Hi everyone!

Do you know an analog synth with a good analog-ish style? Like the closest to real hardware possible, with warm sound?

Also if you know some references for effects with the same analog idea?

Thank you

 

Last edited: Jun 2, 2020

Many people like u-he diva for analog sound.
It depends a lot of how much you know about creating sounds, as there are many synth able to do anslog-ish sounds but they don't demo it with presets, because this is not the main market.

 

Hey, thank you Olymoon!

Diva seems very good, i heard a great potential listening it, very round and warm sound and i'm actually working on it!

You are right about the capacities of the sound designer, i'm committing into this using Syntorial that seems a great tool to start with!

Also would you know some references of effects makers or particular models in the same type of very warm and analog-ish sound?

PS : I found very interesting that the more natural and warm sound of Diva comes in some part from the trimmers that are successively detuning each note when playing.. beauty is in imperfection!

 

Last edited: Jun 13, 2020

Done...

I'm glad my advice was useful for you

 

Here's a list of analog-ish synth warmth you can check out:

OP-X PRO-II: http://www.sonicprojects.ch/
U-he Diva: https://u-he.com/products/diva/
U-he Repro: https://u-he.com/products/repro/
Brainworx bx_oberhausen: https://www.plugin-alliance.com/en/products/bx_oberhausen.html
Synapse Audio The Legend: https://www.synapse-audio.com/thelegend.html
Way Out Ware TIMEWARP 2600: https://sonivoxmi.com/products/details/timewarp-2600
Memorymoon ME80, Messiah, and MemoryMoon: http://memorymoon.com/products.htm

 

Roland Cloud Jupiter 8 sounds pretty dope

 

good saturation plugins: decapitator, noveltech character, ISM aroma, abbey road vinyl, elysia alpha master (soft clipper), j37, studer a800 (UAD), PSP vintage warmer, ozone exciter, kazrog true iron, sonnox inflator etc. etc. ....

bx_refinement is a really interesting tool aswell that removes something i would call "digital harshness" from your instruments

 

My faves are definitely Diva and Repro from U-he both are outstanding. That good in fact that I'm probably gonna sell my Moog Sub 37 for lack of use.

 

Softube Modular and Reaktor Blocks not that heard to learn. The U-He stuff is all great.

 

The issue is that a good emulation of an analog synth won't sound like the records you're trying to emulate. Someone mentioned it earlier, the saturation/distortion/hiss/reverb basically all around processing is what makes a synth sound "analog" and even more "vintage" I really love Repro-5 but having owned to Prophet 5, Repro kind sounds like you're recording electricity straight out of the oscillator chip. You have to work on it a bit to get it to sound anywhere close to Human League or something...

 

I'd add GForce Oddity 2 and BeepStreet Dagger to the list.
Oddity 2 is a gem for pads and Dagger is a surprisingly simple yet flexible and capable little monster.

 

Perfect list bro, thanks for including Timewarp2600 and ME80, can't go wrong with those two at all.
I'd add GForce Oddity 2, and a couple of well made EMS emus (XILS, Arturia, Reaktor Ensembles), and a couple of well made string synths as well.

 

Synapse Obsession is now near the top of my lst.

 

all halion 6 extensions. similar to omnisphere/kontakt but so much better and easier

 

"Analog Obsession" plugins. They're so good than they give them away now.

 

having a ton of classic real gear and modern analogs here is my little list of vsts that are great:
The Legend by Synapse audio
Reaktor Blocks
Roland Cloud plugins (jupiter 8 is very close to my original one, far far closer then the arturia crap)
all U-he stuff
Little One by Xhun Audio

effect wise little is really analog sounding because most are emulations of digital machines.. here i would go UAD moog filters etc

 

what's Warm? seems pretty subjective to me, no? don't fall for it mate. everytime you see somebody describing a vst/fx as "warm/color" and similar useless words, ignore it.

anyway, RC-20 Retro Colors is a great effect. special mention to TOGU AUDIO which are the best, great little company. some people say "ARTURIA", but their GUI is ass lol, they do sound nice though.
get KORG legacy stuff if you want as well. but don't pirate every plugin that has "warm" in their tags. you can make anything sound "warm" with the right filters and effects, but then again "warm" is a lot subjective...

cheers

 

Those plugins... omfg... I do believe the guy who made them tried his best, but utterly failed. There is something nice going on with some of them, but it is obvious he put too much effort into making hardware lookalike GUIs, rather than learning how to program properly. He's not alone, though... some really popular plugin companies do the same, taking advantage of the placebo effect of a hardware lookalike GUI. We're all humans after all, eh?

My cure: close your eyes and prick your ears. Woof, woof !

 

So true. He got so obsessed with the analog hardware that forgot he was a digital software developer.
Karma's cool sometimes

You bet. We'd go faster counting the ones that doesn't. Besides the GUI though, some go too far. This new Denise Audio God Mode plugin lately for instance...

 

Last edited: Jun 29, 2020

Yes it is for sure, it's cultural!
When i personally speak of something warm and analog-ish i'm not referring to an 80's synth sound but in three words : to Jimi Hendrix's sound!

I never used to listen to electronic music and to any kind of based synth music neither..
So i can hear clearly the difference between the Prophet-5 and Repro-5 on youtube videos (and it's youtube's sound!) just because i really don't like the perfection and digital precision of 99% of the synths i'm trying/listening to. And the Repro-5 is like that, too linear, i think i won't use it anymore instead of Diva.

The thing becomes clearer and clearer to me : when a saxophonist plays a solo with pedal effects, i love it. Why? His natural sound is very out of tune depending on his sax, his tuning and the notes he is playing, and the effects he is adding are distorting the electric signal, as is doing the amp after that and the result is a subtle but very out of tune piece of music, and this is changing a lot with the intensity i guess and with a lot of parameters i don't know that bring chaos and life to his play...

That's why i'm an exclusive Diva fanatic for the moment : because of the trimmers! And I just used the detuning for now but just this simili style of "chaos" in the sound and the "hasardous" (for the ears at least) detuning is really giving a lot of warmness, at least that's my definition of warmness in music..

Also I discovered today that in Diva the oscillators are in free-running mode like real synths, and this is also adding for sure much variety in the sound, and if this feature must be common in vst synth i didn't find anything else than Diva for the moment that is nicely detuning as it is doing with trimmers, but i may be wrong? For now none of all your listed vst sounded like it to me..

Beauty is in imperfections!

 

Last edited: Jul 3, 2020