To my ears, they sound slightly digital, but overall pretty good for what they are trying to do. However, there is virtually no mention of them being used in the soft synth World where the likes of Serum, Massive, Sylenth and Nexus dominate.

Just wondering whether anybody uses these Waves soft synths?

 

Why you care? do some music right now!
For a good musician is mandatory know the tools but most go with DJ preset bank. Thats why exist so much shit and rare good music.
Waves is begging with synths, yes they are digital but Nexus and Sylent1 too.
We live in a paradise of tools; Test, delete or keep (mostly delete please)...

 

Because I'm interested in music tech. Which is the reason why so many website and magazines review these tech stuffs for us.

Sheesh. Slightly aggressive response there for a simple question

I am perfectly fine making music. And am au fait with soft synths I like and so on. No harm in being curious about other stuff!

 

yep
they're good.

 

Cool how hes making his own wavetables with his modular rack.

 

way better than my comment ( tbh, I thought about mentioning this video, but I was too lazy to go for it )

 

I love all those synths you mentioned. Codex is my least used but when I do use it, I use it for bass. For anything focused above 150 HZ, honestly, you'll get gnarlier sounds out of iOS Nave than Codex.
For some reason, my Spire patches, as beautiful as they can be, sound like they came from Nexus. I made Massive my bitch and she still shows me love to this day. A Massive patch is quite distinctly a "Massive" patch.
I think Codex tries to be a "jack of all trades" and ends up being a master of none. Serum and Massive especially, have their own characteristics.
To anyone else but myself, everything I said is irrelevant because they're all tools. Find new ways to use them. Pushing envelopes and all that.

*Serum has awe-inspiring envelopes
*Sylenth is like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. Tacky as fnck to some but an undeniable heart of gold.

 

that's fine for CODEX cuz it's wavetable synth, but why Element sounds digital?

 

I don't have compared about sounding, but Waves CODEX and Waldorf Nave have similar GUI (in particular oscillators) in my opinion.

 

Hi Pinkman, strangely I've never found good sounds from Spire, assuming it's too "digital", too cold. Tested with default presets (5 banks) and many expansions banks (found from sister website). Honnestly I prefer - for example - Sylenth1, but it's only my opinion, maybe I'm wrong (it's possible).
Cheers.

 

Last edited: May 31, 2017

My method to install Waves plugins, humm... in fact, CODEX is always installed...

 

opinions cannot be wrong , But I do disagree. and find spire to have the biggest balls of these synths.
where massive really got sharp edges, what I do like from time to time but not really fits my genre.
(mainly hip-hop/trap)

And sylenth1 got the best tweak-ability in my opinion (totally subjective but I like the ratio's on all knobs)

 

They're both pretty good -- I believe CODEX is supposed to be a digital emulation, whereas Element is supposed to be an analog synth emulation. That said, their sounds overlap a bit, but either one is extremely usable.

Another unsung synth VI is Melda's MPowerSynth, which I'd put in the same category as CODEX and Element.

 

Well, the real reason is people who are obsessed around sound design jump plugins really often and they already got bored of even Serum and moved on to even crazier things. The people who use things like CODEX or Element are the ones doing efficient work, who value familiarity and a quick workflow with not much messing about. These kind of people don't talk around on forums or make youtube videos, hence why you don't hear about the plugins very often. Just give the synths a go and if they work for you, use them. That's it. If it sounds, it is good - you don't need opinions from people of the internet to agree or disagree with you. It's all about what works in your workflow for your music.

 

I like them! I find them most useful as additives rather than leads

 

The meaning of "efficient work" depends on your style of music imho. If you just need a pad for your country pop song, just go through some presets of any synth and use the first you like. But that's different in "EDM". Sure there's a lot of "loop music", but some of the better artists are doing beautiful things with beautiful synths.
But even that electronic stuff does not depend on a specific softsynth, that's just a matter what you feel comfortable with. To write or record I have no problem to use what's there at a certain time or place. But if you let me choose I'll personally would prefer a combination of Repro and Serum over the other stuff I've tried. Completed by some sampled instruments for drums and bread-and-butter-sounds.
(And there are times when I'm less efficient and sampling my hardware.)

Back on topic: Element and Codex I missed (may have tried them), I don't care for Massive, Sylenth and Nexus anyway, found what I like, now I'll be efficient...

 

"Efficient work" doesn't mean not working at all. I meant these people know their way around 2 or 3 synths and that's all they need, because they know where everything is and they can use their tools fast - technology doesn't slow them down.

Exactly. Learning your tools well is the most important thing ever

 

They are used more than you may be aware of. Think of them as hybrid analog/digital synths. Combined with the internal parameter linking and a DAW that can control any of the automatable functions (Reaper), you can come up with some very unique (signature) production sounds.

Much more useful & cpu friendly than Waves other rompler offerings.