Best builtin synth are
Europa - Very good wavetable
Grain - one of the best granulators
Malstrom - unbeatable for old school sounds
Thor - subtractive monster
REASON - worst DAW

 

Its factory presets are boring, but the banks I found just yesterday are cool!

 

Yes, sorry, but Surge, Surge XT as well as, Vital, Dexed are blacklisted by my OS Win7/64

 

How is this possible?
I used Vital and Surge while I was still using win 7, they worked fine.
What's your DAW?

 

Wot? Vital is officially Win10, that's correct, but this does not necessarily mean you need it, Surge is officially min WiN7 (and worked here on WiN7) and Dexed doesn't even mention a specific WiN version.

 

Looking at iPhones and iPads, the Obsidian synth inside Nanostudio 2 is a surprisingly capable synth with analog, wavetable, FM/Phase Distortion and multisample support and a very good modulation matrix.
And it's a joy to use.
It's certainly not the one to replace the best desktop synths but surely one that I have with me no matter where I am.

 

This looks pretty heavily influenced by Alchemy. Not a ripoff of it at all, but a good bit more than just having a similar Apple/Logic look to it. The Perform Page may be one of the better examples of it. (first look at this for me).

I'm not sure of the pecking order of any after Alchemy, but i think it still takes the top slot. It is easily just as nice as many third-party synths, but a little resources hungry for a stock plugin. No real surprise there; They bought the company for only it and ~3 main FX plugins to stick into Logic.

 

Seriously? Not one soul is gonna mention Bitwig?

Bitwig is on another level, you can think of it as a synth that also happens to be a DAW.
The stock instruments are pretty solid by themselves, but then you add The Grid which is a modular synth that can interact with any parameter of the DAW you could think of.

In regards to synthesis possibilities, there's no competing with Bitwig IMO.

 

Arturia Buchla easel is capable of delivering
The roland synths are great also
Sugar Bytes Aparillo

 

Yeah, true. I've been meaning to get more into Bitwig because of this.

In fairness, Ableton has Max 4 Live, which has similar (or more) potential, but the learning curve is bigger I think.

 

Really? Is it predecessor of AKAI's Beat MPC (that is DAW itself, but could work as VSTi inside of another DAW)
Will they (Bitwig synths) work with another DAW?
Do they have a bunch of nice factory presets (I ask this, because I didn't use z3ta due the lack of good factory presets)?

 

Yes, Max is way deeper as it's basically a programming language, and can be used outside of Ableton.
I've used my fair share of M4L devices before switching to Bitwig, and I don't think they can compare. M4L is like modding Ableton to the max (hah) but it doesn't give it the endless modulating options that Bitwig has from the get go. With the latest version you can have a single device on a channel that modulates literally everything in the DAW, even the master volume, and every device comes with all those modulators available.
Honestly even the basic stuff can get so deep that I never bothered to learn to use The Grid. I have VCV Rack for my true modular synthesis needs, which can be used as a VSTi so yeah.

It's different. Think of it as a giant synth with every option you can imagine (and many more), but it has a DAW interface and does everything a DAW is supposed to.

They won't work in another DAW, no. However, you can open projects made with other DAWs in Bitwig (not sure which ones, I only tried with Ableton projects). They can be buggy though.

They have TONS of nice presets, and you can find many many more online. There's a pretty active community that keeps uploading some great stuff.

 

Godlike synth! I sold my CS-80 and Jupiter after hearing ReaSynth the first time.

 

Yes, it was. I use it sometimes, but not often, because there are very few decent presets to choose from...
and more, I'm not a sound designer, never was and never will be...
I use ready presets only and just twick them to my needs

 

Because of the modularity, is why it is not mentioned as a "Stock plugin". It's not a self-contained unit when you need the whole DAW to replace just one synth. I have never seen someone refer to an entire Eurorack rig as "a synth" just because it's all inside one case. Especially not when it comes at the expense of rest the entire DAW application getting smoked by Logic and Cubase. It's apples and oranges. Having to add a bunch of stuff (nice that it is free content), by definition is not "Stock".

 

Last edited: Jun 21, 2023

Recent versions of Vital no longer work on Win 7, Dexed and Surge work fine though!

 

I like Retrologue in Cubase. It's a rather decent Minimoog-type synth, not necessarily better than some other commercial options, but decent enough! If you own a Cubase version with Retrologue included, you can also use it in other DAWs, but I wouldn't buy Cubase just to use Retrologue of course.

 

Are you serious lol tons of people refer to Eurorack as synth, specifically modular synthesizer. And not just Eurorack of course, Moog, Buchla, Wiard... The whole thing IS the synth (by that same logic one could argue that a synth like the Minimoog isn't really a synth just because it's in one case, it's a bunch of modules under the hood).

Likewise, Bitwig IS the synth, it just happens to also be a DAW that allows you to use different tools separately if you want to, and tons of other stuff. You can create huge, evolving generative patches without even punching in any MIDI notes, let alone using anything else than whatever you get when you install the thing.
The "stock plugins" in Bitwig could be thought of as pre packaged modules with an interface. Every one of them can be created from scratch by the user.
And you don't have to add a bunch of stuff. It already comes with a ton of samples and presets. All the third party stuff is completely optional.
If that's not a self contained unit, I don't know what is.

 

Yes me too. I've sold a NordLead 3, a Schmidt Eightvoice, and a Moog One - 16