› Home › Blogs › Arp's blog ›

Synth shopping part II: the contenders

Submitted by Arp on Tue, 04/21/2009 - 06:00
in

Here are the contenders for my main synth.  I thought I'd be able to get some opinions from the IDM Forums and whittle it down to 3, but where's the fun in that?

  • Arturia Jupiter 8V ($257): I'm stuck in the early 90s, so a Jupiter has to be in the mix.  (though I'd rather make more money licensing tracks and then blow it on the whole Arturia V Collection)
  • FabFilter Twin2 ($169): Sounds nice and the GUI rocks, but I just got the One and prolly want something else.
  • FAW Circle ($199) the overall sound just doesn't do anything for me, in spite of the beautiful GUI
  • G-Force Imposcar ($130): I've always loved it and it has one of the baddest filters in VST land ever.  v2 is coming up and FINALLY that filter can process external audio.
  • Korg Legacy Analog ($199) Really great sound & value but it requires a fucking dongle just to try it.
  • LennarDigital Sylenth ($180): New to me, but it sounds really, really good.  Extra points to the developer for having a lisp (though I guess that would make it Thylenth?)
  • NI Massive ($229): An obvious choice, and I'm curious to see what the CPU usage is.
  • Rob Papen Predator ($179): Chris' suggestion...
  • u-He Zebra ($199): a dark horse contender, but there are a LOT of great demos out there.  It's got a brilliant interface, and worthwhile endorsement from Hans Zimmer.  Plus Urs is a cool guy.  Oh - and it's modular.  I wonder how deep that rabbithole goes...
  • Vember Surge ($150): Also new to me, and also pretty damn nice

Plus, some nice synths that are too cost-effective to pass up:

  • FabFilter One ($6.50 special): just bought it today
  • Koblo Centaurus ($7.49): Sounds old and I already bought it Smile
  • Leslie Sanford Cobalt ($25): Nice demo mp3s, looking forward to playing with the actual demo.  Plus it's made with Synthmaker.

There it is - this is going to take some time.  The two leaders are Imposcar and Zebra, and another synth will have to blow me away to beat those 2.  I am kinda psyched to buy 2 nice synths for under $15 - I've never been thrilled about writing a track and having all synth parts come from one synth.  I like melding different sources.

And one thing that will have a strong sway in the decision will be how creative I can be with a synth - I want to get back to exploring sounds & textures (which I notice are the strong points of anything that's been licensed from Pump Audio).  I think a synth like Zebra may have a big advantage there.

 

  • Arp's blog