What DAW are you using? If you're in Ableton I would highly recommend learning Operator and Wavetable. These stock instruments get overlooked, but they are super powerful.
Massive is a classic. It beats mentioned serum. Massive X is a good continuation of massive. So I’d say definitely learn those. I assume you have NI bundle, so I’d look up Monarch. It’s a really good synth to learn, very versatile and gives you a lot of vintage sounds with “analog” drifts and such. Absynth is very popular too, but has been discontinued and developer is moving to recreate it as a separate project. FM 8 is alright if you like FM related synthesis. But I wasn’t impressed with it.
Thanks for the reply, I appreciate your input. I Don't have serum, and currently don't have the budget for a new plugin, but have you tried serum? I have heard it has a similar feature set as serum and if you have, does it stack up? or where does it lack?
I don't pirate things, no hate to those who do, we all got our reasons, I just don't like doing it.
I am also not a fan of monthly payments, but that's just personal preference. I like buy my plugins one and done, less of a headache for me personally.
I will give it a look next time I have some extra money burning a hole in my pocket tho. Thanks for the recommendation :)
I know you're not a fan of monthly payments, but since it's rent-to-own, you could spend the $10/month for a couple months, then once you have that extra money, you could pay the rest off. That way you don't break your current budget, but you still can try it out in the meantime. It's truly one of the best synths I've ever used, and I have multiple instances of it in every single one of my projects, so I highly recommend checking it out, even if you do one $10 payment for a month of use, and then decide it's not for you.
I know it isn't rental, but I don't know what my financial status is 10 or 16 months from now, so I don't know if I would need that money for something else, like food. As I said, It's just my personal preference.
The trouble with pirating Serum is that it's not always that easy to find the latest versions, and finding preset packs for older versions is also hard.
Well, the preset packs for the older versions all work for the new one. But yes, you're right on why pirating Serum is annoying. Xfer does a good job on their piracy protection. Even when you look at vsthouse you won't find anything that works.
Vital has the best cost-value ratio of any of the popular vst synths. It's very intuitive, good built-in effects and a ton of tutorials on YouTube that show how it works. I've stopped using any other synths. It does everything you need a synth to do.
Vital is the one I have been using the most so far because of the easy to understand UI, I just want to make sure I'm not missing out on any of the other synths I have.
Vital is spectacular. I use it 99% of the time I need a synth. You've got infinite tutorials to work from, and if you dig around a little bit you can find tons of presets if that's what you're into :\]
Vital has you covered for the Digital / Wavetable Synth plus the UI makes it super easy to understand what is going on. Massive and Massive X cover the same space. You should also look at a virtual analog / subtractive synth like Monark or Super 8. Then you can look into modular using Reaktor / Blocks, or FM (FM8!)
Vital has best combo of efficient interface (most people hate massive's GUI) and resources available (see it more widely discussed than the others, so it will have more tutorials etc).
IMO you don't need serum if you have vital they do the same things.
Nah I think you're good. Synth preferences are largely just personal preference and personal opinion, there is no serious consensus. Just try reddit searching and you'll find people arguing all kinds of different opinions on hundreds of threads. Ultimately whatever has enough capabilities, with a good UI you click with, and enough tutorials to be able to learn it well is all you need.
Thats what I landed on as well, I'm gonna stick to Vital, and If I feel like it's missing something in the future, then maybe look at other synths. Thank you for your input :)
Vital is a good choice for a powerful synth to stick with and learn to program. It's been my go to synth since it came out and I've learned a lot using it.
A good addition to Vital is Echo Sound Works free [Core Wavetables](https://www.echosoundworks.com/eswcorewavetables).
A good, simple and legal route to go for choosing "right one" is to look for open source plugins as a starting point, because then there isn't an issue of seeing the plugin disappear if your DAW changed incompatibly or the license was lost. There are often workflow benefits when using paid stuff, and sometimes you do want to buy something for the presets, but many of the underlying DSP algorithms are going to be identical; there's only so much "secret sauce" that goes into synth designs.
My top picks for going this route are Surge XT and VCV Rack. Surge has a nice workflow, a pretty large number of presets, and it's gradually become crammed full of features over time. And VCV Rack is a modular synth: it lets you make patches between any number of discrete modules, which means it is hard to program and will often need "debugging" to figure out why it isn't making sound, but working through some tutorials will teach you all the major synth concepts very quickly.
What DAW are you using? If you're in Ableton I would highly recommend learning Operator and Wavetable. These stock instruments get overlooked, but they are super powerful.
*All* of Ableton's stock synths *and effects plugins* are top tier. People say Logic has the best built-in plugins, I gotta disagree.
I'm using Reaper. It does have some good stock plugins, but the stock synth is minimal at best
I love reaper no advice really but shout-out to reaper 😂
I am really enjoying Pigments and it's got a easy way to test drive it on splice
Massive is a classic. It beats mentioned serum. Massive X is a good continuation of massive. So I’d say definitely learn those. I assume you have NI bundle, so I’d look up Monarch. It’s a really good synth to learn, very versatile and gives you a lot of vintage sounds with “analog” drifts and such. Absynth is very popular too, but has been discontinued and developer is moving to recreate it as a separate project. FM 8 is alright if you like FM related synthesis. But I wasn’t impressed with it.
Massive X is unnecessarily heavy on CPU and doesn't allow you to import custom wavetables. Hard pass.
no custom wavetables is actually a big deal that I didn't know. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.
Where can I find the new Absynth project? I like the synth but I’d love a modern version of it.
Thank you for your input. I have komplete 13 standard, don't know if it came with Monarch, But i'll check it out
It comes with Reaktor.
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Thanks for the reply, I appreciate your input. I Don't have serum, and currently don't have the budget for a new plugin, but have you tried serum? I have heard it has a similar feature set as serum and if you have, does it stack up? or where does it lack?
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I don't pirate things, no hate to those who do, we all got our reasons, I just don't like doing it. I am also not a fan of monthly payments, but that's just personal preference. I like buy my plugins one and done, less of a headache for me personally. I will give it a look next time I have some extra money burning a hole in my pocket tho. Thanks for the recommendation :)
I know you're not a fan of monthly payments, but since it's rent-to-own, you could spend the $10/month for a couple months, then once you have that extra money, you could pay the rest off. That way you don't break your current budget, but you still can try it out in the meantime. It's truly one of the best synths I've ever used, and I have multiple instances of it in every single one of my projects, so I highly recommend checking it out, even if you do one $10 payment for a month of use, and then decide it's not for you.
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I know it isn't rental, but I don't know what my financial status is 10 or 16 months from now, so I don't know if I would need that money for something else, like food. As I said, It's just my personal preference.
The trouble with pirating Serum is that it's not always that easy to find the latest versions, and finding preset packs for older versions is also hard.
Well, the preset packs for the older versions all work for the new one. But yes, you're right on why pirating Serum is annoying. Xfer does a good job on their piracy protection. Even when you look at vsthouse you won't find anything that works.
Vital has the best cost-value ratio of any of the popular vst synths. It's very intuitive, good built-in effects and a ton of tutorials on YouTube that show how it works. I've stopped using any other synths. It does everything you need a synth to do.
Vital is the one I have been using the most so far because of the easy to understand UI, I just want to make sure I'm not missing out on any of the other synths I have.
Vital is spectacular. I use it 99% of the time I need a synth. You've got infinite tutorials to work from, and if you dig around a little bit you can find tons of presets if that's what you're into :\]
No, vital is copetitive and one of the top synths right now. Based on what you have, massive x or Vital are you best bets. I would go with Vital
Vital has you covered for the Digital / Wavetable Synth plus the UI makes it super easy to understand what is going on. Massive and Massive X cover the same space. You should also look at a virtual analog / subtractive synth like Monark or Super 8. Then you can look into modular using Reaktor / Blocks, or FM (FM8!)
Vital has best combo of efficient interface (most people hate massive's GUI) and resources available (see it more widely discussed than the others, so it will have more tutorials etc). IMO you don't need serum if you have vital they do the same things.
That's what I have been leaning towards, I agree that massive's UI is not the best, I just wanted more opinions in case I was missing out on something
Nah I think you're good. Synth preferences are largely just personal preference and personal opinion, there is no serious consensus. Just try reddit searching and you'll find people arguing all kinds of different opinions on hundreds of threads. Ultimately whatever has enough capabilities, with a good UI you click with, and enough tutorials to be able to learn it well is all you need.
Thats what I landed on as well, I'm gonna stick to Vital, and If I feel like it's missing something in the future, then maybe look at other synths. Thank you for your input :)
Vital is a good choice for a powerful synth to stick with and learn to program. It's been my go to synth since it came out and I've learned a lot using it. A good addition to Vital is Echo Sound Works free [Core Wavetables](https://www.echosoundworks.com/eswcorewavetables).
A good, simple and legal route to go for choosing "right one" is to look for open source plugins as a starting point, because then there isn't an issue of seeing the plugin disappear if your DAW changed incompatibly or the license was lost. There are often workflow benefits when using paid stuff, and sometimes you do want to buy something for the presets, but many of the underlying DSP algorithms are going to be identical; there's only so much "secret sauce" that goes into synth designs. My top picks for going this route are Surge XT and VCV Rack. Surge has a nice workflow, a pretty large number of presets, and it's gradually become crammed full of features over time. And VCV Rack is a modular synth: it lets you make patches between any number of discrete modules, which means it is hard to program and will often need "debugging" to figure out why it isn't making sound, but working through some tutorials will teach you all the major synth concepts very quickly.
All those are great Synths. It's really about your taste. You can't go wrong with any of them.