Paging @howard, @wellbi, @Paul (?) and other plug-in pros.
What is a good buy at 50 dollars or less when looking for great analog synth sounds??
Thanks!
Wait till black friday and buy Arturia Pigments for around 50 euros https://www.arturia.com/products/software-instruments/pigments/overview
I am a huge Arturia fan when it comes to synth hard- and software. The analog lab is really cool alternative if you want to play with legendary synths instead.
Serum and Kiloheart phase plant are good alternatives. They are all the similar priced , but in any case I would wait for black friday. With Arturia you can also get good deals if you buy a piece of hardware.
Anyway I think Howard and Welbi are more experienced when it comes to synth.
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Thanks, Paul!
Maybe I should add: I am mainly interested in sounds (i.e., pre-sets, emulations) and not so much in learning how to make my own sounds (I really don’t need another rabbit hole right now 
)
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In that case Arturia Analog Lab V!
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Nice… but, 200 bucks 
That’s why I would wait for Black Friday, it’s hard to find something of similar quality. You also get a hefty discount when you buy Arturia hardware.
Maybe start with the free version to see if you like it? Perhaps this is enough for your needs 
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Great - will check it out 
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Yeah if you just want presets, for classic analog synth emulations you cannot do better than Analog Lab when it is on sale (or free with all Arturia hardware - they make excellent keyboard controllers). It’s selected presets from all of the dozens of V Collection synths.
I will sell you Pigments 4 for 50 euros now if you like too. It’s a fantastic synthesizer with many, many great presets, and by far the prettiest UI of any synth plugin. I am simply too far in to another synthesizer to use it much, though, so I have been considering selling.
I would offer to just give you Analog Lab (as I own the full V Collection, which makes it superfluous); unfortunately it’s tied to my keyboard controller, and if someone ever bought that they would automatically get that license transferred. Can’t transfer it without transferring the controller too.
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Thanks, Howard! Let me dive a little into some online videos to listen to presets etc.
From what I have already seen, this is indeed a fantastic synth; I am just a bit worried it might be overkill for my purposes (and my abilities to dive into its engines), but 50 € is a great offer. Let me get back to you on that. (Of course, if you sell it in the meantime, that’s cool )
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Hey. With 50 bucks to spend on a virtual synth, I would probably go with one of these virtual synths. Cherry Audio’s virtual-analog framework is incredible. Which one to choose? It depends on the sound you’re after. There are quite a few people on the YT who demo old synths so you can hear these machines in action (Dr. Mix, Starsky Carr for example) and these Cherry Audio recreations are really close to the originals and are mostly, quite cheaper than Arturia, NI, etc., so I would find which sound is the one I like the most (Moog, Arp, Sequential … All these companies have a specific sound to them. A bass sound made by a Moog will have a recognizably different sound from an Arp product. etc.) and go with that one.
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Have you tried some of the free ones like Vital? I think the free version comes with 75 presets. VCV rack is cool if you want to play with something that’s like a real analog synth.
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Vital is outstanding. Vital actually stands up well against other places paid products.
There’s a few excellent free synths for sure; I would probably start with Vital and Surge. Those two alone would take you a long way.
Vital is much nicer to use than Surge though.
Oh, and Dexed. It’s outstanding. I keep forgetting it because I have the V collection DX7.
If you want a DX7 and learn the pain of early FM synthesis (but end up with great sounds), Dexed is great. It’s actually much easier than a real DX7 was too.
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Thanks, @sshoihet and @howard: more stuff to check out, more choices - hope to dive deeper on these and the Cherry Audio synths (and the Arturia demos) over the weekend
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Could be interesting (and sentimental). DX 7 was one of the iconic synths I grew up with… yet, I don’t want to dive too deep in the synthesis part - I’d prefer loads of presets for now 
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Oh it has a bunch. It might be able to load old DX7 SYSEX files too; this often works on synths modeling older gear. I have all the old ESQ-1 patches I used to love working with SQ80-V now 
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Just verified, Dexed can load DX7 sysex files; there’s many sites with archives of those.
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Hah, thanks for looking more into this. I feel another rabbithole opening up wide
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Oh yes. Synths are an infinitely deep hole for time, cash, sound sculpting, etc.
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Yeah I am staying away from synths 
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