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For as much as I really really want to, I just cannot fall in love with any of them. I tried. I like some of them, but love none of them. Some of them are worth the price, most of them are not.

Native Instruments: Where to start, oh how i hate battery and how it cut off my initial transients on my samples that I paid big bucks on. This was battery 2 and 3, have not tried 4. I do like kontakt only because of how seamless it loads my akai sample lib that i had from the old days. But that is it. Massive sounds like a plastic toy. Pro 53 is meh, FM8 and 7 were decent, Absynth is meh because it aliases so bad, reaktor is good prb it takes too many licks to get to the center of the tootsie pop. Razor is kinda cool. Their sample Libs are pretty good tho, i mean like the pianos, i like the bosendorfer NI thingy. But over all is komplete worth getting? Maschine? I find the sounds uninspiring. Machine is a daw made by company who makes blah. Why use that when i can use groove agent one in cubase or renoise?

Arturia: Samey same. All the plugins have this samey same sound no matter what. The osc never seems to have character, and the filters barely have any usually. It sounds so sterile. Sure with some compressors I can make them more lively, still it seems like a lot of work to get them to sound good. Arturia has their bundle on sale, but i still don’t think its worth buying. I just think the envs and the high end sounds strange, the mini moog is fat but it has this wrong shape to the sound, the envs are just whack.

FXpansion: Decent but still kind of sterile. Guru and geist are kind of cool but kind of a pain in the ass and not easy to figure out. They are having a sale now and I would say now is the time to buy their stuff, its priced right, with out the sale it is not.

Adam Szabo: JP6K is 25 euros and worth every bit of it. This is a must buy.

Spectrasonics: The best, and I mean the best plugins to have, they sample really good analog and digital synths. Omisphere and Trillian are brilliant and I cannot recommend these enough. worth every penny.

U-he: Over Priced. Again I try to fall in love with all the hype, then i get the stuff and try it, Ace, I can never get it to sound good in a mix. Diva is an elephant and the envs and osc sounds strange and mushy. Filters are ok, but the envs and osc are blah. Zebra bores me. The only thing they made that I liked is free and it is called Tyrell Nexus 6, to me it sounds like the mks 80. This thing is a beast, sharp sounding and cutting, and the osc and filters sounds good, i like the envs as well. So save your money, just get Tyrell Nexus 6.

CamelAudio: Alchemy. I wanted to love you, then I got a korg micro-X and Kronos and just could not love you..

Lennar Digital: Sylenth 1, in my opinion the best VA VST on the market. Killer built in fx, very nice sounding osc, and a great filter. Killer on leads, arps and plucked sounds. Great pads as well. Very cool arps. Like it so much it is very Roland sounding. Musical and vibrant and cuts through the mix very well. Kind of sucks at fat bass though. Worth Every Penny.

Christopher Gill: Superwave Trance Pro, I love it, its not the best sounding, but love it for arps. Jp8000 emu, but it cannot do pads and strings as well as the real jp8000. Still so cheap and worthy every penny.

Ohm Force: Minimosta: Sounds like a boxy minimoog, has more character than the arturia stuff, but still seems flat against the creamware stuff or the real thing… Pass. Buy a slim phatty or a Sub Phatty.

SonicProjects: Op-x pro II is the fucking bomb. THE BEST SOUNDING VST on the planet. Sounds so Vintage and does amazing strings, pads, leads and bass, and the filter sounds great. It clobbers Diva…. Its on sale now for 75 euros. GO BUY IT before dec 28th..

Synapse Audio: Dune synth. This is OK. Not great, not bad. A lot of usable sounds. For the money it is pretty good, 99 usd. I recommend it. Still there is no VST bass monster besides trillian.

TAL: This shit is the bomb, and its free, the Uno 60 is pretty damn good for a VST, it sits in the mix well, no its not super vintage, but kinda close. Tal Noisemaker is AMAZING. Free, go get them now. I also discovered the U-no_lx, its 60 bucks and they nail the juno 106 sound, cept the bass is not as fat, but the character and tone is on the money.

Tone2: Gladiator. I must say that I do like their stuff. Gladiator is ok. not stellar, but not crap. Very good sound set, but the sound is kinda meh. I think its worth about 70 dollars they are very much over charging for all of their products. Esp when tyrell nexus 6 and Tal noise maker are free and kick the shit tone wise out of this stuff. Saurus sounds ok, and i really like Nemesis, They are all over priced. If they had a bundle with Saurus, Gladiator and Nemesis for 250, I would buy it. Lower your price and I will endorse you products, they sound better than arturia, and native instruments, but not as good as tyrell and TAL or OPX.

Xils Labs: Syphinx: Where’s the beef? That seems to be the problem with all these high end VA things. But, the multimode filter on this thing does sound bad ass. Still wish it was $100 and no dongle, I hate those things so i say forget this and get the OPX, or use TAL noise maker or Tyrel Nexus 6.

Korg: Legacy Analog and Digital. Analog lack presets, breaks up when you play it high, and lacks any low end punch. Digital, flat, and boring. The MDE-X Fx are grandiose though, simply amazing for ITB fx.

So bottom line. For me Spectrasonics Omnisphere and Trillian. Superwave, Jp6k, Tyrel Nexus 6, Tal Noisemaker, Uno 60, Sylenth1, Are the must use VSTs. I can make an LP with just these and a DAW, Cubase or Renoise. Still I need hardware. I need a real analog for bass, love my slim phatty for this. A power house VA like a virus TI, C, B, or a Nordlead 2, or 4, and a couple of Korg Workstations for ambiance general sounds.

Most VST plugins are a joke, they sound like thin plastic. They all have this samey samey sound. The ones that succeed are the ones with good built in fx, great sound programming and decent tone. Only a few cut it in my opinion. Hardware is still a must. There are some VSTs that are great though, and those are the ones that sample hardware And a couple of VAs that are cpu hogs that are free.

For Drums, its Renoise build my own kits inside it. Or Cubase Groove Agent 1, works better than battery and kontakt. Build my own kits in Groove Agent 1, and use pre made kits in halion 1 and groove agent.

FX: Love waves API bundle. Love Duende Bundle, Love Sony Oxford Limiter. Love Korg MDE-X, Love Lexicon PCM. All worth owning.

I wrote this up after many years of using them, and really getting to know them all.

 

Hi Catalyst. What Monitorspeaker and headphones do you use. I am not a pro. Just wonder how to distinguish the sound? Is there no chances to get the desired sound of a synth with some fx?
Lets say you have a bad ( so i mean not good sounding) synth but with some extra filters and/or saturaters, amps etc. it must be achieveable a good sound. Is it really recogniseable when you listen to dancemusic/hip-hop/D&B/Dubstep etc.? What makes the difference? I hear a lot of positive arguments how hardwarestuff sounds better than softsynths. Is it really the case? Do i have to buy a 1000~ Eurostuff to get that fat sound? How can filters be different? Filters are just lovering or boosting some frequencies. And compressors ar just attenuating the level of a sound. So why are so many EQs and Compressors on the marked anyway?

Sorry, here are more questions than one. But the core-question remains same i think.


Cheers

 

Those are great insights! Thank you, it reflects what I was thinking.
After reading it I'm surprised about the Omnisphere. It is very hard to tame this synth!. I assume you are doing own sounds with it, as I do. 100% agree, the raw material is top notch.
The presets are swamped in reverb! What I did, I took a week and re-saved most of the patches (plenty of those there ) with less FX and lower volume (this thing can blast your speakers)
Also surprised about the Zebra. There are some very good programs , especially by Howard (Dark Zebra presets). I do agree about the hype though .

 

Very well review.
As I said before, everything is a big shit these days and costs much, except few stuff you already numbered at the bottom. That's the stuff I like and prefer too.
Omni is number one, and after that Sylenth and now Spire comes alive and can replace sylenth.

Comercials are sucks... well waiten libraray for Kontakt was Output REV, comercial is great - great sound - great music. When I try this library finally I was
They say, it's not just sample reverse... ofcourse, but I can make that sound of flute in Live sampler or Kontakt any time and blend with another guitar reversed sample + put some distorsion and reverb etc...
Nothing special and now I'm thinking, who want's to pay that ?

 

and what about Spire? I didn't notice it here

 

Yes spire is awesome..Catalyst give your opinion!

 

Thank you... but, remember, the way you listen to the sounds, the way you feels music is not necessarily like mine. Sometimes I use DSK SaxophoneZ and sometimes LinPlug SaxLab. Did you know why? Because even if SaxLab is better (...much better), in some case DSK SaxophoneZ give a better 'color' (I know it's a weird word to use)... anyway I appreciate your opinions.



P.S.
The monkey it's me.

 

VAC is an electro band and has nothing to do with Catalyst, right? Or am I missing something?

 

And yet still NOONE outside this community will notice whatever VST you use and most of people listen with earbuds and to mp3 files hell nowadays they even have mp3 in the car stereos..

 

This isn't written by me, it's written by Bryan Erickson of Velvet Acid Christ, that's why I titled it VAC's and used the VAC logo. The guy has been making albums for 2 decades and not sure how long before that he was fiddling with synths. In terms of Spire, I really like it but you all should know that considering I was the one telling everyone about it. I tend to agree with most of his opinions about VST's though. Developers charge WAY too much money for way too much bullshit and build it up with a lot of hype. Personally I love Spectrasonics stuff and if there's a synth to buy it's Omnisphere and Trillian and the Oberheim emulation by Sonic Projects as well as the JP6K which is quite a steal for 25 euros. Then there's so many free offerings that often even rival that of the paid ones. You're right mattmckay I love Reaktor but it does take a long time to get under the hood and really start being productive with it. Sometimes you go in there and wonder what happened to the day.

 

Oh yeah!
There still questions about
money X better workflow x best results
bang-of-a-buck results x best results
cheap synths that you know all x better synths that you must learn more
Virtual clones x orginal
original x clones
style specific x broad band syths
sample x synth
old x new
fashion synths x obscure
and so on...
the pain is everyday changes and we must be a student forever

 

At least it has inspired me to take a look at the good old Noisemaker again.

BTW on their homepage they also say that Sylenth is better than the Virus TI - come on, one can surely like the Sylenth more, but better then the Virus?

In comparison Sylenth is a rahter primitive synth. Nothing beats the Virus in that special sound domain the Virus is reigning (if you know what I mean).

 

Yeah I don't think any ITB gear can beat a Virus but I think what he links is the fact that that kind of sound is achievable in the software domain at a low price point. If you're talking cost to benefit you can't beat Sylenth. I actually made mention in another conversation with lowpass who said that all the synths you ever need are Massive, Nexus and Sylenth and stated that two of those are extremely limited and I was referring to Nexus and Sylenth. By the way where do you see that he says it's better than a TI? He was talking about the Nord Lead 4 hardware vs a Virus.

 

Spectrasonics stuff...downloading Omni and Trillian as we write...but 33TB for a bass synth, really? lol

 

Ofcourse nothing can beat hardware... look at that in this way

Code:

analog module with oscilators -> analog filters -> analog amp -> DAC output (with secret spice, integrated saturaror, eq and compressor)

Access, like Roland, and Waldorf and all others has own a secret spice in DAC section in output section.

When you put Virus output in mixer input, sound is warm but it's not distorted, like other hardware. And you never get that sound with VST, maybe maybe with a lot thins on channel chain

1. Sylenth1 (near settings to virus)
2. EQ
3. Compressor
4. Saturator
5. maybe a little distortion
6. etc...

And why we not open a thread like challenge, if someone has it own Virus, to put audio and all the settings of preset, so we can try to replicate sound in Sylenth1, Spire, Massive, Zebra, etc... just to reveal Virus

it's not only synth bass, there is a real bass indeed, don't forget that

And you can still use Trilogy, it's 3Gb, without extra extra live basses.

 

Omnisphere and Trillian are really great and very diverse, a lot of bang for your buck especially when you factor in the killer synthesis section and wide choice of filters. They sample classic gear but also do more out of the box stuff like the Burning Piano. If you also get Stylus Rmx but use it with your own samples and loops you can do some cool stuff. Diskonnekted like to make use of RMX and if you can get an actual copy of that issue of Beat magazine you get samples designed by the band which is cool. I've been trying to get my hands on that for a while but it's in German so not exactly useful when I can't read it. Still want the samples though. By the way Spectrasonics are supposedly hard at work on some interesting developments. Wonder what's next.

 

What is the fuss about access virus anyway? sound for me not different than other softsynths.

 

And I don't know if you know but Eric Persing the founder of Spectrasonics created patches for a lot of hardware synths and invented the Hoover sound. There is a patch called I believe Mother Of Hoover in Omnisphere and it's fucking badass.

 

Punch, warm and accent in overall sound, that's all. You are right in common, but there is a other truth, when you "not" having something, that "something" is better
I believe, if I have own Virus, I will create lot of sounds with soft synths again I would rather like to have some modular synth hardware with a pile of wires...

 

Nice round up I agree about the Korg VST as I own a vintage MS-20. I'm currently dreaming about a Moog Voyager XL to get authentic bass sounds and leads

I've posted about this before, with any synth it's what you do with the sounds that matters. I always process my VST synths, and I even send them to my outboard Warm Audio Tone Beast pres for some warming/distortion.

>>>

See what a bit of reverb does