Free synths with really good presets?

thanks

 

Many sounds sound shit by themselves unless in a context or layered. No preset is bad, with little tweaking and some sound design knowledge you can blend it in your mix. Many times unexpected sounds work well together. Preset quality depends on synth quality as well. Some synths sound fat, some clean, some cheap, some rich and effects matter a lot as well.

Vital is a great place to start

 

what do you think helped you improve to make better presets to tweak them etc?

also regarding vital it has only 40 free presets or so i guess i have to google around for others

 

i found this
https://forum.vital.audio/c/share/l/top

 

Synth1 has a lot of presets and is pretty good for old school style music (trance, electronic)

 

Surge has nice presets. One of my favourite synth. Really easy to program sound I want.

 

yer its a classic old school synth and its gr8 for pads

 

Full Buckets synths are really good with a total of 25 free synths how can you not find any interesting sounds for Windows and Macs, small in size and are not CPU hogs.
https://www.fullbucket.de/music/vst.html

 

Surge (of course!) https://surge-synthesizer.github.io/
Triple Cheese https://u-he.com/products/triplecheese/
Note: Don't laugh at Triple Cheese, despite its stupid name this is a very fine free synth with a physical modeling engine. Try out!

 

Last edited: Nov 5, 2021

Vital, PG8X, K1v, FURY800 (and anything from full bucket music). Those are just a few freebies, but quality wise they rival paid software.

 

Surge is a fantastic synth with many free presets packaged within the download. You can't go wrong with it. There are also many free patch collections strewn across the interwebs. Here are some more to get you started.

https://rekkerd.org/patches/plug-in/surge/

 

All the above (Vital, Synth1, Surge, PG8X, Tyrell) and Obxd.

Use presets as starting points. As mentioned, It all depends on the context.

 

https://www.thewavewarden.com/odin2
https://www.discodsp.com/obxd/
https://oceanswift.net/enterprise/
https://u-he.com/products/beatzille/
https://u-he.com/products/zebralette/
https://u-he.com/products/podolski/
https://u-he.com/products/triplecheese/

 

is moog meant to be mostly for bass btw? although i guess u can do leads too etc..

 

Hello, I'm BEAT16 and have been making presets under the name Sonic Sirius for 10 years, quality for free.

Sonic Sirius - Synthesizer Soundsets
Freeware Soundsets for Software and Hardware Synthesizer
http://ohlenbostelhelge.magix.net/public/index.htm

Dead Duck Software - Reducktion VSTi https://www.kvraudio.com/product/reducktion-by-dead-duck-software
- The Sonic Sirius Soundset for the Dead Duck Software - Reducktion VST
http://ohlenbostelhelge.magix.net/public/misc.htm

Mastrcode Music - Zenith VSTi https://de-de.facebook.com/MastrcodeMusic/
- The Colours Soundset by Sonic Sirius for the Mastrcode Music - T-Force - Zenith VSTi
http://ohlenbostelhelge.magix.net/public/misc.htm

Phuturetone - GR-8 VSTi https://www.kvraudio.com/product/gr-8-by-phuturetone
- The Sonic Sirius Soundset for the Phuturetone - GR-8 VSTi
http://ohlenbostelhelge.magix.net/public/misc.htm

The Wave Warden - Odin II VSTi https://www.thewavewarden.com/odin2
- The Sonic Sirius Soundbank for the Wave Warden - Odin ii Virtual Synthesizer
http://ohlenbostelhelge.magix.net/public/misc.htm

Togu Audio Line - TAL-NoiseMaker VSTi https://tal-software.com/products/tal-noisemaker
- The Shining Stars Soundset by Che for the Togu Audio Line - TAL-Mod VSTi
http://ohlenbostelhelge.magix.net/public/misc.htm

U-HE - ZebraCM VSTi https://u-he.com/products/zebracm/
- The Solar Energy Soundbank by Abc for the U-HE - Zebra CM VSTi
http://ohlenbostelhelge.magix.net/public/misc.htm

Vember Audio - Surge VSTi https://surge-synthesizer.github.io
- The ' ReAction ' Soundset by CHE for the Vember Audio - Surge VSTi
http://ohlenbostelhelge.magix.net/public/misc.htm

Vital Audio - Vital Spectral VSTi https://vital.audio
- The New Wave Soundset By Sonic Sirius For The Vital Audio - Vital Spectral VSTi
http://ohlenbostelhelge.magix.net/public/misc.htm

 

Last edited: Nov 5, 2021

Tone2 Firebird is also worth mentioning.

 

nah it can do all sorts of sound, famous for bass because of the phat tone it produces from the famous (ladder) filter design it uses, and the early version of the Moog synths are all monophonic synth. The VST of these monophonic synths recreation these days all have poly mode selector that enable it to played polyphonically so you can play chords and whatnot.

 

Last edited: Nov 5, 2021

Here's a nice list too: https://bedroomproducersblog.com/2020/10/30/free-retro-synth/

 

.
Finish songs

Can't explain a lot but you automatically start learning how sounds blend with each other. There are tons of preset design tutorials. Many famous sounds are really basic sounds, I started messing around with Sylenth1 initially because it was the lightest on my CPU. Initially I just jumped through presets unsatisfied. I realised its useless and started using Nexus instead (thanks, Chinese for v3) as it was better sounds/processed already and it has a huge variety of sounds. I realised I was wasting time in finding presets in Nexus as well. By now I was quite good in Sylenth1 but honestly bored by its sound, I mean it requires a lot of layering to sound full (my opinion, i am no pro). I started to mess with more synths, Diva, Spire, Serum. In this I realised, that's its really the basics you need to get good at. Really. LFOs, Envelopes Oscillators, Voicings, that's in all synths. Synths like Serum or Vital take it to the next level by sexy visualisation. Finishing songs pushes you to explore into new areas and makes you realise how bad you are at something which you thought was like 2 layers. I now grab any synth, honestly it doesn't matter which one, it us helpful when you have an idea of what type of sound you want. Sound design knowledge will make you reach your dream preset faster. You can make a bass patch into a lead and vice-versa, by playing with octaves, unisons, switching from square to saw waves etc.

I will advise you to stay away from sound design and stick to tweaking to help finish stuffs, finessing with knobs till you get a perfect sound or finding that perfect reverb settings is an unhealthy habit. Finding a good preset is only useful when you have the other elements to go with it unless you are going to use it solo. Also imo, do whatever to get a good result, if that means using cured stuffs, then by all mean you should do it.

You already got some killer choice available. Vital's built in free presets are less, but you can google for free presets, there's one really good one by Echo Sound Works called Origin if you are into EDM.