I have Xfer Serum, Vital and Phase Plant.
When I had only Serum, I though it was great, but Phase Plant gives me more options to create sound (with less effects because only few of thems are free, rest you must buy separately - but then Phase Plant is not worth its price; you can still create great sounds with default effects). PhasePlant have everything what Serum plus possibility to handle samples - and three columns of effects. And better default presets.
Serum have better waves modifications, but Vital have it as well, so if you need that type of sound modification - Vital gives you more.
Phase Plant sounds imo better than Serum (and Vital) - at least with less effort.
Don’t get me wrong, Serum is great, but after I bought Phase Plant and download Vital, I kind of regret that I bought Serum. Still made lot of presets using Serum (because is very easy and effects are good), but I could made whole song using only Phase Plant and I’m not sure if it will be possible with Serum.
If I may recommend something, that will be combo - Phase Plant + Diva.
I am currently working with MSoundFactory. I think it is the most complete synth available, since you also can use any Melda plugin inside, which is some kind of crazy.
But the UX is very poor, especially the filter sections. There is no visualization in the synth section at all, maybe a waveform display, that’s it. You also can’t do multiple waveform transforms at once, like in Vital. There are workarounds for that, and every LFO also can be an OSC, too.
Somehow a pity that Vojtech isn’t not finishing the UX, and does not seem to care for filter coloration either. He expects you to build your very own filter curve using multiple filters, peak filters, saturators and so on. Which messes up a fast and easy workflow.
You also can make a grid within a grid. But a lot of workflow operations seem to be missing, like “convert selected modules to a new grid” and so on. So you end up with a lot of copy paste operations.
The audio engine is completely alias-free and maybe the fastest available on the planet .
I’m using the Reason Rack plugin. As long time Reason user, it’s awesome that i can now use all known effects and instruments and my old presets in other DAWs like Renoise. Works fine since Renoise supports VST3. It has very huge preset library.
Supercollider incomplete ? I don’t know about that …on p.c. it is the most stable as it has ever been , and it still gest regular (community driven ) updates .
A guy I know swears by it and uses if for everything , including live perfornances
If I had to pick a top 5 VSTi, they’d be as follows (in no particular order):
kilohearts Phase Plant
SugarBytes Factory
SugarBytes Aparillo
SonicCharge Synplant
InertiaSoundSystems Granulizer 2
I like new Sonic Arts Granite and Audio Damage Quanta for Granular, but Granulizer just sort of clicks with me a little more, at least for most use cases. Gets to the sound I want faster, usually.
Audio Damage Continua and Phosphor are top notch as well. Phosphor is the only purely additive synth I own and I love the sounds I get out of it and the limitiations it imposes, so I’d probably have to smuggle it out under a copy of Aparillo, probably.
Audio Thing MiniBit and SugarBytes Cyclop are another two sort of niche synths that I love. Cyclop drops the T H I C C BASS out of the box very easily, and the SugarBytes brand FSU and automated modulations under the hood are icing on the cake.
Sonic Charge Microtonic, SugarBytes Drumcomputer, and D16 Punchbox have me covered on drums. Inear Display Ephemere is the only other drum plug I have found that I will be buying. (Though, if anyone reading this has suggestions for any Snare, Hi-Hat/Cymbal, etc. “standalone” synthesizers in the vein of Punchbox, lemme know)
To be completely honest, I would probably have to just list every plug-in I own at this point. I bought them all for no other reason than I liked the way they sounded. I regret nothing when it comes to my purchase history on plug-ins.
One VST that I use constantly thanks to @TensaiKashou is Permut8
Really experimental, but it got a lot of FXs under it’s belt. IMO its repeater functionality is better than Renoise’s by a long shot.
Plus adjusting parameters is in Hex. Hex is love.（´▽｀）
That looks interesting, think i will have to trial that. I didn’t really understand exactly what it does, but it sure made some nice and glitchy sounds.
Wow tranzitow looks fascinating. I have never heard about this synth before. Is it possible to control it completely via midi CC ? Personnally using a plugin with a mouse does not provide any inspiration, so for me it is really important to be able to control any parameter through my electaone controller.
ya, but it’s a pain in the ass to set up instrument automation with it in renoise, as all the parameters are listed only by a number instead of their parameter name. seems like a big, dumb oversight, or just laziness on the part of the reason developers.
I used reason for years and got a lot of mileage out of it, so have been playing with the rack plugin recently, trying to decide if I want to drop coin on it. not sure if I do yet. I feel like props/reason studios made a lot of decisions that undermined dedicated sections of their user base in order to appeal to entry-level plug-and-play types to make $$$. disappointing.
