What do the good people of this excellent place think of the virtual synthesizer mentioned in the title?
I'd like to hear opinions comparing it to similar synthesizers, such as Pigments, Zebra 2, and others like it.

 

Ultimately, you'll have to find out what sounds good to you and what you're comfortable using.

Perhaps the music says more than the language; the sound set is mine.

The Wave Energy Soundset by ABC for the Native Instruments - Massive X VSTi

The Wave Energy Soundset by ABC for the Native Instruments - Massive X VSTi

- Inside the Download: 1 Soundbank " Wave Energy " with 197 Presets
- Genres: Dance - Trance - New Wave - Electro - Modern Synth Music
- Styles: Arpeggios - Basses - Effects - Leads - Pads - Sequences
- For: Native Instruments - Massive X v1.01 or newer
- Format / File Size: Soundbank (*. NKSF) / 6 MB
- Release Date: September 2019
- Price: Free - Gift

Sonic Sirius - Synthesizer Soundsets
Freeware Soundsets for Software and Hardware Synthesizer
https://ohlenbostelhelge.wixsite.com/sonic-sirius-sound-d

Royalty Free Soundset License
All ' Sonic Sirius ' Freeware Soundsets they can be used commercially in
things like movies, games, and anything else you might need a cool
sound for. You may not however redistribute them for a profit.

Free Download
https://mega.nz/file/SmBw0KpR#aJwaSmTaixD4EYCiuGleMuuox9oKDp1Ol8M2j7lCbk4

 

Last edited: Dec 2, 2025 at 8:50 PM

It's really a performance physical modelling synth masquerading as a "normal" wavetable synth. First of all the oscillators are pretty twisted, wavetable scanning modelling vocal tracts and resonant filters? Yeah. Want to have several tuned filters with feedback in your signal chain? Doable. Ah screw it, want to rearrange the whole signal chain to have tuned filtered noise feedback loop doing FM on the oscillators? Sure.

It's great for all sort of odd glassy harmonic FM things. You can make it sound like a virtual analog (the filters are great) but that to me is kind of missing the point. It is good for thumping FM basses though with a heavy metallic edge lacking in the original FM synths.

Ok that's the synth side of it but then you get the performance sequencers which can hold several sequences (scenes) which can be MIDI triggered so you can make basslines, paraphonic chord sequences, wavesequency-bits, all manner of polyrhythmic things (quintuplets, septuplets, nontuplets with time signatures? are you shitting me?) On top of it there's a totally berserk unison/harmonizer section, also useable as a one key chord memory function (use a keytracker to assign chord types to keys). I wish it did MIDI out.

Later on they added a performance screen which lets you create four variations of the sound and morph between them via a X-Y pad, or automate the morphing with different orbits.

I've used it for several years now and I'm still surprised at the odd things it can do. It's not a go-to synth for me, but something to fuck about to create something new and surprising. But then it has got the performance side to it and once you've got a sound going, it's very easy to twist it working alongside a track as a playable performance device.

So it's a weird mish-mash of things, some seemingly making no sense at all but still somehow work together. I love it, but it's sometimes a love-hate affair.