Hi there, im looking for some 80's retro pop synth packs or samples/presets and Midis, whatever sounds nice and useful please let me know if you have them,

thnx

 

Dr Fink has a couple of sample packs, for Sony

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/drfink

(He was keyboard player for Prince in his heyday. Can hear it,too)

Zenhiser do a few sample packs of 80s drums.....but keybs? dunno.

Midi's? Download Human League midi files, and you good to go. :D

 

@ Prognai,

My suggestions will be only focused on '80's Samples/Presets' or Synth sounds of this era, because for the 'MIDIS' files it exists thousands and thousands of them all along the Internet (but also within specific Libraries), and not necessarily of the 80's.

If you want to get some of these 'glorious' sounds of the 80's, and as you'll certainly not easily find the 'original' Hardware Units (either Keyboards, or Racks) that were used during these years, it seems logical to try to find 'Soft Synths' (VSTi,... ) emulating some of these Hardware Units...

Several Hardware Units were used during this 'music era', however some of them have emerged more than others as 'pure' reference of this era. Among them you'll find :

FM Synthesis :
- Yamaha DX7 (6-OP voice [32 Algorithms] and its various derivatives : 'DX7II', 'TX816',... )
- Yamaha TX81z (4-OP voice)
- Yamaha FSR1 (a more sophisticated version of the 'DX7' and only available as 'Rack Unit')

Wavetables based :
- Korg M1
- Korg Wavestation (and its various derivatives : 'Wavestation A/D', 'Wavestation SR',... )
- also some Korg T Series

- Roland D-50 The other 'Great Legend' of the 80's (with the 'DX7') but with more 'warm' and 'fat' sounds (compared to the 'bright', cold',... sounds of the 'DX7')
- Roland JUNO-106
- Roland JUNO-60

A Hybrid version (Digital Oscillators, but Analog Filters... ) :
- Ensoniq ESQ-1 (either as Keyboard, or 'ESQ-M' the rack version)

These are just examples of the most relevant, but as you can guess it, not exhaustive...


Now we go to some really good emulations of these 'original' devices :

For the 'Yamaha DX7', Native Instruments has created the 'FM8' (but also its previous version : the 'FM7'), and has the great advantage to be able to import the sounds (Presets) of the original DX7 (Hardware) in '.syx' format.
Various Sound Libraries are available that contain the original sounds of this synth, or slightly transformed by the developers themselves. These Sound Libraries are very often available in the most common 'Sampler Engines' proprietary formats available nowadays as : 'Kontakt', 'EXS24', 'HALion', 'SF2' (SoundFont),...
As stated, various developers have done (and still do !) such Sound Libraries, and you should to have a look at a developer who's name is : 'Nicebeats' or 'Nicebytes' (it seems that's exactly the same developer !). You'll find among its numerous Sound Libraries, a lot of models of this era (but not only !), that are not so bad, and moreover, each of these Sound Libraries focused on a certain Synth Model solely...

For the various Korg devices, 'Korg' itself has done the 'Soft Synth' (VSTi) versions of some of its legendary 'Hardware Units', and you can find them within 2 Bundles, as follows :

* 'Korg Legacy Digital Collection' (containing the 'M1', 'Wavestation',... )
* 'Korg Legacy Analog Collection' (containing the 'Mono/Poly', 'MS-20',... )

As with the 'Native Instruments' Soft Synth versions, here also you can import the sounds (Presets) of the original ones ('Hardware Units').

The previously stated comment about the 'Sound Libraries' done by various developers also applies with all these Korg Models ('Nicebeats' and/or 'Nicebytes' has done several good Sound Libraries containing Korg Synth Sounds).

The same applies with the several available Sound Libraries that focused on these 'Roland' Models and their distinctive sounds...
You can find a good emulation of the 'JUNO' Model in Soft Synth (VSTi) format done by 'Togu Audio Line' : 'TAL-U-NO-LX v2.00' available since a few days... It contains a 'bunch' of Presets (some closely emulating the original ones).

It also exists several 'Soft Synths' (VSTi) that emulate the 'Sound Chips' of various 80's devices (the sounds of these famous 'Arcade Games' with Bit Depths of 8 or 12 bits), but here also the list can be exhaustive, so it's better that you look for them and make your own choices...
However as an example : 'HyperSynth' has done 2 VSTi of this kind : 'Oresus' & 'SIDizer' (that sound very nice in my opinion !).

 

Get the TAL-U-no-LX vsti. It comes with 300 presets and you can make your own stuff, really 80's sounding:

 

thanks you so much will have a look at it...cheers buddy

 

thank you soooo much mate thats a lot of useful information out there, o appreciate your many thanks buddy

 

thanks mate will definitely check them out

 

Check out the SQ8L by Siegried Kulmann on KVR.
It is an absolutely accurate emu of the Esq-1/ SQ80 by Ensoniq.
Wonderful!