What synth do you actually USE the most in your own music????

VST, AU, AAX, CLAP, etc. Plugin Virtual Instruments Discussion
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rezoneight wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2020 3:56 pm
Jesus man there are a ton of reasons. One, most of these hardware of software emulations still provide stuff the old ones didn't. Two, because people got digital fever and IMHO the business went in a bad direction (ie: terrible user interfaces). Thankfully that trend reversed as people realized that yeah, the "old way" was better.

Anyway, I'm happy that you don't feel the need for that stuff. There is no reason to pin it down to stupidity that others do want this stuff. It's wonderful we have a great market that supports everyone's needs.
i don't necessarily disagree with the sentiment, but the "old way" doesn't work great on most of the time with a mouse and keyboard on a screen.
I don't like overly skeumorphic GUIs.
u-he is imo on the edge of it, i like it and it doesn't bother me but in generally i prefer to work with a less skeumorphic plugin design
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e-crooner wrote: Sun Jan 19, 2020 11:44 pm Those things may have existed in 1980, but they were not widely used, yet.
What do you mean by "widely used"? Synclavier was used on a ton of albums in the early 80s. So was the Fairlight. You can't keep moving the goal posts here. You said up to 83 for your own example. Those instruments were already in pretty wide use by 1983. Things just got better. Go a bit further into 1984 and you get the Emulator 2 and Ensoniq Mirage.

Now, clearly things are far better now because all of this stuff is cheaply available by just about anyone if you start talking ITB. And there is a ton of inexpensive hardware. But saying all of that tech was not "widely used" in the early 80s is nonsense.

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Ploki wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2020 4:09 pm
rezoneight wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2020 3:56 pm
Jesus man there are a ton of reasons. One, most of these hardware of software emulations still provide stuff the old ones didn't. Two, because people got digital fever and IMHO the business went in a bad direction (ie: terrible user interfaces). Thankfully that trend reversed as people realized that yeah, the "old way" was better.

Anyway, I'm happy that you don't feel the need for that stuff. There is no reason to pin it down to stupidity that others do want this stuff. It's wonderful we have a great market that supports everyone's needs.
i don't necessarily disagree with the sentiment, but the "old way" doesn't work great on most of the time with a mouse and keyboard on a screen.
I don't like overly skeumorphic GUIs.
u-he is imo on the edge of it, i like it and it doesn't bother me but in generally i prefer to work with a less skeumorphic plugin design
Sorry I was referring to knobs on hardware vs menu diving, not software UIs.

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BONES wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2020 2:57 am It is not something that works in any recorded medium, it must be experienced live. There is something very special about a full symphony orchestra that is lost when you try to can it.

That was my reaction when I looked up some Maze on YouTube after you mentioned them. No wonder no-one has ever heard of them in Australia.
Yes, but it still depends on what the orchestra plays. And that content doesn't change just because it is a live performance.
Every instrument sounds more interesting live, be it electric bass or whatever.

The reason Maze are not popular in Australia is simply that Australia is a white country. Just like Maze are not popular in Idaho I suppose :hihi:
But they have millions of loyal fans within the African-American community. Many of them have been fans for half a century.

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Maze, assuming you're talking about the soul/funk band, has been around as long as I have and I've never heard of em and I'm an American ;) I'm sure they have fans just like any other band that has as many gold albums. Still never heard of em.

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rezoneight wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2020 4:16 pm

Sorry I was referring to knobs on hardware vs menu diving, not software UIs.
oh. those existed on 80-90s synths plenty. via arrow keys or something...that's objectively worse than anything else.
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BONES wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2020 2:43 am
e-crooner wrote: Sun Jan 19, 2020 7:11 pmMost musicians just want to get the job done, not innovate.
Who aspires to be "most musicians"? As ambitions go, isn't that kind of sad? There is little or no innovation to be had any more but most artists want to move forward over time, not stay stuck in the same old groove for decades. Of course, a lot of established acts don't get much choice, they play what the punters want to hear, which is often the old stuff, but that doesn't stop the really good bands from moving forward. e.g. If you go and see Killing Joke they will play at least half their first album live but if you buy their latest (15th) studio album, it is a very modern take on what KJ have always done and, therefore, those new songs can sit alongside the old material and none of it sounds out of place. That, to me, is a band who have never stagnated, who have always wanted to push their art forward (or at least sideways). How can you not have more respect for a band like that than one who rests on their laurels and keeps reinventing the wheel?
In the 80s many people welcomed the new possibility of storing presets and reliable tuning. But the sound was fine before as well.
"Fine" in some ways but not in comparison to what's available today.
Meanwhile technical progress has long ceased to be about fixing problems, now it is just a kind of feature arms race.
I don't think that's true at all. Softsynths today sound way, way better than they did 12-15 years ago and what you perceive as a "feature arms race" is more about modern processors having the power to do things today that could not have been done in the past. In the world of hardware there are things like the Linnstrument and Roli's Seaboards that change the way we interact with out sounds, which in itself opens up new possibilities.
So, no, using the most modern stuff just for the sake of it, makes no sense to me.
I agree completely but nobody uses modern stuff just "for the sake of it". People use it because it's measurably better than the old stuff, cheaper, more reliable and readily available.
Why do you think so many developers make and customers buy authentic emulations of old hardware?
Because people, on the whole, are stupid and pathetic.
Because they like the sound of it.
And this is the "stupid" part of it - you can get all the same sounds without having to slavishly clone those old instruments. e.g. The Legend isn't a great synth because it can sound just like a Minimoog, it's great synth because it builds on what the MiniMoog was and offers all the modern convenience the original couldn't. But if you compare it to DUNE, you can see how much it is being held back because of what it is - an emulation. It's probably why both Synapse and U-He sell their emulations much more cheaply than their original creations.
And even the old synth makers have revived their businesses.
That, right there, should tell you how unrealistic this market is. Why are these old synth popular again today when nobody wanted them 30 years ago? They haven't magically gotten any better, have they, so why are their businesses viable today when they weren't 30 years ago?
Why would a classic pad sound be crap while other classic sounds are still appreciated and never age?
That's actually very obvious - with modern digital instruments, a pad can be so much more than was possible with analogue subtractive synths. Both the DX-7 and Roland's D-50 proved that in the 1980s and the bar for what they had to offer has been raised many, many times since. The old filter sweep pad still has it's uses but no-one could seriously suggest it is in the same ball park as what we can do today.
For instance the Jazz Bass sound or the Music Man sound or the Strat sound or the sound of a trumpet or acoustic guitar etc. etc. etc.?
All awful to my ears, the reason I wanted to learn synthesisers in the first place. I mean, you can make a Strat sound good with the right treatment but on it's own it doesn't really have much sound at all.
Nobody says a Bösendorfer is crap just because it sounds like 100 years ago.
Actually, I would because I do not like piano at all.
Countless millions of people listen to Classical music.
Yes and countless billions, probably including all of your group, believe in some kind of creator who will take them to a nice place after they die, if they behave themselves. Doesn't make 'em right, though, does it?
I would much rather listen to Mantovani than to EDM.
It would be a toss up for me.
One example of how a good song does not really depend on instrumentation: Mad World. Many people love Gary Jules' version and don't even know the original by Tears for Fears. The two versions sound very different, yet both are very good.
That's down to performance as much as anything, although I find Jules' voice really annoying and I don't like his version nearly as much as the original. (I miss the synth brass.) Another example would be Die Krupps' Tribute to Metallica, which they did specifically to showcase that Metallica's songs are really good and could work in a different genre.
Sure, some synth strings are ok, but no match for the magical sound of a real strings section.
I agree, which is why I use Nova Essentials a lot in our songs. Good luck emulating any of that in any synth.
Craftsman? Well, I do invest a lot of time and effort in trying to emulate real instruments because I don't like samples.
So you don't listen to recorded music, then? Because that's just samples. Or perhaps you just lack the vision to understand the possibilities presented by sample-based instruments? My DSS-1 was the best thing since sliced bread in 1985. It allowed me to do things I couldn't have dreamed of previously. The ASR-10 that replaced it was a quantum leap beyond that and today, Kontakt and HALion make those things seem like children's toys.
Often when there is a bass line, I just open one bass patch after another, but can't really decide which one to take as many of them sound good with that bass line. After all, there is no right or wrong patch. As long as it sounds good, it is enough.
I spent several hours last night making bass patches for one of our songs, to replace Wasp so I can bring it into Cubase. I tried the synths I thought might be up to the challenge - DUNE, Legend, ArcSyn and Pigments. In the end I got the latter two working well enough to do the job - not exactly like the Wasp patch but good enough in the mix - but I'm still not happy so I will try a few more tonight. I don't look for presets, I start by mimicking the settings in Wasp, then tweak it from there. I find I waste far too much time trying to find a preset.
Never heard of Killing Joke. But if you say so...
I prefer artists who are loyal to their style, which does not exclude subtle changes, though.

I wasn't specifically talking about soft synths. Of course they sound better now than they did 15 years ago. (Still, I use mostly Sylenth1, which is also ancient. Although it is not perfect, I don't really miss anything about it.)
But with hardware it is different. A Jupiter 8 or Oberheim already sounded very good decades ago. There is little to improve about the sound.

I don't want to use one of those complex super-synths. The excess of features repels me.

No, people are not pathetic, they simply like emulations. Many of the users could not afford the hardware, but now they get the authentic sound for 100 bucks or so.

Dune is much more complex than Legend, i.e. more programming effort, hence more expensive.
Legend is still pretty limited despite a few add-on's, but it doesn't matter, it is all about the sound.

I know complex pads, but they don't really fit well. They draw too much attention in my view. They sound good on their own, like when playing the synth alone. But in a song, no thanks.
I prefer subtle pads in the background. Like on the second version of Chris in this video, from 3:57 on, love those synths:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNbWz8e11MA

If you find Jazz Bass, Strat, pianos etc. awful, we really live on different planets :) Makes me wonder, what is left?

No, I don't believe in creators, I am an atheist.

Not at all, the music I like and listen to usually does not use samples. I mean, I am not categorically against samples, but I prefer their absence.


You know, you seem to have a very different idea of the role of music in people's lives. For most people music is just a vehicle and storage space for their memories and emotions, they don't care about the technical side of it. That's why almost all people cherish the music they happened to listen to when they were young, had their lives ahead of them, their bodies full of hormones, were in love for the first time, got married, had their children. Those events get much rarer as people age, so the music that is around when they are 40 or 50 or 60 just doesn't have that meaning anymore.
I observe it in myself: The music of my youth will always be MY music. On the rare occasions I hear a modern song now that I like, that liking fades away quickly because I am getting old and don't have any memories associated with those songs.

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e-crooner wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2020 6:08 pm You know, you seem to have a very different idea of the role of music in people's lives. For most people music is just a vehicle and storage space for their memories and emotions, they don't care about the technical side of it. That's why almost all people cherish the music they happened to listen to when they were young, had their lives ahead of them, their bodies full of hormones, were in love for the first time, got married, had their children. Those events get much rarer as people age, so the music that is around when they are 40 or 50 or 60 just doesn't have that meaning anymore.
I observe it in myself: The music of my youth will always be MY music. On the rare occasions I hear a modern song now that I like, that liking fades away quickly because I am getting old and don't have any memories associated with those songs.
This has to be one of the saddest things I've read in a long time coming from someone who says they are a musician. I get for "normal" people their music tastes don't change as much (though for most of the people I know and talk to about music that isn't true, for some yes but the majority no) but for a musician to be stuck in the time period of their youth really is disturbing to me. I am almost 50 now, and grew up in the 80s. I still listen to 80s music but my tastes in music have evolved A LOT since then and have branched out in many, many directions. There is a hell of a lot of good music out there these days and its so much easier to find now due to the many ways we now have of streaming, buying ,etc.

You and Bones keep going back and forth about how you don't like this or don't like that. This is noise. Those people are stupid because they don't think what I do. Two of the most "un-musician" musicians I think I have ever read/spoken to.

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rezoneight wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2020 3:56 pmThis is such a dick comment. Or maybe most people have different reasons than you for buying those authentic emulations of old hardware?
Very likely but they would be stupid, pathetic reasons, not reasons I could respect.
Don't know about Synapse but U-He most definitely does *not* sell their emulations much more cheaply. Think you need to take a look at their product page again.
Of course they do - you get two synths for the price of one when you buy RePro.
It has absolutely nothing to do with anyone being stupid.
Says the man who can't work out that two synths for the price of one is cheaper. (Just sayin'...)
Jesus man there are a ton of reasons. One, most of these hardware of software emulations still provide stuff the old ones didn't. Two, because people got digital fever and IMHO the business went in a bad direction (ie: terrible user interfaces). Thankfully that trend reversed as people realized that yeah, the "old way" was better.
Those are more compelling arguments for using virtual instruments and/or any modern synth with a knob-per-function interface, like a Minilogue or Argon 8.
It's wonderful we have a great market that supports everyone's needs.
I think you mean a market that's happy to exploit people's stupidity. We all know what P.T. Barnum said and in the words of H.L. Mencken "No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people."
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BONES wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2020 9:17 pm
rezoneight wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2020 3:56 pm
Don't know about Synapse but U-He most definitely does *not* sell their emulations much more cheaply. Think you need to take a look at their product page again.
Of course they do - you get two synths for the price of one when you buy RePro.
You get "two synths for the price of one" because 5 was a generous freebie because they're cool guys and it was probably pretty easy to do. They were already 3/4s of the way there with Repro-1. It's not like they included two completely different emulations for 160USD. Its similar to The Legend in the way it expands the abilities of the core monophonic emulation, it just happens to be in two plugins vs one like The Legend. Diva is their second-most expensive product and it most certainly is an analog emulation.

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I had to give this some thought, but I guess in the past year I’ve used the Haken Continuum more than any other synth.
Incomplete list of my gear: 1/8" audio input jack.

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That may all be true but I'm sure they would have asked more if they thought the market could bear it. They run a business, after all, not a charity. DiscoDSP give away their Oberheim emulation.
e-crooner wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2020 5:25 pmYes, but it still depends on what the orchestra plays. And that content doesn't change just because it is a live performance.
My point is that it doesn't matter. I couldn't listen to a recording of any classical piece, it's boring as batshit, but I enjoy going to see an orchestra perform and have been doing it a couple of times a year recently.
Every instrument sounds more interesting live, be it electric bass or whatever.
I don't find that at all. There are tons of reasons I love to see live music but it sounding better isn't any of them.
The reason Maze are not popular in Australia is simply that Australia is a white country. Just like Maze are not popular in Idaho I suppose :hihi:
That sounds very racist. Michael Jackson was massively popular here, as were Earth Wind & Fire, Hot Chocolate, Bob Marley, Aretha Franklin, Shirley Bassey... the list is almost endless (but does not include Maze).
e-crooner wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2020 6:08 pmNever heard of Killing Joke. But if you say so...
I prefer artists who are loyal to their style, which does not exclude subtle changes, though.
I prefer artists who do whatever the hell they want to do, like The Beatles. That's how things change, maybe for the better, maybe not, but when things stagnate like they have over the last 20-25 years, any change is good.
A Jupiter 8 or Oberheim already sounded very good decades ago. There is little to improve about the sound.
A Jupiter 8 or Oberheim sounded good in it's day but cannot hope to compete today. I used to love several bands who had Jupiter 8s, back in the day, so I jumped at the chance to get the Roland Boutique JP08, only to discover that it was pretty lame. I sold it on pretty quickly. I am also a big fan of the Oberheim sound but I'm not stupid enough to think I need an Oberheim synth to get it. SimSynth 2 in Fruityloops, way back at the turn of the century before it had VSTi support, had a very nice Oberheim-like sound and I quite like the SEM filter types in Pigments, too.
I don't want to use one of those complex super-synths. The excess of features repels me.
Yeah, I am very much the same way but the alternatives are, sadly, even more repellent.
Dune is much more complex than Legend, i.e. more programming effort, hence more expensive.
I don't know, having beta tested through the development of both, I think they both required a shit-ton of work. When you are making a synth that doesn't have to sound like anything else, it's probably a lot easier than trying to keep purists happy with an emulation.
I prefer subtle pads in the background. Like on the second version of Chris in this video, from 3:57 on, love those synths:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNbWz8e11MA
That sounds like something you could make just as well on any crappy freeware synth you care to name. It's quite thin, so you don't need great oscillators, and it's not pushing the filter at all, so any old filter design will do.
Not at all, the music I like and listen to usually does not use samples. I mean, I am not categorically against samples, but I prefer their absence.
Whereas I don't give a shit. If it's good music, it should make no difference how it was made.
You know, you seem to have a very different idea of the role of music in people's lives. For most people music is just a vehicle and storage space for their memories and emotions, they don't care about the technical side of it.
Sure, but we're not those people. We make music, so the technical side of it should matter to us.
That's why almost all people cherish the music they happened to listen to when they were young, had their lives ahead of them, their bodies full of hormones, were in love for the first time, got married, had their children.
Shallow,mindless drones. Not exactly my target audience.
Those events get much rarer as people age, so the music that is around when they are 40 or 50 or 60 just doesn't have that meaning anymore.
How sad for those people.
The music of my youth will always be MY music.
No, that was someone else's music. Your music should be the music made by people your age, people who rejected the music of their youth in favour of something of their own. For me that was Punk but there was an ethos behind that, of rejecting the norms on principle and doing things your own way. If I want to be true to MY music, I must also be true to the ethos that underpins it.
On the rare occasions I hear a modern song now that I like, that liking fades away quickly because I am getting old and don't have any memories associated with those songs.
That says to me that those songs don't connect with you emotionally, that the only value of the music you like is the memories attached to it. Music runs much deeper than that for me. It is all about the emotions it evokes. Yes, when I hear Supercharge's You Gotta Get Up and Dance it makes me remember carefree holidays on the coast as a horny teenager but that can't compete with the powerful emotions stirred by Killing Joke's Requiem, even though listening to that song doesn't evoke any particular memories for me at all. It connects far more deeply than that which is why vacuous love songs never make any impact on me.
Last edited by BONES on Tue Jan 21, 2020 12:06 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Would anyone be the least bit surprised if I said 'Yoshimi'? :D
And that's for the last 10 years :hyper:
It wasn't me! (well, actually, it probably was) - apparently now an 'elderly' so maybe I forgot!

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SiloCybin wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2020 5:07 pm [Mod edit: quoted post removed.]
I am not sure how this relates to the topic. Then we have the bilateral rants going on. I think the mods should lock this thread as it no longer relates to the OT.

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actually I have been on the verge for a while, but not locking it permanently...I would like to see it get back on topic and stop the you statements.
The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another's world. It requires profound, purpose‐larger‐than‐the‐self kind of understanding.

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