Operator Vs. Sytrus

epytryga · Post by **epytryga** » Sat Mar 25, 2006 4:18 pm

Hi there everyone:
I'm seeking a bit of advice...I already have a license to Sytrus FM synth....if anyone out there has it and Operator as well...could you compare and contrast? I'm tempted to get Operator because it's so well integrated into Live....

Any thoughts would be helpful.

Johnisfaster · Post by **Johnisfaster** » Sat Mar 25, 2006 7:46 pm

I'd get it, though I was never really a big fan of sytrus as it was difficult for me to come up with my own patches in intuitive ways. I always found myself just clicking around till something sounded cool. where as operator is so intuitive if you understand sythesis you can think of a sound and make it. not as "stumbling around in the dark" like.

thats just me though. maybe I never spent enough time with sytrus.

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Fri Jun 16, 2006 10:14 pm

I own both. I've recently found Sytrus to be amazing - go figure - I own the synth since the November group buy and only now does it suddenly start to make sense. One great thing about Sytrus is the analysis of single-cycle waveforms, which helps me create new sounds really fast.

Operator just begs you to tweak around with it. On top of that, the deep integration with Live as well as the well-thought out UI makes usability and FM programability much easier than other FM monsters. So between the two, you really can't go wrong. If you're on the fence, download the Covert Operators patches for Operator, and then load it up in Demo mode to hear some presets. You'll like what you hear.

njh · Post by **njh** » Sat Jun 17, 2006 2:07 am

i can never get a decent sound out of operator,
i guess i would chose sytrus out of the two. honestly i never use either of these synths in any music i make. its probably time to delete them both.
they are both cracks anyway.

mikemc · Post by **mikemc** » Sat Jun 17, 2006 4:13 am

I have both, nebulae has some good thoughts, I second these.

The two work well with one another. One thing I've found with Sytrus is that it can be very heavy on CPU-- I can run multiple instances of Operator with the CPU that the string ensemble Sytrus preset uses. Operator tends to be more uniform in CPU usage from patch to patch, it is easier to play around with and get the sound to change drastically, I think, whereas Sytrus has some of the more accessible 'popular sounds' as presets, and they sound good.

This live performance contains sounds from both.

http://www.utenzil.com/mp3/Utenzil_LIVE ... WashDC.mp3

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Sat Jun 17, 2006 4:23 am

Mike-

Nice fuzzy sounds in that set. Sounds beautiful - I bet the show itself was probably awesome! Let me know when you next show is...if I'm in your neighborhood, I'll definitely stop by. Great stuff.

Also, note that you're close to your 1000th post. It's tradition to give mad props to me on a quad-digit-milestone post. Just FYI.

One other note, I've found that Sytrus can easily become CPU hoggy if you complicate things. If you keep it simple, say a 4 oscillater supersaw with chorus and delay and filter, it can be very good to the CPU. If you go overboard with a lot of FM and tons of envelopes, well, the more it has to compute to make the sound, the more it'll tax your CPU. Another nice feature is that you can set the oversample to very high for render only, which will only tax the CPU during a mixdown or a freeze.