Too much "special sauce" synths

[inkwarp]

pigments is a fantastic synth.
i should also mention aparillo. seems a bit gimmicky but it's a really powerful synth.

[layzer]

you can pay someone for a special sauced synth or you can learn sound design and special sauce just about any synth yourself.
Caveat emptor

[Forgotten]

Nothing worse than getting 'special sauce' on your synths...

[EnGee]

Most likely Dance presets in any synth are exaggerated. Nothing is wrong with that IMO because this is what is needed mostly!
I believe it depends on the sound design more than on the synths.

[JoeCat]

special sauce: a synth you load up try a few presets then promptly uninstall and forget. i don't think stuff like dune2 or zebra have special sauce, they are really good tools. if you use a synth often enough then it stands to reason it will start to become more familiar to your ear. reaktor is a good example of this. Rounds, some of their synths like photone or akkord, they have a very recognizable sound, but then it's all about how it sits in a mix. on it's own ears can get fatigued quite quickly. Harmor is a good example of this. it just seems to sound good when it's in amongst other sounds... imho...

Interesting that you mention two of the older Reaktor synths, photone and akkord. I know Reaktor improved a lot with Core, but there's' something about those older synths. Maybe some of it is the preset design, which to my ears tended to be more interesting than many modern synths; maybe some of it was the choice of harmonies and tunings (akkord or course, but even a lot of photone sounds rely on harmonically tuned oscillators, etc.) Same with carbon.

I've convinced myself that I should ignore those older synths because of the new zdfs, etc., but I think the impart a character (or, at least inspire a workflow) that gets me somewhere newer synths don't.

I think an album of photone, akkord, and carbon, though some modern effects, would sound quite awesome.

[Trancit]

Corona, DUNE, Serum, Harmor. All hyped in some way. You don't expect us to know what's actually going on and name it with technical terms, do you? OK, let me ask you: what psychoacoustic effects are you aware of, in theory?

Actually Harmor is quite neutral sounding... it´s only that the saw wave loaded on the default preset is not a straight one ( a little bit hipass filtered for whatever reason)... if you replace it (drag n drop) by a straight saw wave it sounds just clean as you can expect from a pure digital synth

[Vectorman]

Zebra is one of my favorite synths because it isn't a special sauce synth.

That was something I noticed about Zebra and liked fairly soon after buying it over a decade ago - that its sound is pretty balanced and not hyped (which is also what I prefer when it comes to mixes in general).