Is there a Surge XT patch bank motherlode

 

Surge sounds utterly awful in every way. I do not understand the appeal when there are free synth that sound good.

 

While I would say to have both, it’s a bit tricky to find the Virus TI firmware to make ostirus run, Surge is ready to go out of the box and is more advanced despite only being bitimbral, nonetheless you still get a very complex monster for free, one of the best free plugins in existence… plus you can have Virus TI wavetables imported into Surge

 

Appreciate the input, folks...

I think I might understand what's going on (and maybe why many synths sound so 'bread-and-butter' or 'shallow' to me), and maybe why U-He's for example, along with few others, might have certain je-ne-sais-quoi's about them (at the 'root' levels) that people pick up on:

Why go through the trouble of emulating the actual chip if it wasn't for its signal flow/architecture that affects the 'signal'/sound?

For the Roland's different chip now, right at the end of one of its YT preview videos (cue at 12:12 in presented video below), they apparently give a hint at 'the trouble', with microscopes and wires and analysis equipment. (This chip may be different from their standpoint where they didn't have the schematics at the outset and so had to 'decrypt' and/or 'reverse engineer' it.)

Here may be another 'hint' from the manual of another synth I like and own:

"We believe that Spectral is an exceptional instrument because of its unique
audio processing capabilities, which result from the fact that we at LinPlug
design most of our audio modules from scratch, sometimes – as in case of
Spectral - following paths no one else would probably even consider." ~ Linplug's Spectral synth's manual

So it might be about the signal, too, and its 'creative' 'flow/paths', not, or not just, the other 'whiz-bang' features 'tacked on'.

 

Last edited: Nov 14, 2025 at 10:57 PM

That’s for the “secret” solution, which might not be accepted everywhere, Surge doesn’t need that kind of extra step and unless you already have a Virus TI, you would have to take the foggy path to the museum like most of us here

 

It's really not that hard and the bins can be found in multiple locations on the net, even including, for example, sometimes on archive.org.

 

There are a few synths-- Vavra, Nord Lead and so on-- The Usual Suspects have done, based on one or more versions of one chip. Now they have ventured into another chip with the Roland.
I think their work is FLOSS, yes? If so, it does beg the question of forks and added features in my mind.

 

Last edited: Nov 14, 2025 at 10:49 PM

That, like Pigments and others, is also about visual feedback of course.

Pet Cat Desert Island Setup:

 

Last edited: Nov 14, 2025 at 10:39 PM

Surge for me, I use it in vcv as well with over sampling. Thing with surge is it has Plaits oscillators & i just really that modern sound in contrast to my analog. Virus is ok its a digital VA reliant on fx, the hardware was very nicely made.

 

Surge on VCV Rack, but I dislike the VST version. Annoying UI. (imho) I've always enjoyed working with a Virus. So i'd have to choose that. The nice thing is however we have a plethora of choice.

 

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Amen to choice!

Regarding Surge plugin vs. Surge modules in VCV/Cardinal... Sure, the UI in Surge is not the greatest, it's been unchanged basically ever since it was payware and could do with a revamp... mean it's nice that we got scalability and skins but that's not enough.

But it's strength is that the patches are self-contained and easier to share. VCV patches (as we all know) are always very individual and idiosyncratic and they're harder to share in a way to be immediately usable if there's more going on than just MIDI note input. With the plugin you can just map the macros and name them, done, good to go.

(group modulators with generators/processors alongside signal flow or separate the control and audio paths? choices, choices)

An aside, BaconPaul's (one of Surge XT's devs, he was behind the VCV modules) other stuff is great too, some great VCV gear and other plugins too (Six Sines, Two Filters), recommended. But this is veering off-topic, sorry.