Freesound Forums

Hey guys.

Just wondering what kind of sound design tools you guys like, both for instruments, and fx.

Im relatively proficient in synthesis. I love Ableton Operator and Uhe Zebra 2. I'm also getting into Albino 3 right now, though it does love soaking up cpu.
I spend a lot of time creating my own patches. Its a hobby. ops:

I never really fully got into Absynth, though I suspect a few of you sound designers on here probably love it. I guess the tutorial DVD would really help someone get into Absynth.
Ive played around with Massive, and although it sounds amazing, it kills my computer.

When sound designing, I often end up going back to sample based synthesis. I use Kontakt and Ableton Sampler. I just love the way something like a high-hat can be quickly turned into a monstrous shimmering sweep.

When I ask about Synthesis vs Sampling, Im talking about sampling as part of sound design (as opposed to multisampling instruments)
What do you prefer to use when patching instruments such as keys, leads and pads? I prefer to use a hybrid like Operator (FM/Subtractive) for instruments, but when designing special effects, I love sampling.

I'm curious though, do any of you use sample based stuff for instruments. I suppose samplers such as Kontakt can be used in similar ways to synths, but it seems a bit overkill to me.

Interested in what people think on the subject.

hmmmm

When doing more electro-ish stuff, I overuse Reason's Subtractor Synth. Although it's very simple (a two oscillator analog synth), when you stack a bunch of them with different settings, a bunch of effects and neatly put them in a Combinator, you can have pretty massive sounds. And best of all, I can run maybe 15 of them without my computer even sweating, which is great considering I have a 1.8Ghz 512MB P4. I'm an addict to creating patches too.

Cheers for the reply.

I'm getting more and more into Zebra 2 lately. It is the best synth I've ever used. Really fantastic, but takes a lot of dedication to get into.

I am a synthoholic - have even renamed my girlfriend Synthia [not really]. Like you I continually make new patches and now have thousands. Totally addictive.

Absynth is a beast I love but the presets are mainly bollocks and as a matter of pride I always try to make totally new presets for any synth. I use Absynth basically as a weird sampler - take an existing patch, replace the samples with your own or replace the oscillators with samples then experiment with parameters at will. Most presets start out with a mixture of osc and samples and have pre-made envelopes and lfo's so you have a head start on a moving evolving sound.

I keep promising myself a good sampler and I would go for Kontakt as I love NI stuff but where the hell will I ever find and keep enough memory for the 30gigs it now shifts with [or the cash!]

Cool

I have messed around with Absynth. It is capable of such a huge variety of sounds. My only problem with it that, although i can create nice sounds with it, I find it difficult to use if I have a certain sound in mind. To me, Zebra is the perfect compromise between a "bread and butter" synth, and a power synth.

I've not used Albino much recently. I agree it is a little "straight ahead" but if I wanted to make a warm little sparkley bell sequence, I'd probably do it in Albino.

I'd love to hear some of your patches by the way, and any other softsynth addicts here.

ERH I love Kontakt for loading multisamples, but for sound design I'm not a fan. I use Ableton Sampler sometimes for sound design. It's pretty cool.

I'm working on getting a large collection of Zebra patches together at the moment. I'll post some examples soon.

Although I combine synthesis and sampling, I'm always sampling every sound I create, so I'm a 'sampleholic' (:
For me it's more flexible and more interesting to work with samples and sampled synths (I mean if I compose some melody, for example, I will sample it), because, first, if you work with samples therefore you can cut and stretch them as you want, it's like a flight of your fantasy, and I often add lots of effects on them, therefore I'm a 'effectoholic' by the way))), second, working with samples won't kill your PC as lots of Massives for example do. So it's just the question of your own flavours.
(sorry if it's a bit weird in places -- my English fault))

just a tip for anyone looking for a sampler veber audio shortcircuit is now free and its great, vey straight forward but also powerful sampler, i brought it years ago but its now free so check it out, forget spending £300 on kontakt with over bloated features this is under 1mb and does what any hardware sampler does and more http://www.vemberaudio.se/ also surge (which does clost) is a very powerful synth with fx and all great routing.

I mostly sample my synths and combine with samples fro sound creation, but sampling has always been my thing, its best to use whats needed for the said project really.