stick with it. I used synth1 for years, it's quite capable.

However, if you do decide to go with a commercial synth, go with something that is flexible that you can grow with. As always, try demos, see what fits your workflow. Personally, Dune 3 offers a lot of options in a straightforward interface, with a smooth workflow and it sits well in a mix. U-he's Hive is also very much worth checking out. Both offer an ease of use with powerful features.

[Butwug]

Coming up on one year of producing, and this is my two cents. Demo a few synths for a week. Make a drum loop, and go at it with the demos. Try one for 20min, try another for 20min, then another for 20min. Do this a couple times with the demos and youll quickly see which one you like. Many capable synths, with different workflows. As far as presets, as long as it has a decent amount to reverse engineer the sound when learning synthesis. Better to put in work learning how to use the synth of your choosing than relying on presets, IMO.

If you have Bitwig or ableton, you can use native synths as they are completely capable of producing quality sounds as well. I often find myself using phase modulation synth on Bitwig as it’s the best one Ive tried.

Again, demo a few, and choose what you click with.

If it helps any, I have Uhe’s Hive and Zebra2. Bought Zebra2 because Init is blank, with one oscillator and one envelope. Thats how I like to work at times, blank, and add what is needed; semi modular environment. Also have Hive because it’s quick to work with. Many modern synths with this layout, not just Hive.

Which reminds me, Uhe has a couple GREAT free synths. I used those for a few months. Was so grateful that it was one of the reasons I chose to buy Uhe products when I had the money to do so.

[BlackWinny]

• Tyrell Nexus 6 Presets
• Triple Cheese Presets
• Zebralette Presets
• Podolski Presets
• OB-Xd Presets
• Dexed Presets (Cartridge manager, in the middle of the page)
• Ragnarök Presets
• SQ8L Presets
• KVR: PG-8X Presets (and it also reads perfectly all the innumerable JX-8P sysex, for example those or those or those among many others)
• TAL-NoiseMaker Presets
• Elek7ro Presets
• Crystal Presets
• FireBird Presets
• Charlatan Presets
• Synth1 Presets
• Digits Presets

And all these things are free, all these synths and all these presets.

[Thryo]

On the secondhand market you can find an unregistered AnalogLab Lite for about $8-$9. Then Arturia will offer you an upgrade to the full version of AnalogLab for around $28. Once you download the free sounds from their community, it has about 7500+ presets. All for less than $40.

Sadly this isn't the case anymore with analog lab 4. It is now a $70 upgrade from lab lite to lab 4.