I agree with pretty much everything you say here. Not like this guitar.It's limited to just a few basic sounds, but they're very useful basic sounds'. 'There's far too many options with modern synths. In a documentary on youtube, Eno picks up his electric guitar and explains that he'd like synths to be more like strats. No doubt some are, and I'm not a synth-hater, but a lot of 'live' stuff is arguably a few button pushes away from just putting on a CD and miming. How many people are playing softsynths 'live' at gigs in any meaningful sense of 'playing live'? It doesn't often work unless your already talented or tuned in and if it's mostly pre-set then it kind of defeats the purpose of feeling that you're creating on-the-fly.Įven Brian Eno said you can play a reasonable hit song by holding down one key of most modern soft-synths.

Like you can banish the dullness by distracting the attention from it. To me, that excessive focus on modulation comes from a restlessness and trying to create something that feels meaningful by making it ever-changing. They're not neccessarily bad things, but. I sometimes visit KVR when I'm feeling masochistic bored with acoustic instruments, but the overriding focus there is largely on what's the latest toy or the 'realest analog sounding' and noticeably an obsession with automation and modulation. It's interesting (to me anyway) to see the features develop in soft synths. But I never pushed to learn it properly, so that's something to do down the line. I think there is even couple of free orchestra libs, not converted from sfz, but build from high quality recordings.Īnd to close, I sometimes also use Zebra2, finding it to be the roundest sounding, authentic and vintage imitating synth out there. And personally, I do really like 'Hollywoodian' sounding samples, thought there must be some misunderstanding, cause for example ewql does sound like that, but it actually sound like real hall performance way more then dryer libs!Īnyway, there is few options that op can go with, but I think just getting some libs that work in free kontakt player, is good for starters! And I just reminded myself that there is planty of free libs for it too, and they sound fine. Thought most of kontakt libs, as well as play etc. And when I'll be able to afford it, I'll definitely snatch it. As for orchestral libs, the Vienna Symphonic Library has the immense advantage of being generic (not 'Hollywoodian') and recorded without reverb. So I use the excellent and free Grace to play sfz samples. I'd like to buy Kontakt and a shitload of samples too, but it's way too expensive for what I do right now. I got it for €45.Īnd finally, I like to complement it with the free Kairatune for making weird high sounds.Īlso Kontakt player. OTOH, while Dune 2 is quite expensive since it's the same price as Zebra 2, which is arguably more capable (but probably doesn't sound better), SM is the deal of the century when you grab it on sale. But all in all, because of its great sound, for me Dune is the better synthesizer. I think it's very visual and relatively easy to use. Lots of people find the graphical interface confusing, but it's not my case. They don't showcase the capabilities of SM as much as they could. SM comes with many more presets (1200 vs a couple hundreds), but many of them are kinda boring compared to Dune presets imo. SM is probably even more versatile than Dune 2, except for the arpeggiator, which is quite a bit better in Dune, and you can layer up to 8 sounds with 3 oscillators each (you can do the same to a certain extent in SM with the 2 layers/4 oscillators). Especially since with something like SQLite, it's very easy to implement. I don't like to have to spend hours searching for sounds. In 2015/2016, having to search in menus by name is primitive. I don't know why authors of synthesizers don't implement that feature. On the downside, the Dune presets can only be found by browsing the menus. Curiously, to me SM sounds a bit like Spire, that many people, for some reason say sounds better than Dune, but I find the contrary is true.

Although they probably can do the same patches I prefer the output of Dune 2, as SM sounds less dynamic and a little bland next to it I've yet to understand why but it sounds congested in comparison with Dune. It sounds lush, warm, and it's reasonably versatile. Just got the Dune 2 synthesizer, and I have to say I really like it.

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