Best synths for sound design

The Lounge Other Gear
81

This is why I keep recommending the Motas-6 for this kind of thing (last time I’m going to mention it here I swear! :wink: )

It has at its core, a very nice 3 VCO mono sound with mixable waveforms and plenty of gain staging options.

The VCO’s have analogue phase modulation which can get very usable and pitch stable results.

This then passes through a mixer section into 3 freely routable filters

You then also have a native LFO and loopable EG per parameter as well as access to 4 global LFO’s / loopable EG’s so you can have either 5 LFO’s and an EG or 5 EG’s and 1 LFO for every Pot on this synth… The LFO’s can track pitch and go well into audio rates (although they will start aliasing a bit at higher speeds like on the A4)

You also have things like vector morphing, something like 50 LFO shapes as well as user definable LFO shapes and a bunch more features too…

This thing is so crazy for sound design, I’ve not used anything else that can approach sound design in the way that this thing can and most importantly to me is that it sounds very good, It can range from modern to vintage easily and the feedback on it is the best I’ve heard on a synth.

Anyway… I’ll stop endlessly going on about this thing haha… The thought of someone buying a mono for sound design and buying something at the same cost that is much less able makes me sad and I hope people will at least take a good look at this thing before they make up their mind about what synth is for them. I’ve spoken to a few people on GS who sold / returned their Pro-3 for one of these and were very happy with their choice.

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82

The Waldorf Iridium seems to have a lot of endless possibilities. I can see this being used a lot.

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83

Never used it but the Nord Modular seems to be very powerful.

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84

Very powerful for making 35 yrs old tracks

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85

What do you mean?

86

It’s just wrong examle! The track is a cybotron-like track from the 80’s = nothing new about it. Cybotron didnt have the modular and they still could make more interesting sound design.

87

I reckon this is the/a way to go. Besides being very flexible it is really quite easily manoeuvred and sounds great. Quite sure someone made it possible to use as a plugin or without the actual hardware as well (forgot about it so haven’t tried it) so there’s no reason not to try it really :slight_smile:

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88

Again, while I don’t entirely disagree with the underlying sentiment of what you’ve said, I think you’ve somewhat missed my point, and I do feel compelled to address the above two statements in particular.

First and foremost, within the context of gear discussions like this, I always try to lend a little perspective in regards to the craft and humanity of music; particularly when I see people putting the blame on the gear rather than themselves. It’s ironic, when you consider how much great music has been made with so much less than we have at our disposal today.

As a 30-year career musician (and artist) myself, I can’t help but cringe at the pretention of those who are only interested in pursuing the lofty and often misguided goal of creating something that’s “never been seen or heard before”. As I said earlier, literally everything is derivative, no matter how inventive; and anyone operating under the belief that they can pull something truly out-of-thin-air is likely delusional. Hell, it’s a cliché in the world of art and music.

I’m thinking of a lyric by one of my esteemed colleagues, Craig Cardiff:
“Where the poets are so hip, they don’t even write poems.” :wink:

As for your second point, if artistic genius only happened with the advent of new mediums, there’d have been no Beethoven after Bach, no Monet after Da Vinci, no Vaughan after Hendrix, etc.

To put this discussion back on track, today’s sound design tools are LEGION, and their potential thus far has barely been tapped. And, as I said in my original post, that’s before you consider the context we give to the sounds we create and the notes we might apply them to.

Phil Collins took a relatively nondescript preset on a Prophet 5, and the toyish sounds of a CR-78, and made everyone’s hair stand on end; forever changing the landscape of pop music, and setting a new benchmark for music producers the world over, using tech that was right under everyone’s nose, and often scoffed at.

That’s all I’m saying.

Cheers!

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89

another +1 on the microfreak. mentally i sometimes knock it because it is “only” plaits (which i already have in modular form) however it is very nice. keyboard adds something too. i get a lot of organic things from it.

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90

Seems like it’s already been said, but I use a synth and then for more I use a sampler. I would think for sound design enthusiast it would kind of be a no brainer choice in moving into deeper territory. I would have to agree there really isn’t anything new, just recently made and maybe as far as hardware more advancement in quality of sound design especially if you prefer digital as higher resolution live manipulation is more advanced than the old school low bit rate samplers. But it just depends on how you want to go about it, maybe as you were getting stuck in the patterns of familiarity with the DN, you just wanted a break into a new approach? Well hope this adds something.

91

Thank you for your detailed response. I think, we seem to share a quite similar point of few :smiley:

Absolutely agree to this … one of my most loved sayings to make others angry is … “a fool with a tool is a fool” :wink:

I think I get your point and again agree. Misguided would be to believe that a new sound makes for a great work and that’s definitely not the case.

But let me explain, why I mentioned this “never heard before”. As we are in a forum about electronic music and electronic music devices, I repeated what synths have been for pioneers like Done Buchla or Bob Moog. They and the first electronic artists “coined” the term “sounds never heard before”. It’s in some documentaries about electronic music and instruments. IMO this was and is one of the most important features of synthesizers :wink:

I think here you got me wrong. What you say is true, but what I ment was, every medium has limitations and new things will spark new ideas, sometimes even not intended by their inventors. I like the mentioning of Bach and Beethoven. Well … Bach created the Fuge and the well tempered piano. Maybe that exactly this helped Beethoven to create his music, maybe … ?

Just take the MPC as a modern example. I don’t think that Roger Linn had future Hip-Hop artists in mind, when he created his first “Midi Production Center”. There is an intersting video documenting him presenting the MPC and telling the audience that this might be a “modern violine” … IMO the entire Hip-Hop scene would have been very different to what we know, if there was no MPC.

If we only have a pencil and ink, we can create impressive drawings, but we need brushes and paint to create paintings. That’s not an opinion, that’s just a matter of fact :wink:

From my experience I can tell that as a musician I always learned much, if I picked a different kind of instrument (here classical mechanical instruments) and tried to learn to play them well. Coming from piano it was a revelation to play a wind instrument, or to learn some basic chops on drums. It always opended new insights about creating music and - just as a fun fact - I play different music genres depending on the instrument :wink:

This made me mention that changing horses can have a big impact … but my saying from above is still to the point … “a fool with a tool is a fool” :wink:

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92

What about the SE-02?

93

Thanks for the engaging conversation. To be clear, I am enjoying this exchange. And yes, I do think we agree on a number of points. :slightly_smiling_face:

Cheers!

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94

Thank you too,

but I fear we have to stop this … at least in this thread … because we are a little off-topic :smiley:

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95

In the digital era there are more potential new tools than people. Mastering something like reaktor, max/msp or supercollider gives you an entire world of your own creation.

That said, I would say the best tools are a sampler, field recorder and some powerful synth which you are comfortable with and know deeply. Learning new synths all the time is disruptive and superficial, you never attain mastery.

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96

Agreed, particular for sound design sampling has much to give us. AFAIK many of the film and game sounds are based on sampling.

Yes … particularly if we stay inside one method of synthesis. Having a couple of synths in the studio I would say, most of the subtractive synths share many similar timbres. There are differences, indeed, but having one versatile instrument and experience to work with it, will get us to the most places.

For a sound-design project, which shall generate very diversive sounds I would recommend to get versatile synths of different synthesis methods and - as mentioned above - a sampler with field recorder.

97

yep, I went with the microfreak in the end. figured I don’t really need another deep monster synth to bury myself in. then I saw a good price on microfreak and thought ‘hell yeah, I know plaits already (in vcv rack form), it’s deep and awesome’. I’ll play with all the iridiums some other time.

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98

Aside from a global observation it is a very personal subject, so in a matter of speaking:

  • what is the goal?
  • where do you get the inspiration from?
  • how much affinity do you have, or do you need to adjust or learn?
  • the philosophy behind a instument or tool!
  • can you identify yourself with these principles?
  • or do you need to build a instrument or tools by your own ideals?
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99

What is sound design anyway? It sounds a bit arty. :smiley:

100

The decision to use a filter on an oscillator is sound design. :smile: