Jump to music examples (on the last page)

I hate paperwork. So it’s been a few years since I updated the list of music gear covered by my insurance policy. When I started crossing off the things I no longer have, or still have but no longer use, I was reminded once more just how rapidly the world of electronic music has been transformed by computers.

Six or seven years ago, there just about wasn’t any such thing as a software synthesizer. Crafting a synth arrangement required routing MIDI and audio cables and searching through LCD patch lists in a rack of hardware. Today I can (and generally do) work straight through from my initial musical inspiration to the final tweaks in the mix without ever leaving the computer screen or switching on a hardware synth, except to use the weighted-action keyboard on my ancient Korg 01/W ProX.

Not to knock hardware: there are still some great hardware synths out there. Any short list would start with the Yamaha Motif and Korg Triton series, both of which are terrific. And not to deny the limitations of software, such as stability problems and the gnawing fear of a hard drive crash. Even so, soft synths offer some potent advantages:

  • They don’t take up space (especially important in a cramped home studio like mine), gather dust, or cause backaches when moved around.
  • The settings of a plugin soft synth are automatically saved with my sequencer’s song file—no need to fiddle about with MIDI program changes.
  • All of the mixing takes place in the computer: I don’t have to render external audio tracks (which is necessary with hardware instruments) in order to finish the song.
  • The built-in soundset for a soft synth isn’t limited to the 64MB or so of samples available on a typical hardware synth. Soft synths with gigabytes of factory data are becoming more common.
  • Perhaps most important, the development costs for soft synth creators are dramatically lower than for their hardware counterparts. That allows for massive innovation in features and sound design.
  • The great big screen for editing.

Because I write a lot of product reviews for music magazines (mainly Keyboard and Electronic Musician), I probably have more familiarity with a variety of soft synths than the average bear, so O’Reilly Digital Media thought you might like to hear which ones I feel are especially noteworthy. “But don’t just tell people what your favorites are,” they said. “Explain what makes each synth special. And include a few sound files that show why you’re inspired.”

Given the number of great soft synths available today, any list of favorites is bound to be not only subjective, but more than a bit arbitrary. My apologies in advance to those whose dream machines aren’t discussed here. (Leave your nominations below.) For reasons of both practicality and personal prejudice, I applied the following criteria:

  • I’ve used all of these synths (some more extensively than others). They’re well and innovatively designed, and they sound phenomenal.
  • There are no samplers on the list, mainly because I don’t use straight sample playback much (except for percussion).
  • Since I’m a Windows user, no Mac-only products are included.
  • Including more than one program from Native Instruments would have made for an unbalanced presentation.

Help for Beginners

If you’re new to synthesizers, more than a few terms that insiders toss around may be Greek to you. Here are some quick definitions of terms used in this article, to get you off to a running start. For more background, see my book Power Tools for Synthesizer Programming.

aux send: an aux (auxiliary) send is an audio signal path (also known as a bus) that is used to route a signal from a mixer or synth channel to an auxiliary effect processor.

envelope generator: a synth module that creates a signal (called the envelope) that can be used to modulate (change) some aspect of the sound. For instance, an amplitude envelope changes the loudness (amplitude) of the sound.

filter: a synth module that processes a signal by removing (filtering out) some portion of the frequency spectrum. A lowpass filter, for instance, lets low frequencies pass through, while filtering out high frequencies.

frequency modulation (FM): a type of synthesis in which one oscillator modulates the frequency of another oscillator. When the modulating oscillator is in the audio frequency range (20Hz–20kHz), FM produces a perceived change in tone color rather than a perceived change in pitch.

just intonation: a tuning system in which the frequencies of the notes are whole-number multiples of one another. Our conventional tuning system, in contrast, is based on the 12th root of 2, which is an irrational number. Just intonation tunings produce pure-sounding chords, but they don’t allow free transposition from one key to another.

LFO: Low-Frequency Oscillator. An oscillator running below the audio range, typically used to produce vibrato, tremolo, or filter sweeps.

modulation: a signal that changes the behavior of an audio module (such as a synth or effect). For example, modulation from an LFO could alternately raise and lower the cutoff frequency of a filter, thus changing the harmonic content of the sound passing through the filter.

multitimbral: capable of making more than one type of sound (timbre) at the same time. An eight-channel multitimbral MIDI synthesizer can play up to eight different sounds at once, with each accessible through a unique MIDI channel.

oscillator: the module in a synth that produces the sound. The raw signal coming from an oscillator will usually be processed by other modules so as to make it more musically useful.

overtones: most sounds in nature (and in music) can be thought of as composites that contain simple vibrations (sine waves) at many different frequencies. Each of these sine waves can be referred to as a partial. The words “overtones” and “harmonics” are often used as synonyms for “partials”; the differences among them would require a lengthy explanation.

patches: a group of settings for parameters that work together to create a particular sound in a synthesizer. Most synthesizers provide memory storage for numerous patches. The words “preset,” “program,” and “patch” are synonymous.

Scala tuning tables: Scala is a software system for creating and analyzing tunings. Tuning files created in Scala can be loaded into various synthesizers, after which the synth will play whatever tuning has been loaded.

waveshaper: a synth module that changes the shape of a waveform. Since waveform shape is directly tied to the harmonic content (sound) of the waveform, changing the waveshape will change the sound. Often, waveshapers add new harmonics to a tone, making it brighter and more colorful.

Without further ado, then, here are my personal picks—as of mid-2005. If you ask me again next year, the list may have changed.

Pages: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Next Pagearrow