At times, I get mad about it and start developing new instruments.
My last one is Sulmona ArpSynth, which I’m currently developing. It features some interesting variations over the other arpsynths, like for example a 5OSC based sound engine, a pre/post-delay filter, and a wet/dry knob for the arpeggiator.
What I am asking is if you think that SynthMaker or SynthEdit can be compared in any way with Reaktor, and which one you think is the best between the last two and all the three programs.
What I really love of these two programs are the following features:
no cost
ability to export to VST DLL
SynthMaker looks more promising to me, but it is still completely closed (you can’t write new elements for it), while SynthEdit is an older and more open project.
I think I am quite familiar with reaktor now (atleat I get the stuff done I need fast), and I checked synthedit once and was totally repelled by it. It does not have much elements to work with, there is some crazy 0 to 10 volt system (and not -1 to 1 or 0 to 1 or similar) and there were even the most simple things missing (like mathematical calculations and similar). I tried around for about 30 minutes, surfed the map to see if I downloaded the wrong version or needed some update-packs and then gave up.
However, this was some time ago (about a year or more), maybe this has changed now.
i’m also an oldtime reaktor user. atm i’ve done too much of stuff there to switch to another editor. of course there are awful bugs and some features are missing, but i hope 4.05 will be less buggy at least. i’m developing few synths and filters, which i’m gonna seriously use, and actually, it takes months to “nothing > good idea > working ensemble”. i don’t think i can use else editor than reakor. using those “voltage” systems sounds mad to me.
Slightly off topic here, just out of curiosity: if a modular routing of instruments and plugins is implemented somehow in Renoise. How many/what kind of modules would be needed to make it usable as a “synth builder” as well? (I have looked only slightly at such modular synthbuilding programs before). In other words, what kind of modules do you use to build a synth? After all, we already have a set of basic effects, and the most basic building blocks should be trivial to program once the modular routing would be in place.
synthedit is meant as an analog modular synth, therefor the voltage system makes sense. and that is probably the reason why it doesn’t come with many math modules.
as it-alien already pointed out, synthedit lets you make your own modules (if you have some coding abilities) that is a big plus.
i find the standard oscs and filters that come with synthedit not good sounding, but i haven’t tried out custom ones yet.
on the other hand i’m not a big fan of reaktor’s sound from what i heard so far. i think it sounds somewhat sterile and lifeless, but i seem to be the only one who feels this way, so maybe my ears are just weird.
well i’m no expert, but i’d say the more modules you have, the more custom synths with own character you can build… (eheh very useful statement)
out of the blue, i can think of the standard ones like (lf)osc, filters (lots of), env generator, amp, mixer, all kind of signal shapers/distortion/saturation, envelope follower, maybe z^1 module, logic modules, math modules, midi modules, blabla.
probably not that trivilal… the modules needed to be very fast and high-quality, maybe one could run into latency-caused problems? i could imagine profound dsp-knowledge is needed?
you also needed to implement multiple signal paths between modules.
