Best recommended ambient pads intrument

[aklisiewicz]

I'm looking for intrument that will be focused on pads and ambient sounds. My goal is to find something where I do not have to spend tons of time to modify existing sounds or build them from scratch to get the sound I need. I could do some minor tweaking but for the most part I want to concentrate on creating music (not sounds).

Which synth or instrument would you recommend for ambient (relaxation type music) ?
If you think you might recommend a few instruments please list them in importance order (hope this would also help others to choose the right one). I have done some research on-line but there is lots of information about plugins which are no longer in development or supported or there have no add-on libraries at all etc.

I have tested a few instruments. Although most of them are god in general, so far none of them suits my needs 100%. Here are some thoughts:

1. Omnisphere (customer support not very helpful, lots of repeating patches, there is only about 10% patches that would suit the music style). Do not need all the fancy stuff (multis, FX, ARP etc becvause all of this can be done easily in Live9)
2. Absynth5 (customer support sucks, not easy to learn, but there are some god 3rd party libraries.
3. Massive (similar to Absynth5 but less towards mentioned genree)
4. Morphestra (no sample import, very limited in patches, poor interface, not working on 4k monitors, lots of reverb type effects but original sounds rather poor)
5. Reaktor+Pugins (seems to be the closest to my needs but the learning curve is humongous)
6. Rob Papen - Blue (unfortunately have no access to latest version but played with it few years ago and it was quite close to my needs)

I have full NI Komplete Ultimate 11 and some of the components also have really cool sounds but searching for sounds is not very intuitive and using tags does not always give me expected results. It also forces user to work with multiple instruments and learn lots of tweaking and manipulating which takes tons of time. I'm not interested in live performance just studio (so do not need those extras as well).
I'm looking mostly for PADS so what in your opinion would be the most suitable instrument which delivers as much pads as possible without all the other stuff (which might be cool but I do not need it) ?
I would also like to find some plugin which works seamlessly in LIVE9 (some instruments like Absynth5 do not integrate really well with Ableton)


Thank - ARTHUR

[orionka]

which library do you recommend for Absynth?

[aklisiewicz]

So far I purchased LOST LIBRARY from ADSR site and it's quite nice (definitely worth the money). The problem is that Absynth5 itself does not integrate well with Ableton and unless one is really well experienced with sound design it is not easy to get expected results tweaking the sounds. Also mapping ABSYNTH directly to Live SUCKS. It is little better when you use Kontrol Komplete but still limited.
Check this: https://www.adsrsounds.com/synth/absynth/

[Tarekith]

I like Omnisphere2 for ambient music, huge range and variety of sounds and it's very easy to tweak the existing presets into new ones. Especially by turning up the amp attack and release.

[aklisiewicz]

Omnisphere is not a bad product but has some CON's. It is quite expensive and has lots of stuff which duplicates Ableton features (so you pay extra for things which you can do easily with Ableton). It also has about 20% of patches which are based on the same sample/preset just minimally modified (very bad idea).

Of course term "AMBIENT" is quite broad. I'm mostly interested in long evolving and warm pads suited for relaxation and meditative music.

There is few more options I fgound but I was not able to test the demo so if anybody purchased those please share:
- ZEBRA-2 + some ambient Libs (i.e DARK ZEBRA)
- BigFish AMBIENT WHITE
- BigFish - ZODIAC
- LUNARIS by Luftrum (not released yet but very promissing)
- Insusurro Pads
- PADS by UMLAUT
- Sonespheres 1 - Distance by SOUNDIRON

[TomKern]

Zebra is a great synth that is well suited for evolving sounds. Definitely worth a look IMO.

But it does not load samples like Omnisphere does (you can load single cycle waveforms though - up to 16 per oscillator - that you can morph through in a modulated manner) nor is it a virtual analog synth for those really fat analog pad sounds (you can stack many oscillators though, so fatness in general is no problem)

And the customer experience with U-He has always been great for me.

[[jur]]

Absynth definitely, once you've spent a little bit of time to understand its philosophy you're all good.
But hey, you own Komplete so you surely already have more than what you need. Learn to use what you have.

[wehkah]

For pad sounds you often have to deal with a slow attack, long decay / release and some slightly modulations to get a evolving sound. I really like Absynth, Massive and Reaktor. Ableton Analog is cool too, it also features envelope loop features which are great. I recommend to start making some string like sounds and use it as a base.

Here is a Absynth 5 video from PluginGuru.com, Brian & John explain some cool features. Absynth is still straight forward.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1FA7e5HIbk

For MIDI / automation in Live check the Absynth PERFORM page! The Controller page contains the MIDI CC/Macro controller setup and the Assignments page allows you to configure the internal assignments for each CC / Macro control.

cheers,
T

[Stefan Jantschek]

Absynth 5 is the one.

Althought it might be not the first choice for the "tweak the preset" guys,
Absynth is still one of the most complex and powerful VSTI´s available.
It gives you access to any sort of known sythesis.
From wavemorph to granular, from FM to sampling, anything can be done
with unlimited Envelope control.
It`s another universe than the usual ADSR`s.
Especially long time evolving, complex sounds are based on that.
Shure some of them can be immitated with sample libraries, but that´s the difference
between sounds dead or alive.

There are granular based sound possibilities you won´t even find tutorials for.
And more than enough parameters can be mapped with Live 9.

The only drawback is, you guessed it, you need to learn.
So my tip for you, aklisiewicz, go on and search for what you think you need with your superficial method,
or invest the same time learning Absynth.
You can only grow.
It`s up to you to trust me saying Absynth is worth it!

And forget the "Brightness Knob"

[aklisiewicz]

I'm sure Absynth5 is capable of nice sounds. For me the problem is time. I only can spend limited amount of time on designing sounds (and the limit is rather low). I'm looking for something I can use out of the box and eventually modify a sound bit to give it some personality. I'm also fully aware REAKTOR and it's plugins are the whole universe of what can be done with pads, drones and ambient sound but it requires tons of time to learn. I'm not afraid of learning it is only the time limit, so therefore I'm looking for more out of the box sounds.

wonder if anybody is using AMBIENT WHITE to share opinion ?

ART

[login]

I honestly think you have more than enough for this, maybe add zebra. I think that instead of a synth you should get preset banks.

The ones by The unfinished are quite good http://www.theunfinished.co.uk/

[jestermgee]

As I understand it you have both Omnisphere and Komplete Ultimate and so far find both do not offer what you need, even though most users agree it's probably even more than what you need.

Possibly music making isn't really for you. I don't think spending even more money for that "quick fix" idea would be wise but it's your cash I guess.