5 replies to this topic

[CRFaithMusic]

Hi everyone

I'm looking to buy a Vst synth soon and if you could give me some advice that would be great!
First of all I'm basically looking for one with heaps of patches and I don't have to make the sounds from scratch.
Second it has to sound good ;)
Thirdly it has to be under $200

At the moment the one I have found is http://www.soundsonline.com/Phaedra. Has anyone used this before? Is it worth buying?
Any other recommendations for other products would be helpful too

Thanks,
Caleb Faith

[Moritz P.G. Katz]

Hey Caleb,

In my experience there's no real one-fits-all solution to this, at least not under 200 USD. (Omnisphere is a bit more pricey)

Do check Native Instruments' Massive, Reaktor, Absynth and FM8. They're all great soft synths in their own right.
Also, right now NI's having a 50% off Thanksgiving sale that lasts until Monday!

I've heard great things about Sonic Charge's Synplant, you might want to check that one out as well.

And I haven't tried Phaedra, but looks like it's a collection of synth samples - not a synth.

Cheers,
Moritz

[LorenzoGatti]

I'm looking to buy a Vst synth soon and if you could give me some advice that would be great!
First of all I'm basically looking for one with heaps of patches and I don't have to make the sounds from scratch.
Second it has to sound good ;)
Thirdly it has to be under $200

• Buy a VST Synth? Many good ones are freeware: you should only spend money if you know you "need" a certain instrument, for example because you have tried a demo and it is better than what you are already using for a specific purpose.
• Even if you aren't interested in complex synth programming, you need to know what you are doing. Ready-made patches are a good starting point, but you still have to adjust parameters. Don't be afraid: common "subtractive" synths are rather easy to understand and control, while samplers (if you buy well made sample libraries) sound good with little effort at the expense of flexibility.
• Looking for a single synth is pointless. You can use many different instruments for different sounds, layer and chain synths and effects, and with experience you can progress along the complexity scale from simple VSTs to comprehensive and quirky ones.
• Software synthesizers do not "sound good" in the same way as a well made antique violin sounds better than a cheap chinese one; they can only sound more or less close to what you want, after more or less stressful and complex programming effort. Another reason to learn several diverse ones rather than obsessing about what's best.
• Freeware suggestions: the simple but deep Synth1 by Ichiro Toda and most of the KVR Developer Challenge submissions of the last few years.
• Paid suggestion if you really want to: Native Instruments Komplete, a large collection of synths and samples. Probably you won't find much use for Reaktor, but the rest is likely to last you a lifetime.

[Moritz P.G. Katz]

Hey,

Very good points! There's a good bunch of free VSTs that you can grab - I did forget to mention that because I can't use most of them since I made the jump to OSX.

One of them's Oatmeal, a subtractive synth my brother coded - definitely check that one out. (all family-related bias aside, it is a great and flexible instrument)
Wish I could use that one again, fiddling with the effects or just using the "Random Preset" button is loads of fun! Here's a neat article about Oatmeal.

Cheers,
Moritz

[TheLastBaron]

Personally I think Zebra 2 is the best synth out there, and it's $199 I believe which is in you budget, but like everyone else has said there are plenty of AMAZING VSTs out there for free which are worth checking out before you spend money on anything.

[CRFaithMusic]

Thanks for the advice guys I really appreciate it I ended up looking on youtube for synth tutorials and found this one and this one. They're both free and seem really good for beginning on because they aren't overly confusing

I actually had oatmeal before but because I had no idea what I was doing I gave up and forgot about it...

Thanks for your help,
Caleb Faith