sylenth1 test run

[kensuguro]

a quick 1 night jam to walk through some of sylenth1's presets and patches I made on the fly. One thing I noticed is that although the synth seems modulatable to a good degree, there's a lot of 'bunching' like sending EG1 to control OSC group A's volume, rather than being able to route to OSC group A's VCA release or decay. It's okay in most cases, but I just assumed it was a given to be able to route anything anywhere. (spoiled)

All sounds from sylenth, drums, everything. I do have track eq and comp where necessary and a master saturation+comp+limiter.

One thing I can say about sylenth is that the presets are programmed top notch. The synth can be made to sound like cream melting in your mouth, or digitally flat and clinical.

The synth layout itself is fairly traditional. osc section is A,B section of 2 osc each, each with assignable detuned voice number. 2 filters which you can route any combination of osc group A and B through. 1 amp eg, 2 EG, 2 LFO, 6 (from memory) mod matrix assignment slots. The master has dist, chorus, phaser, reverb, etc effects that sound very clean and edgy. EG and LFO can be mapped to osc section AB pitch, volume, filter AB cutoff res, pretty much the standard fair. If you're used to modular or building your own synths, it definitely feels like the modulation is at a level higher level than what you're used to (LFO to amp EG release time is not possible, etc) but also speeds up the workflow.

There's no FM or sync.. I think this synth is more or less a supersaw/detune unison machine. It sounds great, but the modulation structure feels rather limiting. (but also simple so quick to use) One thing that everyone can appreciate is that because this thing is coded in assembly, or just with super optimized code, you can have a billion instances of this thing running and you'll be just fine.

[astroman]

excellent sequencing, Ken...
it's a nice synth for a fair price, cool to have in a mobile environment without an iPad or so...
I'm really grateful you posted this (and made me do some hands on demo stuff)
it opened my eyes... eh ears
I won't look any further in any of these VSTs - never again. It's a waste of time and effort.
Seems to always end the same: sounds are smooth, deep. They are crisp... even the filters.
From the technical point they are close to perfect - but sterile and boring, no character.
Cool to add one to a certain position in a mix, but several tracks ?

To get a comparison I started up good ol' Solaris 3.
What a difference, immediately the sound became more wide and nuanced
(I mean not somewhat but a fundamental change of the spectrum, amazing)

So I have ALL that stuff on my harddisk, rarely used (lack of time and I'm a bit string focussed atm)
You made me refind hidden audible treasures... big thank you for that

cheers, Tom

[ChrisWerner]

Tom as its best, great. Welcome back to your roots, I mean your ears.

But that leads me to a old pain in my head.

Sure our Scope synths beat any native ones but only in its sonic quality.
When it comes to new approaches of instrument creations, experimenting around w/ synthesis forms.
Combining GUI w/ a synth to get a new baby that you have to love, the native world is far beyond and has simply more products to choose from.
Of course the native world is huge compared to our Scope world.

As Ken said, Sylenth is straight in it's way, but in its way I find it good to program and the result is one of the better ones in the native world.

I really welcome the approach SC goes with Scope 6 and I hope it will lead the community to an interest to realize their dream synth in a easy way and share it with the rest of the world. We have it all there already but realizing a thought to a final nice looking device with a good workflow is not easy in Scope.

Well if you after old school synths, we are fed up years ago on Scope.

A short example, imagine realizing a Razor synth in Scope. What you think?

I really like to see it on Scope, imagine how it would sound when it would be on Scope... I walk through every Reaktor module of Razor, only the OSC Bank isn't to infiltrate... And now think of it playing it w/ 32 voices... nearly impossible.

Sorry for tripping on your thread Ken. I like Sylenth it is like twice a Prisma and a SB404 w/ some effects. It a good VSTi.

[kensuguro]

np. scope synths vs native is always fun to ponder about. Not necessarily versus, but it's interesting to think about strengths and weaknesses. For me, scope synths definitely sound better but apart from a handful of great classic emus, and mod platform, scope synths fall short quickly when compared to the new ideas being explored in native space. Like Chris says, native definitely has more experimentation, refinement in terms of UI, workflow, and even task specialization. Imagine a synth like Zebra on scope. I'm not sure if it's even possible, but it would be nice to have these newer ideas realized through all that dsp power because the scope world is definitely overfilled with classic emus (good ones), which the entire world has more than enough of.

But I'm quite less picky about synths based on their OSC potential, but I pick more by synth architecture and mod structure. I think the way the OSC sounds, unless it's just horrible to begin with, has limited affect in the way I compose. If I find a better synth for the task I can swap it out later, but more or less, I would write to suite the synth/instrument. So if it has a particular shortcoming, I'd just write around it, and feature what it's good at, etc. For any synth, if I can coax out enough good sounds from it, then all is good. I wouldn't necessarily compare against scope or analog gear, but measure its effectiveness within the context of the composition.

Anyway, with sylenth1, I think I like the layout of it. I just wished filter A and B were on the same page.. But other than that, the layout is more or less like good ol' Bluesynth, and the workflow is very fast. I can easily make new sounds while composing.

[astroman]

same here, also stumbled over the 2 page thing, but aside from that I agree... it IS a very efficient layout

actually I wouldn't want to emphasize the 'versus' so much - it's not like that
(I admit that I always slip into the toy trap, again and again) :p

but what really puzzles me is that strangely 'rich' sound of the Scope synths, particular in the low to center midrange.
All but 1 native synth (I know) are nearly desert land in that domain with few structure, if at all.
Many can to deeeep sounds even with fast attacks, clean highs in flawless filter sweeps (the better ones)
The 1 exception is the SQL8 Ensoniq Emulation (SQ80) and that's even free...

but why does Scope produce a richer spectrum ? why are the mids always(!) left out in native synths ?
afterall it's math... they do nothing but calculate
but it was a good reminder for me to focus on what I already have...
(I have a sh*tload of such stuff on the iPad, too - it's just too easy to click and too hard to reject)

cheers, Tom

[kensuguro]

Yeah, that's definitely one of the immediately obvious things when I switched to native. The problem wasn't so much that the bass/mid bass wasn't there by default, but I couldn't bring it out with eq or saturation or whatever I did. Whereas with scope synths I remember trying to cut back from getting too much body.

And totally agree why it's not happenin' in vstis.. a square's a square, saw's a saw.. why the difference? Not sure. Though, comparing vsti output with nord, max/msp, reaktor, and even csound, I do feel like the boring ass bass region of vsts is closer to straight up math output. So perhaps it's scope side that has a lot of secret sauce action going on. I listen back to past mixes on scope and still can't figure out how to replicate the meaty bass on anything but scope. I'm pretty sure the raw wave outs of both scope and vsts should be close, if not identical.

wow, just checked out SQ8L.. this thing sounds awesome!

Jimmy concludes: "You can polish a turd, but it's still a piece of Shit."

here's me complaining about shitty bass in nativeland:
http://forums.planetz.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=29856

[astroman]

quickly browsing that thread...
I'm to bad in math to analyze such algorithms to find some rational reason.

But it's good to know that after all those years our ears can't be fooled - cool you heard the same...
In fact I've made that 'midrange experience' to my personal yardstick regarding amplification.
If it's good in the 300 to 1k range, then it will all the other stuff with ease, usually.
Not to forget my favourite bass, the Fender Precision - it's the punchy low mids that set it apart.
I have 3 of them by now and each one has it's particular 'personality'.

cheers, Tom