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Thread Comments about the feature article: These Are a Few of My Favorite Synths

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gearyelton

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1 Posted on 03/24/2015 at 14:45:16

I’ve been writing about synthesizers since the 1970s and reviewing virtual instruments since the 1990s. Still, when Audiofanzine asked me to pick my "top 5" software synths, it was no easy feat, as there are so many good ones to choose from. After careful consideration, I chose the five that I've found most useful in a variety of musical situations.

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synthonym

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2 Posted on 03/26/2015 at 02:31:47

Which one of these soft synths are the most user-friendly? Or is there another you would recommend for a synth newbie?

gearyelton

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3 Posted on 03/26/2015 at 19:52:24

That's a hard call, Synthonym. It depends entirely on how you use them and what you want to do with them. If you're just playing factory sounds, they're all user-friendly. Once you've learned your way around, none of them are difficult to use for even the deeper stuff. Although Omnisphere doesn't have the most attractive GUI of the bunch, I'd have to say it has a slight edge on user-friendliness. But that could just be because I use it most often.

eleanorbigsby

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4 Posted on 03/27/2015 at 03:24:14

Quote from synthonym:

Which one of these soft synths are the most user-friendly? Or is there another you would recommend for a synth newbie?

User-friendliness is often a misnomer. It's not like one soft synth is more user-friendly than the next, just like one DAW is not objectively and undoubtedly user-friendly than the next. IMHO it's more dependent on both your knowledge of synths in general and whichever software you start off with and begin to learn. Both with learning synths as well as software, there's a learning period. The more time you spend learning, the more 'user-friendly' it will become.

telecode

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5 Posted on 04/06/2015 at 04:05:35

I have the Matrix and Arturia. Great sounds from those synths for the price and I agree with review about Matrix. But there are use friendliness issues with the GUIs. Arturia try to re-create the original look of the synth. On some of them, with a large format monitor, the GUI front end for the synth does not resize. So its stuck at whatever windowsize Arties made it at. This gets to be a real problem when you are trying to adjust or tweak some knobs to get a custom sound because they are so small to see and click on. I use Maschine a lot and am able to map the synth as a plugin to different pages of knobs. Just my 2 cents.

Mike Levine

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6 Posted on 04/07/2015 at 04:58:57

I definitely hear what you're saying. Although the appeal is clear from a marketing standpoint, software emulations of vintage synths can be difficult to use because the hardware knob setup doesn't always translate well to a computer screen. Manufacturers need to take that into account as well. There's little point in owning a great-sounding vintage-synth emulation if it's a total pain to use.

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