Ableton Forum

for acoustic arrangements my favourites are The Trumpet by Sample Modeling und Wivi by Wallander Instruments.
both (still growing) brought my arrangements to annother level during last year. probably not for everyone, but for me, playing them by windcontroler, the biggest step forward!

concerning the synth-world i agree with the other user:
sylenth2, zebra2, omnisphere, massive...

Saxer wrote:for acoustic arrangements my favourites are The Trumpet by Sample Modeling und Wivi by Wallander Instruments.
both (still growing) brought my arrangements to annother level during last year. probably not for everyone, but for me, playing them by windcontroler, the biggest step forward!

concerning the synth-world i agree with the other user:
sylenth2, zebra2, omnisphere, massive...

Is stylusRMX a synth ?

i thought it was a bunch of "cool" sample loops.

collision, corpus, overdrive, limiter (just for the native ability to save my speakers and ears while playing collision and tension, w/o too much color ala saturator), frequency shifter. i ain't messed with the new operator too much yet, as far as programming, but i'll get there. multiband just confuses me, lol. and i think i tried looper once or twice <shrugs shoulders>
but my favorite plug so far this year, hands down, is vocoder

my new fav. synth is circle....wow!

It's good to see people championing Abes stuff - The Live 8 Suite will be a very powerful tool, especially for those who have not invested heavily on 3rd party vsts and who intend on using Live for composition, arrangement and mixing (i.e. not offload mixing or complex audio and MIDI needs to another DAW).

1:Camel Audio Alchemy:perfect for sample manipulation,it's like Absynth on steroids.
2:Native Instruments Maschine:finally software+hardware that gives me that HARDWARE-feeling i craved for.not a synth but awesome nonetheless.......
3:Izotope Ozone 4(loudnessmaximizer is the most transparent and creamy sounding limiter i ever heard.eq and stereotools are really good as well.don't use the rest though....)
4:Sonalksis dq-1 Dynamic eq:combined with their sv-315 comp,sv-517 eq and ozone 4 the absolute s%^t for mixing/mastering/whatever.
5:reaktor SPARK:amazing fat synth with awesome feedback.check it out if you like Massive's feedback.....nasty!

can't think of 5 more synths/fx that made such a HUGE impact for me.....

I'm a cheap bastard and since I don't use pirate software it's all about the free vsts for me.

My favorites (not necessarily new in 2008 or 2009) are:
1. Crystal
2. Cosmo Girl 2
3. Poly Iblit
4. EX096
5. Cello Fan
6. Izotope Ozone (one of the few vsts I've purchased)
7. Izotope Trash (another purchased vst)
8. Waves (the only other vsts I've bought)

I own a lot more than this (including Alchemy and the rest of U-He's stuff) but these + Live's devices are all I really keep going back to:

Ohmicide

Microtonic

Zebra 2

DTBLKFX (Free/X-Platform!)

MFM II

I have a feeling once Filterscape gets its next update and Uh-Bik, is complete, they will be here also...

So , i dont see any real new stuff i have missed.

my list goes like this , and its not strictly 2008-2009


-zebra2
-effectrix
-fabfilter pro c
-microtonic
-Reaktor

I don't know if they are "Top 10" or not but I have been impressed with:

Alchemy
Density
EpicVerb
Aether
Uhbik(s)
Omnisphere

leedsquietman wrote:It's good to see people championing Abes stuff - The Live 8 Suite will be a very powerful tool, especially for those who have not invested heavily on 3rd party vsts and who intend on using Live for composition, arrangement and mixing (i.e. not offload mixing or complex audio and MIDI needs to another DAW).

Yeah man, the operator improvements really took me by surprise in Live 8. Just so much added without really having to change the look or feel much. New filters, filter drive/shaper, custom additive waveforms, aux env/lfo via pitch env/lfo, modulation assignments. So many nice things. And although I just love the structure and feature set, heavily tabbed synth layouts still bothers me and operator suffers from this badly since it's in such a cramped space. With eight tabs already and now the oscillators each ahving two tabs, it ameks for a lot of clicking around. I just wish it could expand like samplers sample zone view or the spectrum analyzer to be like a single pane synth. Same thing for all of the ableton instruments really. They are all heavily tabbed. I personally lean towards wanting to use a plug-in just for the interface sometimes.

Sylenth1
Great vst!

Camel Audios Alchemy is excellent, still enjoying it.

For fX Uhbiks are excellent as well.

All the other VST synths I've replaced with Prophet 08, which is, needless to say, excellent.

And I also found myself enjoying my Nord Electro2 again. Excellent.

Lennar Digital Sylenth

Underrated/forgotten and worthy of mention IMO:
Sugar Bytes Artillery II
Sugar Bytes Unique
AraldFX Storm Gate
Audio Damage Automaton

Here we go .. In No particular order .. (Synths) Zebra2, just awesome sounding and pretty straight forward to program.. Alchemy, F%±K what it can do with audio samples and morphing! Sylenth, man this is one hell of a great sounding beast and a breeze to tweak.. (FX) Uhbiks! fekking effectual sublimeness..

Apart from that I must also make a shout out for the Live 8 updates. The mighty Operator.. Always been a great synth but now it's even greater.. However Glitchrock, I totally agree with your criticism on its fiddleyness, and think your suggestions would be great if implemented ... And yeah, Vocoder I LOVE! Wicked on everything I throw at it! Overdrive is nice touch as is the Limiter and the Multiband Dynamics..

Tried Synplant..... didn't 'do' it for me... Do like the look of Obelisk though.. hmm.

Hd