Arturia does a great job emulating synths. My own mix of analog and Wavetable mix I like to experiment with is Arturia's Prophet V and the Prophet VS synth it comes with. They have a fully free version with 50 free presets from the 17 instruments that is worth checking out! You can then decide if you want to add one or more, or the whole collection.
So they're not really a full emulation of the hardware like Arturia makes, but they do sound good! I got the whole Syntronik bundle on sale.
The Syntronik synths use sampled oscillators from the original analog synths, plus added modeled filters.
This is one of the instruments in the IK Multimedia Syntronik bundle, this one available ala carte for $45. No particular advice on the Mellotron here, but that would be interesting to have! I've seen Mellotron style patches floating around in various synths, but don't own a dedicated model. I still want to get hold of a good Mellotron VST (Mtron seems to be the favorite), another would be good emulation of Taurus Bass pedals Till then, just render, or eventually upgrade.Īh the days of playing with the Octave Kat (and Kitten). If you want the full potential of both synths, you may at times wish to have two dedicated computers running. Very nice sweeps, and depth to its design in a more modern soft synth and definately visual way. I have Serum, and it's a wonderful synth. It's also going to be quite full, so be aware not to blend too much other timbres over it, but with the right amount of experimenting, you should get some very nice synth tones, LFO, and true analog type envelopes (that some of us know all too well). When you operate all 16 oscillators, it's going to put a real drag on your computer, but the fact that you can capture it's very intense analog sensitivity is well worth its weight (weight?) In gold. It's such a dedicated analog modeled synth, where defined oscillators actually feel, slur, and have the true analog vibe. To Leo, I'd simply use Diva, and render where possible. The 1.1 version is about 40% better on CPU than the 1.0 version. Yeah, I was going to send Leo the SOS review today, as well. I might be wrong about that.Īnyway, good luck and have fun.
I thought U-he had a demo - I believe you can install it and it will make a distorted noise every once in a while until you actually pay for it and put in a serial number. They are both currently in my top 5 softsynths, and should be on any serious softsynth user's short list to seriously consider. For me, Diva has become my go-to VA synth, and I use it more than Serum. They both are class-leading and sound great in their respective areas of expertise, and honestly compliment each other like I mentioned previously. Everything is personal preference of course.
Re: sound quality - the sound quality of one is not "better" than the other. When Diva came out, it gained a reputation that it used a lot of CPU (rightfully so), but any current computer should be able to handle it just fine, and again, you have different accuracy modes, etc. You can set it to draft, fast, great, and divine accuracy modes with a corresponding increase in CPU usage.
The CPU load is relative to the patches and what mode (aka "accuracy") the plugin is in.
This comes at the cost of quite a high CPU-hit, but we think it was worth it: Diva is the first native software synth that applies methods from industrial circuit simulators (e.g. Modules can be mixed and matched so you can build hybrids, but what sets Diva apart is the sheer authenticity of the analogue sound. The oscillators, filters and envelopes closely model components found in some of the great monophonic and polyphonic synthesizers of yesteryear. U-He Diva - Dinosaur Impersonating Virtual Analogue Synthesizer The Spirit of Analogue