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Maybe There Is No Go-To Synth!
I realize that I haven't found the synth that does everything for me, and I have been looking. Thor has been listed as many people's Go-To. And so has Sunrizer, and so have a number of others. I'm cheap and insecure about my keyboard knowledge, so I don't want to buy a synth that will either be too difficult to wrangle or too genre-based or too one-dimensional.
So I listened to a bunch of Thor presets on the Propellerheads site, and a burden was lifted. I hated everything! What a relief! I don't want any of those sounds in my music. I'm sure it's versatile, but it is definitely no magic bullet for me.
So rather than going for a main course, I'll just fill up on appetizers.
I'm completely drawn to the iceWorks apps, which all seem out of the ordinary and intuitive. And cheap!
So Laplace, Mersenne, Cassini? Sound good? Altogether a little more $ than Thor, but greater breadth, no?
And yes, someday the Model 15 and Animoog. The Model 15 sounds like God, but I don't think I'm worthy yet.
Comments
The Iceworks synths are great, but Lorentz would probably be better in the ease of use stakes than Cassini. Cassini is quite complex.
I don't know how many apps you have currently, so pardon me if you already have this one, but I like to recommend Magellan by Yonac for a good "all-around" app. It's got a great variety of presets, fairly intuitive programming, an arpeggiator, sequencer, multiple keyboards, and some built-in effects. It also works in both the input and effects slot of Audiobus.
A great feature is the "Spawn" feature, which is basically a preset randomizer. It does a good job of creating interesting presets that are usually usable (vs. Animoog's "Random Preset", which is very hit-or-miss). There's also a lot of IAP preset packs to buy, as well as quite a few free user-created preset packs floating around.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/magellan/id544119998?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo=4
Maybe there is really no thing at all, anywhere, ever..
You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. (Camus)
At, cool. And this is pretty reliable, right? I've got Sunrizer and Synthmaster as all-purpose synths; Magellan is different, yes?
Thanks for the advice.
I do love a new purchase. ("Natural's Not in It," Gang of Four)
I think Al over-eggs it; we're meant to dive for things shiny...
Hey, how come nobody ever talks about Korg iMS20? As long as I'm willing to embarrass myself by admitting I hate the Thor presets, might as well also admit I kind of dig iElectribe. Is the iMS20 covered in Gadget? (I kind of forget to count all those synths when I'm doing an inventory.)
No iMS-20 in Gadget. I think that iMS-20 can be difficult right out of the box, which is maybe why many don't mention it. It was one of the first iOS synth apps I bought years ago (solely on name recognition), and I quickly set it aside when I struggled with it. Having gained more knowledge about sound synthesis, as well as owning a MS-20 Mini, it's much more fun now.
I love it, and it's for some reason generally overlooked.
Here is a very old demo/review from Tim Webb (discchord.com) that shows quite a bit of Magellan. There are some good YouTube demos out there, including a few from the developer Yonac Inc.
Absolute stand-by.
Cool.
Also: How stupid am I? Just realized that I can use all of the really pretty cool gadgets in Gadget. It's like I just bought 10 new synths.
Hey man, I'm new here. And if I haven't said before, let me say it again: The people on this forum are so generous with their advice and time. I cannot thank you enough. Plus Albert Camus references!
One other piece of advice is that there tend to be app sales around the holidays. With the US holiday Memorial Day coming up at the end of May, you may do well to resist buying any new apps right now, and instead spend some time getting to know the ones you already own.
If you spend just a little time here, you'll see that buying "the newest app" is quite an obsession, and I think many of us, if we had it to do over again, might have shown more restraint in buying everything that hits the App Store. Just my $0.02 worth of advice.
+1
The iMS and the iPolysixx are both fabulous. Here's a couple of songs that rely heavily on them, the first using iPolysixx and the second, iMS20 (all parts were made with them except the guitars, including the drum sounds):
Magellan was my favourite iOS synth until very recently. Here's a song where everything except the guitars was made with it:
Now I'm deep into Fab Filter Twin 2. For me, it's the best iOS can offer in both power and quality. Of course, I didn't try the new Moog yet. Here's a song that uses the Twin 2 for literally everything (except for the guitars, which were recorded live, and the bass, which was made with FF One, another current fav, and recorded live in the breakdown):
Take notice is better to learn synthesis to get the full potential of each of the above synths: the presets are never quite there.
All the best,
Dimitri.
Not at all trying to sell you on Thor but it's the sort of synthesizer that's quite capable of creating a massive massive array of different sounds. I haven't listened to what they have on their site (guessing lots of EDM and wubwub) but I somehow doubt it could possibly be representative. There's a popular set of Thor video tutorials on youtube. That might give you a better idea.
I'm not actually convinced of that, much as I love the Icegear synths. Cassini is definitely the most capable of the bunch but it will make you work for it. The default presets are lifeless.
In addition to complexity, think iMS-20 doesn't come up all that much because it's a mono synth.
I was playing with Magellan again last night. It is embarrassingly capable in almost all areas. Except… I kept wishing it had a switchable portamento on each sequencer step. The more I went on, the more I really wanted it to be there. Other than that, it has more than enough of most stuff.
I shall await the sale price on that.
I've got nearly all the synths now and up to a week or do ago Thor was my ' go to ' synth . That's now been replaced by the new Moog - whether that's due to it being new and lovely , or down to it's versatility , time will tell .
Other worthy workhorses are iSEM , Poseidon and Addictive Synth . Love ims20 as it was my first music app purchase , but it's never fitted in as a ' go to ' tool
There is a good arguement for owning a lot of these , as they all sound and work very differently , and so some will fit a particular task better than others . I will buy every good synth that comes out not ( just ) because I'm an appaholic , but because it will bring something new to the party
)
Is the iMS20 covered in Gadget? (I kind of forget to count all those synths when I'm doing an inventory.)
there is certainly a gadget heavily inspired by iMS20 -- Dublin
depends in part on how deep into programming you want to go, or want to go later on.
Cassini, Magellan, Tera, Unity, Z3ta+ each cover a tremendous range of sounds, could be called go-to, or bread-and-butter synths. Programming each of these synths is big kid joy, for me anyway, and they each have their personalities, idiosyncrasies and special powers.
If you spend a little extra on IAPs (Magellan, Unity), or 3rd party banks (Cassini) or time hunting for the free banks on the web (Z3ta+) you can have a huge array of presets to try out (and maybe tweak toward your sounds or reverse engineer to learn how they made theirs). Tera ships with about 900 incredibly varied presets and is also a very deep programming environment. If you aren't as interested in programming you can get a lot of sounds for your fifty bucks in Synthmasters IAP system (where you can preview the banks before buying).
Gadget has definitely been my go-to-synth lately. Having multiple instances of all those gadgets has really made me spoiled. I want so badly to use apps like Sunrizer, Magellan and SynthMaster - all which I own, but I get lazy when it comes to recording audio. Especially for trance music, it's so much easier to have all the tracks in MIDI format and have complete control over automation of all the parameters without having to bounce any audio. I've done enough of that with real hardware synths in the past. I'm really looking forward to when more apps start adopting AU. I can only dream of having multiple instances of Sunrizer!
Peace \/
chisel316
Unity?
I'm in favor.
"The passing impulse is now but a mere symptom of the will, all that remains of it in an enervated world." is this why i will never learn to program pure data..?
Lol!
@Fruitbat1919
Unity - with the full bundle of IAP - pretty much does it all...but it's not on the App Store anymore it seems...Oopies!
"1 is too many and a thousand is never enough"
Narcotic Anonymous
This thread reminds me I have a set of new strings I need to put on my acoustic tonight.
Here's a odd question for go-to-synthers: does nobody like iM-1 as a go-to synth? I've got almost all of them and that's what I reach for when I want a synth. Because I think the sounds are better. Is it because it sounds old-school compared to the others mentioned on this thread? Or is it because you want to create new sounds with your synths or else it doesn't count. Or is it just me?...