Alchemy... ok can I now forget most other synth out there?

[anybody human]

For building and programming, I say Alchemy is better than Omnisphere, because it has IMO a much smoother interface/GUI for doing this -- just about everything is on one main screen, and very beautifully and thoughtfully laid out. Omnisphere, on the other hand, puts everything on separate pages that you "zoom" into, a system I don't care much for, and also just doesn't look all that pretty to the eyes.

But Omnisphere wins hands down for sheer sample content. And as presets go, Omnisphere has Alchemy beat by about a thousand miles....

So they both rock, but I find them quite different, at least in terms of my personal tastes with sample-based synths.

-M

I guess it depends. For me when I get down in the weeds I don't like having everything on one page, but a lot of times it would be nice. As I said before I use M4L for granular stuff but I'm definitely going to have to dive in to the resynthesis & granular features in Alchemy because they are excellent. I didn't use Omnisphere near as much until the 1.5 update, after Trilian came out and they added the Juicy filter to Omni. Until then Omni didn't have an analog-ish filter that did it for me, once it did I started using it all the time. When I first got Alchemy I just didn't dig the filters, so I moved on but it might be time to revisit it for the audio importing/resynthesis/granular features.

Don't sell Zebra, that thing rules.

[ewistrand]

I just used this synth the and my first thought was, ok I can chuck all my other softsynth away now (absynth, massive, zebra). It's a all in one synth. OK it's no FM synth, but besides this? I have the feeling that its very easy to design sounds from scratch with this. Or is this only my first vivid impression? It's even moderate to the cpu. Damn I really don't want to buy gear - I have enough, but this sound like the uber synth to me at the moment. Longtime users here who can confirm or deny it?

I definitely wouldn't chuck any of the synths you mentioned; they're all different animals. I own all four and moderate the forums for three of the four you mention (the exception being Zebra); I couldn't imagine cutting any of them out of my palette.

ew

[Machinesworking]

I'm with ew on this.
Absynth, Zebra, and Massive all do IMO very different things well. They overlap palette wise, but they have obvious strengths and weaknesses as far as certain sounds etc.
Absynth by virtue of it's crazy god sounding delay based FX is a pad/lush chord king. Zebra is unsurpassed at organic/hardware sounding wave synthesis, and Massive is great at high end digital synth madness.

Alchemy is my next softsynth purchase for sure. The guys at Camel are really decent people, and the thing sounds great. Omnisphere is ruled out by the fact that it doesn't let you use your own samples, and has a freaking ridiculously large library.

[glitchrock-buddha]

Alchemy absolutely does not replace other synths in my opinion. Absynth 5 is far more cpu efficient and has a killer morph and randomizer which Alchemy's is not nearly as useful. The preset library is also fantastic and now you can morph between them. Alchemy also deosn't touch Massive for that gritty gnarly stuff. Similarly can't do the same stuff as Zebra. But of course the opposite is true, these can't do what Alchemy does.

The one thing about Alchemy is that I don't personally like it's VA section and filters to be as good as the others mentioned, or rather I don't like them as much. I find there to be some kind of metallic type sound that's hard to get rid of. However, it's additive, spectral and granular capabilites are where it shines and where other synths can't quite touch it. The easy edit section is also very cool. I do find the cpu usage to climb quite high though. I'd say it's the biggest cpu hog that I have.

So maybe it could replace other synths for someone else but not me. Provided I already had some way of sampling and doing granular type stuff, I would keep Omnisphere and Zebra before Alchemy, as well as Komplete 6. Very happy to have Alchemy though. Great company, worth supporting.

[superistic]

I nearly sold this until i watched the Alchemy tutorial videos and saw some of the stuff this thing is capable of...amazing synth, use it for everything now, love the way the modulation is set up, the MSEGs are really cool for pads too.

[Anand]

Any views about Arturia synths? I am thinking of getting em.

[UncleAge]

Alchemy absolutely does not replace other synths in my opinion.

Agreed. It in no way replaces Blue, Zebra and ACE for me. It does make a wonderful addition to what I already have though (which is an even longer list).

[LoopStationZebra]

It's not about anything replacing anything per se. For me, it's about not really needing anything else. Then again, my music isn't really synth based.