I’ll second Serum. It is stupidly easy to use and does basically anything. The onboard FXs are great.
The Hardware Megathread
relic
#6102
Yes. They are. And it is dead simple. Which is great for me because I have a hard time planning a patch out in my head. I just do things until a patch sounds interesting lol.
White_Noise
#6103
I don’t know why this is, given that the synths are broadly similar. I’ve demoed Serum multiple times and never clicked with it, while Vital has become the basis of more than one of my tracks over the last 18 months or so. The fact that Vital is free is just a bonus, something about the workflow is better for me.
For the price of Serum I was much happier with Phaseplant. And now that we’re fully in software thread territory - Phaseplant rules. First time I made a sound with it, Metaside was impressed (and he’s done factory sounds so I’ll take his word that the sound was good). I got lucky and got a lot of the snapheap free as part of the upgrade window from V1 to V2, but even with just the base snapins you can have a very good time. I’m slowly adding the premium snapins as I go (I don’t really feel the need for the EQs, and I can fake multipass well enough with the basic EQ and multiple FX lanes, but Disperser and Faturator seem cool). Kilohearts also has a pretty good subscription model where you can use everything and you get a voucher at the end of the year to permanently own something worth $100, but you can save them from year to year so that you can get Phaseplant itself. Or $400 for everything today, and that price dynamically drops as you buy more and more of the stuff. I just checked my price and it’s a little over $200 to jump to everything here and now.
relic
#6104
Hey whatever works for people. I tried so hard to like Absynth when it was the hot thing and never got on with it. Serum feels a lot like Massive to me, which I always found easy to use.
chasedobson
#6105
One of Serum’s strengths is its chaos modulator, routing it in minimal depths to fine freq, panning, and amplitude really breathes life into Serum patches. Sort of like an osc slop or drift parameter on certain analog synths.
relic
#6108
Oh heck yes. And yea, I can already see how this would give patches that subtle “that something.” Thanks again!
Roo_Stercogburn
#6109
I use the Serum FX more than the synth itself but I like the synth itself a lot.
I’ve had Vital for ages, didn’t know it was free now but I don’t begrudge the devs their money, its fun. Its not my go-to for anything though, just something I use from time to time.
Koldunya
#6114
NI added Ozone 10 to Komplete 14… and a bunch of Plugin Alliance stuff, too.
…y’know, shit I already have from before they all joined forces that may or may not be a pita to sell licenses to. A bunch of Play series things they’ve already released. There’s a few new things in it like a choir thing and some instruments…
The newest thing is Kontakt 7.
Native Instruments needs to change their name to Sampled Instruments. Glad I never bought a Play series thing. Unlike Arturia who greatly considers that in their pricing, NI tends to freeze you at “$200 for the update” no matter how much extra stuff you buy.
Roo_Stercogburn
#6115
Same-ish boat with same vendors.
Last Komplete I didn’t get until it was way cheaper a long time after release and I tend to skip versions as there’s usually very little benefit of grabbing the latest if you’re more or less up to date on the various contained products. With the PA stuff I’ll have to take a close look as I’ve got some of them already.
There’s a lot of crossover between PA and NI stuff so its not a straightforward case of just counting the products to decide on purchase without looking at them properly. That said I have found the PA stuff I have way better for mixing/EQ than the NI products. In my own limited experience of course.
Erm. So hardware.
relic
#6118
Yes, they did, and while I don’t have a problem with Behringer outright, I’d rather have the Sequential version. I’ve been drooling lol.