I am looking for a suggestion on a specific type of VST. I don't care about being able to model the sound too much myself, but rather am interested in a variety of high quality out of the box presets. As well as something that is resource friendly, performs very well with multiple tracks.

Any suggestions appreciated

 

High-end synths like Sylenth1 Zebra and similar have good presets out of the box my favorite vst is the legend Synth1 mountains of presets almost 0% cpu utilization

 

Zebra 2, Massive (or Massive X), and Surge spring to mind.

Aside from Zebra, a lot of u-he gear has a lot of good presets, for instance Hive or Repro.

 

CPU friendly, versatile and easy to use... that would be samplers.

 

If you could specify a bit more which are your goals, in term of genres and sound, it would be easier to help you.
Also, "resources friendly" depends a lot of your computer, so some information about it will help too.

Kv331 Audio Synthmaster, comes with a lot of presets and is resources friendly.

Reveal Sound Spire, also.

Free Surge, is excellent and comes with a lot of presets

Free Dexed, may not appear so versatile but have a huge collection of presets, and can load any dx7 presets too.

 

If your DAW has any synth/generator instruments, those would be ones to look at first.

 

Serum. 922940734939 preset packs out there. or Ableton Live stock instruments. Combination of the 2 covered 80% of what planet earth can offer you I guess.

Spoiler: The other 20%

reFX Nexus 3

 

Last edited: Jan 20, 2021

come to my mind sugar bytes Obscurium !! completely out-of-the-box preset synth! have fun!

 

Hmmmmmm...

 

Don't

 

Good input showing your taste but without going fanboy. Well done.

 

I was looking at moving to Studio One so wanted to move away from Ableton instruments. Thanks Ill look at Serum

 

Yeah - it is a good thing to be familiar with some 3rd party VSTi so that switching DAW is not a loss of everything.

 

Omnisphere has some of the best presets you'll find if you don't design yourself.
If you do start designing sounds, one instance of Omnisphere has 8 channels that can each load different presets or each channel can have 4 voices (synth or sample). Each channel also has it's own FX inserts and ARP.
With decent hardware you can load dozens upon dozens.
It will take up a lot of space.

 

I'll list some that I find useful

1. xFER Serum - this is the most versatile, pretty much everything you need. Tons of preset packs as well.
2. Arturia Pigments - kinda heavy on CPU but has cool modulation options and a lot features, sequencer etc.
3. Massive X - loads of preset packs, but also kinda heavy on CPU (on load) especially if you have massive presets library.
4. uHe Diva - this is one of my favourite. awesome classic oscillators. also hundreds of preset packs
5. Sonic Academy Ana 2 - if you are Ableton user, you will find this useful. has built in sampler.
6. Togu Audio Line synths (4-5 emulations including a sampler) - lightweight classic emulations but sound good IMO.
7. Reveal Sound Spire - rarely using this one, but the one at the sister site comes with tons of presets.
8. Softube Monument Bass - my new favourite for anything bass now.
9. FAW Sublab or Sonic Academy Kick 2 - for 808, bass anything no treble.
10. Scaler 2 - this is cheat synth (not really a synth) but so good at what it does, if you are looking for something like that.

 

I must add that, if your computer can handle Serum, then have a look at Vital, which is free, comes with hundreds of presets and growing, and can do the same as Serum.

But I would not say that neither Serum or Vital are light on ressources.

 

Yeah, for the record, that's why I stressed in my post that it runs great for me.. "BUT.. I have a high end PC". Someone else's mileage will vary. I didn't mean to imply it's light on resources though, just that it runs very well for me. And I know you are replying to Serum recommendations as a whole, not just me.. just saying

Personally, I have found Serum runs a lot better than something like Diva, Omnisphere and other resource heavy synths (which sucks, because DIVA is actually REALLY my fave synth, but some presets have serious dropouts for me and I find it unstable, so I've avoided it completely). Serum might run a lot worse for the OP or other people. They would have to give a shot and find out.

I've definitely seen complaints out there over Serum performance, so I don't deny it's possibly CPU heavy. I think it's something where a person might just have to give it a shot on their own and see how well it runs for them, and of course will depend on hardware specs.

And yeah.. Vital.. also recommended that one. I like it. Pretty much a Serum clone, but will take some time before it has the huge library of samples like Serum. The great thing of course is that if you can do your own sound design, you can duplicate Serum stuff in Vital, since the same wavetables can be used in both, and it has all the lfo/envelopes automation, fx, etc at your disposal too.

 

Last edited: Jan 21, 2021