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brandondrury

Damn You Abynth 5! Is There An All-Out Grand Slam VST Synth?

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brandondrury
, 06-16-2012 at 10:32 PM (1502 Views)
I've got a bunch of fun hardware synths. I'm finding VST synths to be more fun. I set aside two hours per day, each and every day this week to get a handle on Native Instruments Absynth 5. Stephen Ambrose, I can't remember which book it was, mentioned that one of Hitler's flaws in terms of the military machine was he'd assign two different groups the same task. (He believed in competition....rather strange for a guy who hated capitalism.) Anyway, when two competing isolated groups were doing their thing, in many cases 80% of what they were doing was redundant. If the two groups would have worked together, they could have just invented the wheel once and spent the rest of their time on V2 rockets.

I get the feeling that Native Instruments is also divided up into two or more isolated groups.

Massive is a hell of a VST synth. If you like the "metallic" nature of the synth (bright as hell would also describe it if you are lazy with the filters)....and I do, the possibilities in this synth are HUGE.

Absynth 5 is also a hell of a synth. People like to use it for evolving atmospheres and such. Admittedly, there's something about it that just pulls you into that world. Unfortunately, I don't always need a pad that sustains for 12 seconds or has some kind of slimy reverb that takes on a life of its own. What if I just want a good ol' supersaw lead? It can do that very, very well....and then you get to the effects. They are very strange (which is good) but they don't include any of the "classic" stuff you'd expect to find. They don't have any of the effects Massive does.

The Dimensional Expander in Massive is AWESOME. I love it. It's actually the closest thing (at least in spirit) that I've heard to my Eventide H3000. I don't have anything else like that in my arsenal in the box. There are times in Absynth where I'd REALLY like to have that Dimensional Expander. Native Instruments already invented it. Toss it in there under some menu.

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The review for Sylenth1 will go up for this week's newsletter. It's an outstanding sounding synth and really makes me wonder why I keep the Moog around. (Seriously.) When you look at the routing options for LFOs and Envelopes, you are stuck with the same limitations of the old late 70s / early 80s synths. (Note, this was back in a time when the designers wanted to do more with voices, routing, modulation, etc but the technology was too expensive.) Just to give a frame of reference, this would be like intentionally (and artificially) setting a 3 day waiting period on email within the US and an 8 day waiting period on email to the UK from the US. Uh, it's new technology. Let's just make it instance and enjoy all the creative options! There WERE NO "good ol' days". Fuggetaboutit.

In reality, I have no idea what it would take to add the ability to send LFOs and Envelopes to just about anything, but I know it's not limited by hardware.

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In all these synths (Absynth 5, Massive, and Sylenth1) there are some kinds of limitations placed on great sounding tools that simply make each tool less effective for what I'm doing. I can understand to a degree why one synth or another has character. (That should be a sonic thing within it's oscillators and such.) To actually deny features that are right there on the table simply for the sake of "uniqueness" strikes me as silly. Just jam 'em all into one mega mega synth....an All-Out Grand Slam synth and I'll gladly buy it.

If anyone knows of an All-Out Grand Slam synth, please let me know.

Brandon
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  1. bozmillar's Avatar
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    I hate the vintage worship as much as the next person, but there are plenty of reasons not to have a do it all synth. I think the biggest reason is that the UI would be a nightmare. The advantage of having limitations is that you can twist one knob and change the sound significantly without turning it into a burst of noise. The market for people who want low level control over their synths is very very small.

    It's the same reason I gave up on using acmebargig's headcase and went back to just using lepou and simulanalog again. I much prefer the sound of headcase, but the UI is a huge pain and it's a CPU hot, which ends up making it a lot harder to dial in a sound I want. I'd rather sacrifice features and just be able to get a good sound and forget about it.

    Personally, I think UI is by far the most important concept in a good plugin, be it a synth or whatever. If the UI is hard to control, it doesn't matter how good the sine waves sound, it will be impossible to get a good sound out of it. The more complicated the interface, the harder it is to make it usable.
  2. brandondrury's Avatar
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    Your points are noted.

    However, this is more along the lines off not being able to use a Fender Twin's spring reverb on a 5150 preset. They let you use a spring reverb on the Fender Twin sound but disable it on the 5150. This kind of thing is my problem. While a 5150 probably isn't a first choice for a "blues tone", if you stumble on an incredible one and you really would want a spring reverb, it seems silly not to connect those dots.

    It almost appears like they went out of their way to add such a limitation. This limitation could always work great in "Simple Mode" but then for those of us who want a specific thing, we could just grab it.

    The GUI is a huge deal. I agree. (I've been discussing a problem GUI issues I had with the iZoptope guys in regard to Ozone 5's brickwall limiter.) However, I think Soundtoys and the Axe FX Axe Edit got this right. You just add a little tab for nerds. No biggie.

    The market for people who want low level control over their synths is very very small.
    And this may be it. There may be little financial incentive for this. Actually, it makes sense that a synth company would take 8 core components and put 5 of them in 8 different products. Product #9 will come out and everyone will just HAVE to have it even though it's just rehashing the same gadgets.

    This does come at the expense stumbling upon a great sound that needs X and not having anywhere to go with it. I guess they call that "character".

    Absynth 5 is marketed as an "insane pad" synth with crazy sustaining stuff. If you just grab 1-2 oscillators and ignore 95% in there it's the same thing as my Prophet or Moog (with a different character). Calling Absynth a "pad synth" is like calling a computer a "porn consumption device". Uh, they are also used climate models.

    I've noticed quite a few reviews of Sylenth1 call it a "trance synth". This is a dead giveaway that a person never went past the presets. That's like calling a Dewalt table saw a "doghouse maker".

    Brandon
  3. dudermn's Avatar
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    NI does make guitar rig may I remind you
  4. brandondrury's Avatar
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    NI does make guitar rig may I remind you
    Yeah, I've got it. I'm not exactly sure your point.
  5. bozmillar's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by brandondrury
    Yeah, I've got it. I'm not exactly sure your point.
    I think the point is that NI hasn't had issues jamming 1000 features into a single plugin in the past.
  6. dudermn's Avatar
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    I think NI might be trying to overthrow the government or something like that actually.
    Their too smart, they must be up to something!

    Though they messed up with the audio kontrol 2 (or was it called complete audio??)
    Mouth is a better plug for you to play with though.



    But the best all in one synth is the kaos pad (+ an axe fx and maybe a microphone (dynamic to keep things ez)

    Yet dub fx uses a gt-8 for most of his works :/
    brandondrury likes this.
  7. raweber's Avatar
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    While I don't personally own it, my understanding is that Reason comes pretty close to what you're looking for. Lot's of modules you can route any way you please - a do it all if ever there was one...
  8. brandondrury's Avatar
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    Reason is a powerful gadget, but what I'm talking about would have to be specific module within Reason (unless you can select oscillators, vcf's, envelopes, etc and route them to essentially everything).

    Either way, I think I have found what I'm looking for. I got a review copy of Zebra2 and it appears to be my dream synth. I have no need for my hardware synths anymore.

    Brandon
  9. aaron aardvark's Avatar
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    I think the u-he Zebra can do all sorts of sounds very well.
  10. brandondrury's Avatar
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    Zebra2 can do a TON of things. It's a wild synth for sure. It does appear to require quite a bit of work to con it into switching from the "neck pickup" to the "bridge pickup". It's naturally very, very smooth and maybe even mellow. I've still got a mountain to climb as I learn it so it's a bit early to say.

    I do wish they had some kind of "death mode" where it switched to a much more aggressive sound at the oscillator....much like Sylenth has. Either way, Zebra2 is my go to synth.

    Brandon