Ableton Forum

Over the years, I have owned a Nord Lead 2, Microkorg, Novation BassStation, Novation K-Station, Alesis Ion, Roland Juno, Roland Fantom, and I always end up back in the box, usually with just a handful of great synths, namely Operator, Sylenth, Massive, Zebra.

Everyone should own Sylenth IMO. It’s low on CPU, fun to program, and sounds great.

nycmex77 wrote:

its either VST or real analog

so which VST's u recommend?

Zebra 2! Ive demoed it and its the craziest thing. Sounds great and pretty much infinite possibilities.
Otherwise if you want an "analog sounding" vst get U-He Diva. Very CPU intensive though so wont run on my pc. I press one note and my cpu meter jumps by about 30%

Pretty much everything U-He makes is gold.

I'll disagree slightly here. I own Komplete 8 and a Novation Ultranova, Acess Virus C. All three have there own distinct sound and structure. While VA do sample well what I really like is being able to create my own sounds, tweak presets and lastly not have to rely on the computer all the time to jam..

I tried a Mopho but think the Tetra's poly capability makes it worth the extra investment. The new Moog Mintaur or Arturia's minibrute look very promising if you want analogue.

I was just contemplating this a few weeks ago and found a nord lead 2x for dirt cheap. It's practically new.

Virtual Analog or not, the fact that I don't have to map anything is great. Touch the knob, hear the change.

But with this said, I still find myself reaching for Sylenth and experimenting with Reaktor. The nord is also a good midi controller. I map the knobs to macros in Live.

If you can find a hardware synth VA or not, get it. It'll serve 2 purposes.

djadonis206 wrote:
If you can find a hardware synth VA or not, get it. It'll serve 2 purposes.

100% agree. essentially - if you are considering a midi controller for £200+, you might as well get a synth.