to: jffe, ronviers, jeffmeister

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ssamm wrote: Do you have any personal favorite synth (or in general, audio) programs? (In general, I’ve mostly only used faux-analogue, subtractive types of synths

----Subtractive in and of itself is rather obsolete, good for classic pop music sounds from the 70's through now since hiphop still uses them a lot. FM synthesis has come a long ways since the old yamaha DX7's. And there's still not much being done with additive and physical modelling, much like in the hardware realm where those are pretty much non-existant (other than "physical modelled analog/subtractive synths, which is pretty much meaningless in that it's not analog, and ANY analog modelling is just digital subtractive etc.). Personally I like Zebra 2 the best these days, it's just so *pure* sounding, and yet has a ton of modulation options so it can sound like many things. Reaktor was fun for a while, until you realize that the huge user library is about 98% repeats and sonic experiment crap, of no use in actually making pitch-based music ha-ha. Ultimately, it really depends on what kinds of sounds, and what kind of range of sounds you need. You almost can't go wrong with Zebra 2, cept it's about $189, so on the spendier side, but it could very well be the only softsynth a person needs at this point in time.

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ssamm wrote: (Personally, I’ve enjoyed messing around with “Reason” -- maybe that’s a program I’ll buy? However I haven’t been able to integrate it with my Acid program too well – so that’s a bit of a turn off...)

----Last time I read about Reason, it was a closed system, ie = it couldn't run just any vst plug-in, only it's own, and it also wasn't too friendly with other hosts via rewire. Reason has always been a world unto itself in that way, and not the "best world" in most people's opinions, although it does have a substantial user base. You might try FL Studio, it's maybe even simpler on the surface, but it's very stable, runs almost any vst plug in you can shove into it, and it's got a nice quick drum machine step sequencer type interface. I still use FL for some simpler tasks myself, it's just a good starting host, and it can be expanded and dug deeper into down the road, when you learn more you find the FL does more already and was kind of waiting for you under that simple surface.

jffe

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ssamm wrote: thanks for mentioning me in your "Exoskeleton"

You're welcome ssamm, thanks for checking out my filters.