One of the biggest challenges I face as I try some of these possible solutions is that there are sooooo many crappy sounds that I will never ever use - it’s really hard to find the few that sound good.
I realize this is, of course, the power of synths that they can make just about every imaginable sound (and even those unimaginable), but, boy, it means that every bank of presets or patches is bound to have only 2-3 % OK sounds in it…
Maybe I should stick with the Alchemy synth in Logic for now (or the ES2) and learn how to tweak the few good sounds to get even better ones
Hm, OK, maybe I found a really cool one - all analog (no FM, no waveforms, …):
An Oberheim OB-X emulator; has a lot of gorgeous leads, pads/strings and bass - quite amazing actually. It’s free to download (and you can donate if you like it; EDIT: apparently, they only expect you to pay if you use the software/sounds commercially - cool!!).
Honestly my favorite synthesis is wavetable, but YMMV.
If you want pure analog, it is very easy to make, for example, a Prophet clone yourself from scratch in any general purpose synth. It took me like five minutes in Phase Plant when I did it. Sounded great too
Pigments could do this easily if you didn’t like the stock Prophet-like patches.
The early analog synths were very simple and constructing them in modern synths is a great way to explore and learn subtractive synthesis. Understanding this actually will go a long way to shaping sounds for other instruments too (like bass).
Potentially, you are underestimating the effort a bit, but you may for sure be overestimating my abilities in this direction… joke aside, this is really what I was hoping to avoid from the get-go.
Anyway, I should be set for now with the OB-Xd. I might miss out on a few nice DX-7 or D-50 sounds, but it’s not like I am getting heavily into synth-pop or something like that
There is certainly truth to this, and I hope to pick up knowledge as I go… I don’t think I am ready for a full-on deep-dive, though!
TAL Software (tal-software.com) … Or if you don’t want to spend money and still want some good analog sound. TAL Noisemaker is quite a staple. It has a basic subtractive two oscillator, filter, and envelope synth design (In my opinion it’s the closest to Minimoog in sound and Pro1 in layout) and it sounds great for the price. Well, good enough for quite prominent producers to use it in their major releases.
I presume you’ve got a midi controller @joergkutter but when i bought my Arturia MiniLab MKII it comes bundled with “Analog Lab Lite” with 500 sounds from the V-Collection.
Yep, thanks, I got two actually (a big one and a small, 2-octave job. Sadly, none of them came with a similar goodie pack as the Arturia - that’s a nice deal indeed.
In this particular case, however, it is not about just any analog synth, but probably THE most classic one of them all
Analog Lab has selected patches from all the V Collection synths. In a way it’s the best ad for V Collection imaginable, but really for anyone not in to sound design on synths it’s enough. You can even tweak the patches a bit (though not as much as if you had the V Collection synth, of course.)
You know there really is a pretty solid argument that now that digital versions exist that can save patches, the Korg MS-20 is the best analog synth of all time.
The hardware:
The awesome software version I found recently:
The best part is that plugin is only $29 and it’s pretty much perfect.
I am a slightly bigger fan of the Sequential Prophet Pro-One in the same space, mostly due to familiarity, but it’s really hard to argue this one. The MS-20 is just awesome. It’s also capable of being (much) angrier and more aggressive than the Pro-One, which is saying a lot.
Potentially, you are underestimating the effort a bit, but you may for sure be overestimating my abilities in this direction… joke aside, this is really what I was hoping to avoid from the get-go.
Moog!
