Invest in Serum?

[Subijacko]

Hi

I'm new to the forum so apologies if this has been asked before...

If you were to buy one soft synth to help you understand sound design and last a few years through creative possibilities, what would you buy?

I've been running a demo of Serum and really like the visualisation and sound quality. I'm producing deep house so using it for pads, bass, fx, keys etc. It chews up my CPU but figure that should change as CPUs inevitably get more powerful and I could always freeze and flatten tracks to get around that for now.

Am I overlooking some worthy competition - Massive, etc?

[Warmonger]

IMO Serum is the best synth on the market overall - got a number of awards and highlights.

Certainly it will help you visualise sound deign and has broad possibilities to learn, will stay alive and keep you interested for years.

The CPU, as far as I found out, comes from Warp functions used over multiple voices. Yes, it can eat a lot of CPU, but you don't need to use it all the time on every sound. For simple pluck or bassline it's light on CPU.

[Richie Witch]

You might want to check out Circle2. I tried the demo recently and was amazed at how visually intuitive it is when creating your own sounds. Within 20 minutes, I had created three new patches and they were some of the best I've made on any synth.

The design concept is such that when you click and drag on a modulation source, all the possible destinations are highlighted. You then drag and drop the source to the destination, which makes the connection and enables a depth control for that modulation path. Both sources and destinations can have multiple modulation paths connected to them, and the connections are color coded when you create them so you can easily see what is modulating what.

It also includes an extensive wavetable library and the available presets make a great jumping-off point for hearing what the instrument is capable of.

You can download the demo here: http://www.futureaudioworkshop.com/circle/

Pretty good demo video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7ZZyjZSWUk

[D3VOUR]

Hi
If you were to buy one soft synth to help you understand sound design and last a few years through creative possibilities, what would you buy?

Serum is a solid choice. However, If you really want to learn a LOT about sound design I would recommend getting Max for Live and buying a copy of Electronic Music and Sound Design - Theory and Practice with Max and Msp - Volume 1 (http://www.amazon.com/Electronic-Music- ... 8890548452).

Can't recommend that book enough if you are interested in really understanding the ins and outs of sound design. It is pricy ($50ish), but you will easily invest over a hundred hours in it.

[beats me]

If you want to learn sound design and synthesis

http://www.syntorial.com

One price gets you the desktop version of their tutorial app, the iPad version of the tutorial app, and the plugin version of their softsynth you learn on.

The tutorials start with 1 parameter and once you pass the test by dialing in the sound they designed it adds another parameter and you dial in a sound using those 2 parameters, and repeat I think up to 66 parameters. The free demo has the first 20 or so lessons.

[Idonotlikebroccoli]

Serum seems like a good investment - interface looks really good to work with, I've heard some very good sounds from it, it seems very flexible, and I hear good things about it from its users.

That said, any synth would be good for your purpose. I'm still discovering new uses for Synth1, for example. Most important thing is choosing a synth you enjoy tweaking.

[login]

If you want to learn sound design and synthesis

http://www.syntorial.com

One price gets you the desktop version of their tutorial app, the iPad version of the tutorial app, and the plugin version of their softsynth you learn on.

The tutorials start with 1 parameter and once you pass the test by dialing in the sound they designed it adds another parameter and you dial in a sound using those 2 parameters, and repeat I think up to 66 parameters. The free demo has the first 20 or so lessons.

Yeah I would get this first for learning, after completing the course you will really know what synth to get.

Serum is great but IMHO it uses way too much CPU for the sound.

[mekanism1200]

I second Syntorial. While I havent used it I think starting from scratch and learning the basics of synthesis is the way to go. It will force you to actually study what you are doing instead of you just twisting knobs around and creating what you want through trial and error, and would ultimately save you time as you would know what settings to use to get the sounds you want. I have been studying sound design for years and I still am not that great at it as I have learned through experimentation, which is fun, but will take longer to learn this way. For the most part all synths are the same at their basic level, so learning the basics will allow you to learn a variety of synths quicker too.

[beats me]

One of the advantages of following the tutorial process of syntorial is it keeps you focused. It’s not just learning a couple parameters and then you go down the rabbit hole of tweaking things beyond that, that you don’t quite understand yet. It’s very easy to get distracted and unfocused learning on just any softsynth without discipline.

[Subijacko]

Thanks all for the advice. Syntorial sounds like a useful resource and will check it out.

[granted]

Serum is awesome. On my laptop is does use a lot of CPU. I use it mostly on my desktop computer instead. I wish it had another filter.

[beats me]

Watched some vids on Serum and it does look pretty sweet with a very visual (helpful) method of doing things. Looks like the big CPU hit comes from unison abuse. 2 oscillators with the unison set to 16 on both, hit a 3 note chord and that’s 96 voices at once and it has the capabilities to well surpass where even Massive would cut you off.

[Kent_in_CO]

+1 on beats me's Syntorial recommendation. Per his advice I've worked through most of the free lessons...it's really good shit!

[Subijacko]

Thanks for the Syntorial suggestion 'beats me'. Bought my copy last week and have been learning so much that I can apply to all synths. Great recommendation.

[musikmachine]

Serum is awesome. On my laptop is does use a lot of CPU. I use it mostly on my desktop computer instead. I wish it had another filter.

If you don't mind using an external filter check out The Drop.