I just found a new Serum & Vital presets.

https://monosounds.studio/products/noire-serum-vital-analog-presets

I listened to the demos, they sound really good, however, that's the question that stuck in my head tonight.
As a preset Junkie, I spent tons of money on the Serum presets and looks like I wanna try hw synth.

Is it more convenient to use a VSTi than an analogue synth, or are there hw synthesizers that are just as convenient as a VSTi? (let's talk in real budgets, not $5000+ synths)

 

Serum and Vital are great VST, and hard to replace with hardware, but it's a different workflow, so don't expect to do the same as you do in those VST with an hardware synth, especialy an analogue.

The great thing with hardware is the interface, you can move knob that you wouldn't think of with a soft. You usually have more possibility with a VSTi but the interface make it less spontaneous for the creativity.
But VSTi is easy to set up, you open your daw, add the plugin and you can play already. With hardware you have to set up some midi information from the DAW to your synth (if you want to program your note without having to play and records everything) and some audio to go back to your daw so you can record those interaction with the machine.

There is not one better than the other, it's really more like a workflow thing, hardware give you the chance to be more in a "performance mode" when producing, it can help your track moving forward quicker because you have to commit to what you're doing.

VSTi let you tweak and edit or even change the sound totally even when the track is fully done, but it can put you in this "eternal tweaking tunnel" that make you become sick of your track and never finish it.

The good news is that once you got a synth, you can still use VSTi, it's not one world or the other.

The best would be to try for yourself, and see if hardware is good for you. If you got a friend that have a synth you can borrow a week or two, that's great. But it's really something you have to try before knowing it's for you.

 

a (va) ti/ti2 is and was not 5000 dollars brand new. smaller ones, used, etc. you could find a good deal.
the virus is the one that most behaves like a plugin. (one other synth does this?). otherwise you are bouncing audio via cables. virus, you send audio bounces from the device over usb as audio. it is best to realtime render. You can almost check out what it sounds like by using the DSP56300 emulator. But this is with a B/C binary. The # voices, will depend on your processor.


The Bass Station 2 is "analog". about 400$ new. great patch librarian, MIDI control in DAW, etc over USB, but you do have to record audio back into the computer. there are many like this price range also, but BS2 is very good all around deal. real older analog is where things become maintenance concerns. but you can find so many second hand deals on hardware if you have patience.

 

Last edited: Dec 2, 2021

Hm... BS2 looks great, start to research to take it on the test drive
however all this "resample" "recording" process looks kinda time killing

 

If you don't make the music you want with your current soft synths, a hardware will not add more than 5% to your music (if that much). You will have to record everything, you will have to deal with noise, you may not have presets (to recall in projects) - is completely different workflow. Think thrice before adding new components into your setup.

 

That's my hobby Like someone killing his time in the garage fixing youngtimer, I spent 5-6 hours weekly in the DAW
Just another toy to try, however I understand that for example presets I tagged in the 1st post, is much more user friendly then hw.