Hi fellas. I'm looking for a software synth that I can use to play live with my band. I need something that can play standalone or maybe in a lightweight daw on Windows 8. We play top-40 tunes so I need it to be versatile to change banks and stuff more than a true emulation of a given bank. For instance I loved Hypersonic, and something like that would be awesome. It's got to be light on the system so I can run it at 32 samples of latency, or less even?

Any ideas?

Peace to you all and thanks for the insight.

 

@ M3RCURYsoto,

Most of the 'Soft Synths' (VSTi Plugins) available can be played 'live' with the help of a 'MIDI Keyboard' (or any other 'MIDI Controller') after doing the appropriate settings...

Here also, plenty of 'Soft Synths' (even if not all !) provide you the 'Standalone' Version as well. If not, you can use 'SAVIHost' (available in both '32 & 64 bit' Formats) for that purpose, and it's FREE ! *yes*

'SAVIHost' Homepage

In this case, maybe you don't specifically need a very sophisticated 'Soft Synth' (VSTi Plugin), and you can perhaps make all your stuff with some good 'MIDI' Sounds/Banks. There's several ones (separate Sounds as well as Banks) that really sound Great compared to some other Factory 'MIDI' Standard Sounds or Banks that are available within some Hardware Synths. Most of the time, these are 'custom made' by some Users and some are even available for FREE ! *yes*

ADDED AFTERWARDS :

I forgot to mention that these 'MIDI' Sounds/Banks are available as 'SoundFonts' ('.sf2') and can be loaded in any Soft Synth that can handle that Format : '.SF2'.
You can also find several of these Soft Synth (VSTi) for FREE ! *yes* . Most of these are really lightweight and really performant... *yes*

If you're an unconditional lover of 'Kontakt', you can also think at it, and by using some of its Features, get exactly the Sounds you need quickly at hand by using the 'Monolith' Option to create and save each of your Instruments. Moreover, during the creation of these 'Monoliths' (Individual Kontakt Instruments also '.nki'), you can use the proprietary Format ('.ncw') used by 'Kontakt' for compressing the regular '.wav' Files (or any other Format used by the Samples), then simply save each created 'Monolith' as is, thus reducing of about 40-50% the size used by each Instrument for its included Samples, and by simply reloading each needed 'Monolith' Instrument(s), you'll get it(them) available almost 'in a breeze'... *yes*
Another great advantage of having the 'Monolith' Versions of your preferred 'Kontakt' Instruments is that they contain everything that is needed to be loaded and played properly (apart all the needed Samples, of course, all the exact 'Mapping' and 'Settings' info, the 'Impulse Responses' ['IRs'] if included, as well as the 'Wallpaper' if available,... ). As these are also totally independent Instruments by themselves, you can then have these placed anywhere within your HD, or even within an USB Key, then simply locate these with the 'Kontakt' Browser, and simply click on these to load them... *yes*

 

Funny. When I read your first sentence, what immediately came into my mind was Hypersonic 2

Anyway, there's nothing that would hold me back from using Kontakt live. Or even an iPad. Depends on how large the sample sets are.
I'd use Kontakt standalone on a machine equipped with an ssd so preset switching is faster than one second.

Kontakt has the great advantage that out of the many available sample libraries, you can pick the ones that fit your situation best and build your perfect live collection. I cannot imagine a single instrument (including synths) or genre that has not yet been covered by at least one sample library.

 

I agree on Kontakt and what`s said about MIDI mapping.
Another one that`s versatile, light and standalone = FM8.
But not much presets around, actually the only ones picking up its potential are from PlugIn Guru, in my not so humble opinion.
So, if you`re not familiar with it unlikely to have a quick go on ...

 

Versatility mean ROMplers/Samplers like Hypersonic, Nexus, Omnisphere (real synth and ROMpler merged), Kontakt (real sampler) and such.
Omnisphere will eat resources for breakfast

Big advantage about Kontakt is you can create your own patches from other synths in the studio.

You can take a look at real do-it-all synths (Omnisphere synth part, Absynth, Zebra...) but to me, they use too much resources to be reliable live.