Synth suggestions

[Morgan C]

Hey guys,

I've fallen in love with Synth1, which is free and really versatile. But now I need something a little more extensive. I basically want a synth (free or paid - but not TOO expensive) that has at least all the options of Synth1, along with some more waveforms. Synth1's 5 waveforms aren't really cutting it and I need some more interesting ones. The ability to import custom waveforms would be great too.

 

[Jind]

One of my all time favorites is Z3TA+ which was upgraded to Z3TA+ 2 last year. It's a great synth well worth looking into. Plus, for the month of April, Cakewalk is running a Marathon Sale with 26.2% off on most of their products. It has quite a few third party soundbanks available as well as a bunch of freely available ones. It has 60 waveforms in it's library.

One of my favorite features is it's new Adaptive Pitch Bend - Adaptive Pitch Bend allows for the bending of notes within the key and mode performed and automatically learns the key based on performance. Normally pitch bend has a set value and it will bend to note out of tune with the performance - with Z3TA+ 2 Adaptive Pitch Bend you can tell it the key of the performance and it will bend to a valid note or you can even have it guess the key (which it does very well) and it will take care of staying in key when using pitch bend.

Take a look at it and see what you think: http://www.cakewalk.com/Products/Z3TA/



[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgWwooQf5m0&[/ame]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ps-rtneX-UA&[/ame]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMZlR1x3vEQ&[/ame]

This video is from a tutorial offered by SWA on Z3TA+ 2: [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvPAW1Mkrfw&[/ame]

 

[Morgan C]

Looks sexy. Two questions that I couldn't find the answers for myself
1) is it 64 bit? Because wrapping from 32 bit is a pain I'm not going to deal with with a paid plugin
2) can you import custom waveforms?

 

[updog]

Camel Audio Alchemy

it's a monster of a synth really and more.


http://www.camelaudio.com/Alchemy.php

 

[Chainsaw Calligraphy]

Might be worth checking out the demo of NI's Massive. I don't think you can import your own waveforms, but it has a big selection of unusual ones built in. It also uses wavetable synthesis so you can get a wide variety of sounds from each individual 'waveform'.

 

[Jind]

Looks sexy. Two questions that I couldn't find the answers for myself
1) is it 64 bit? Because wrapping from 32 bit is a pain I'm not going to deal with with a paid plugin
2) can you import custom waveforms?

Answers to your questions:

1: Yes, it is x64
2: Yes, from the manual so you understand how it works

There are six waveshaping oscillators, each with dozens of waveforms. You can also load your own waveforms into USER1 through USER 6.

Z3TA+ supports 16, 24 and 32 bit uncompressed stereo or mono WAVE (.wav) files as the user oscillator waveforms.

So you can have up to six user selected waveforms accessible at any given time.

I saw that someone else recommended Alchemy as well. I also have Alchemy and it is another really great synth - a little more expensive, but a very nice one to add to a collection. It really depends on what you want it for - I have both and both get used. I've bought quite a few synths when they've been on sale - Z3TA+ 2, Alchemy had a group buy a few years back, I also have AAS Ultra Analog and Rapture as well. Rapture is a lot of fun; another Cakewalk synth by Rene Ceballos of RGC - the creator of the original Z3TA+.

 

[vaiman]

You could also check out Tone2 ElectraX
Can import waveforms and samples.

http://tone2.com/html/electrax_synthesizer__vst_au.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rXCirfiO5mw#!

 

[Djunn]

Check Synthmaster. It's 64 bit and awesome.

http://www.kv331audio.com/synthmaster.aspx

 

[jamvanman]

One of my all time favorites is Z3TA+ which was upgraded to Z3TA+ 2 last year. It's a great synth well worth looking into. Plus, for the month of April, Cakewalk is running a Marathon Sale with 26.2% off on most of their products. It has quite a few third party soundbanks available as well as a bunch of freely available ones.

Jind - which soundbanks would you recommend?

 

[Jind]

Some of the all time classic Z3TA+ (the original one) were recently updated to Z3TA+ 2 spec and features by a guy over at KVR by the name 1-2 Many. They are free ones that many loved for the original and he did the work of converting them for Z3TA+ 2.

Check out his threads for the Fr4ncesco's Virus Mod V2, and the BigTone Ambient Trance Textures

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=346091

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=345779

As I'm not sure what types of sounds you like it would be better if I gave you links to the various folks making expansions for Z3TA+ 2 expansions.

Digital Sound Factory

Xenos Soundworks

Cakewalk Mutant Rebellion

Another cool option would be Galbanum's Architecture Waveforms Cakewalk Edition - it's a pack of 2500 waveforms that can be used with any synth that allows importing waveforms. You can download a demo of some of them from this link and check out some of the demos. They don't list Z3TA on the page, but they are just .wav format so if a synth can utilize external waveforms they will work. I listed the instructions above where I showed that Z3TA+ 2 can have 6 user defined waveforms loaded at any given time and it's easy to just load up a different 6 at any time or even just one at any time.

Note: Cakewalk has an April sale going on (Promo Code: MARATHON) for about another week so if you look, many of these are available on their store and a 26.2% discount can be utilized on them all. I've provided in most cases the link to the developers site, but Cakewalk has many of them for sale in their store as well.

http://www.store.cakewalk.com/b2cus/default.aspx?

 

[Josh Burgess]

If I could only have one, it would be Camel Audio Alchemy. Amazing synth and soundbanks. Massive and Absynth are also very cool though.

 

[jamvanman]

Jind - much appreciated. Picked up a couple of these Z3TA+ 2 expansions and they sound great; it is a lovely synth.

 

[Morgan C]

Holy shit I just tried Camel Alchemy and I love it. Z3TA is cool and much cheaper but Alchemy seems like everything I want in a synth and more. I'll check out Massive, Absynth, etc. too

 

[Jind]

Holy shit I just tried Camel Alchemy and I love it. Z3TA is cool and much cheaper but Alchemy seems like everything I want in a synth and more. I'll check out Massive, Absynth, etc. too

You should look in the KVR Marketplace - I see people selling their Alchemy licenses occasionally. I'd sell you mine, but it gets too much use

Unfortunately I don't see Camel Audio offering sale pricing on Alchemy that often. I was fortunate to get in on what may have been the only group buy they have offered on it a few years ago.

 

[Morgan C]

Just bought Camel Alchemy, thanks a lot everyone!

edit: GodDAMN the Camel servers are slow. 70kb/s for like 5gb of data and my only option is thru Chrome.