# Looking for a hybrid synth



## Pier (Dec 11, 2020)

I'm looking for a hybrid synth that can load my own samples.

Ideally I'd want something with the flexibility of Zebra that can also load samples. I imagine Zebra 3 won't be able to load samples though so I'm considering other options.

The ideal choice in terms of features would be Falcon, but as a hobbyist I can't justify spending $350 on it. Also, while I would love to have all those IRCAM goodies, I just don't need anything as deep as Falcon. Omnisphere is also very powerful, but again, as a hobbysit I can't justify spending that much.

My options right now are either Equator 2 by Roli (about $150) or Phaseplant by Kilohearts (about $100). Both are super strong in terms of sound design with pros and cons. Phaseplant is more flexible and has audio rate modulation, but it seems more geared towards Serum refugees. Also, from the demos, Equator seems to sound a lot better in general (maybe the DSP of filters and effects is better?). Equator can load multisamples in SFZ format.

Kontakt is just out of the question for me. I only use it to load libraries. The UI is just awful and I don't want to invest any time or money into the NI ecosystem.

Ableton Live has a sampler but the modulation possibilities are not as great as having a dedicated hybrid synth.

Any thoughts?


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## shponglefan (Dec 11, 2020)

PhasePlant seems quite flexible and powerful from what I've played with it so far. And it looks like it's still on sale.

You may also want to consider Arturia Pigments 2. It can also handle sample loading. It's normally $199, but if you wait for a sale, you can get it cheaper (it was 50% off during BF).

Haven't tried Equator 2, so can't comment.


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## Pier (Dec 11, 2020)

Thanks for the comment.

I owned Pigments 2 briefly before refunding it. Didn't love the UI with so many animations and it had many bugs for me in Windows with a 4K monitor and scaling.

Also Equator 2 seems to be more powerful in terms of sound design as it has 6 layers.


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## cuttime (Dec 11, 2020)

Iris 2 is free, or practically free these days. Alchemy could do what you want, also.


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## Jkist (Dec 11, 2020)

Vital is free, and supports both drag-and-drop samples onto the main oscillators to use it as a wavetable or vocoded thing, or you can drag and drop onto the dedicated "sample oscillator" to just use as a sample. Worth checking out for sure.


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## richmwhitfield (Dec 11, 2020)

Have a look at Parawave Audio's Rapid. Has wavetable, single sample, multi-sample and granular.


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## Jkist (Dec 11, 2020)

richmwhitfield said:


> Have a look at Parawave Audio's Rapid. Has wavetable, single sample, multi-sample and granular.


This was gonna be my other recommendation. Rapid is crazy powerful.


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## cloudbuster (Dec 11, 2020)

There's also Synthmaster (2.9), pretty affordable with excellent sound and ....loads of features and VPS Avenger, another do-it-(almost)-all softsynth that sports a really flexible granular synthesis engine but unfortunately requires codemeter since version 1.5 and most of the factory presets are pretty straight EDM stuff. 
Avenger lets you stack multisamples in up to 8 oscillators, Synthmaster (still my favorite of the two) up to 4 without stacks and both synths feature drag-and-drop modulation of almost any parameter and an extensive selection of FX, yaddah yaddah ...


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## Trash Panda (Dec 11, 2020)

Iris 2 let’s you combine up to four samples and/or oscillation sounds and manipulate them to your heart’s content. It’s also part of the holiday bundle for $49 with a bunch of other useful plugins. 






iZotope Holiday Bundle | Sound Editing/Production Software


Get over $600 of plug-ins for $49 with this limited edition Black Friday bundle from iZotope. Featuring the new Ozone Elements, Neutron Elements, and Audiolens, updated Stratus reverb by Exponential Audio, and Insight 2, this ultimate holiday bundle has everything you need to mix, master, and...




www.izotope.com


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## Pier (Dec 11, 2020)

cuttime said:


> Iris 2 is free, or practically free these days. Alchemy could do what you want, also.



Other than the spectral thing it's quite basic in terms of sound design and Jesus the UI is godawful.


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## Pier (Dec 11, 2020)

Jkist said:


> Vital is free, and supports both drag-and-drop samples onto the main oscillators to use it as a wavetable or vocoded thing, or you can drag and drop onto the dedicated "sample oscillator" to just use as a sample. Worth checking out for sure.



But it's actually just different ways of loading a sample to a wavetable, right?


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## StefanoM (Dec 12, 2020)

HAve you considered Ethera Gold 2.5 with also CyberWorld Exp ?

Ethera Core Synth 2.5 has Drag and Drop Too...


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## Solarsentinel (Dec 12, 2020)

Consider Pigments 2 (when on sales 99$) but you don'tlike it so consider otherwise Serum. You can load your own samples on serum too and make your own wavetables, but it's more wavetable than hybrid. but really easy to use and very versatile. 
It appear that straylight from NI can load samples too but it's a granular synth, and never tried it.
In the end Omnisphere?


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## ReleaseCandidate (Dec 12, 2020)

Pier said:


> Ableton Live has a sampler but the modulation possibilities are not as great as having a dedicated hybrid synth.
> 
> Any thoughts?


Well, it isn't as simple as in Bitwig, but of course it (with M4L) can do almost ) anything you want and more as in most synths (only really modular environments like Reaktor are comparable) . 
But nowadays almost any not-VA has some sort of a sampler. As you can see in the list of recommendations


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## tf-drone (Dec 12, 2020)

Hi,

perhaps Tracktion Collective, or Steinberg Halion?


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## ReleaseCandidate (Dec 12, 2020)

[Q


Pier said:


> Kontakt is just out of the question for me. I only use it to load libraries. The UI is just awful and I don't want to invest any time or money into the NI ecosystem.



Well, there are of course NI's synths, specially Reaktor.


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## nglez (Dec 12, 2020)

What about Omnisphere? You can load your own samples and the synth engine is great


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## Jaap (Dec 12, 2020)

Padshop Pro could also be worth checking out or keep an eye out on a sale by UVI, which they do on a regular base with Falcon 30% off.
Otherwise I can really vouch for Phaseplant if you Omnisphere and Falcon are out of reach.


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## Pier (Dec 12, 2020)

StefanoM said:


> HAve you considered Ethera Gold 2.5 with also CyberWorld Exp ?
> 
> Ethera Core Synth 2.5 has Drag and Drop Too...





ReleaseCandidate said:


> Well, there are of course NI's synths, specially Reaktor.



Thanks, but like I've mentioned I don't want to get more invested into NI's ecosystem. I already regret having invested money into Spitfire and other libraries (eg: Nucleus) that use Kontakt. I wish I would have invested into companies/products with their own software (eg: Orchestral Tools, VSL, BBC, etc).

Been using NI products for 20 years and the company has been going downhill for many years already IMO. Massive X seems to be one step in the right direction, but they have plenty of products they either have let die or are in life support mode (Battery, Kontakt, Absynth, etc).


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## StefanoM (Dec 12, 2020)

Pier said:


> Thanks, but like I've mentioned I don't want to get more invested into NI's ecosystem. I already regret having invested money into Spitfire and other libraries (eg: Nucleus) that use Kontakt. I wish I would have invested into companies/products with their own software (eg: Orchestral Tools, VSL, BBC, etc).
> 
> Been using NI products for 20 years and the company has been going downhill for many years already IMO. Massive X seems to be one step in the right direction, but they have plenty of products they either have let die or are in life support mode (Battery, Kontakt, Absynth, etc).




oh ok...

I don't understand why, this is a big limit Imho, and you miss a lot of nice things... But Ok.

Bye


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## Pier (Dec 12, 2020)

ReleaseCandidate said:


> Well, it isn't as simple as in Bitwig, but of course it (with M4L) can do almost ) anything you want and more as in most synths (only really modular environments like Reaktor are comparable) .
> But nowadays almost any not-VA has some sort of a sampler. As you can see in the list of recommendations



I've been thinking about getting Bitwig for years now. I've actually been lusting on their modular environment since it was announced years before v1 was released.

It's on sale now for $300 but I'd get so much stuff...


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## Pier (Dec 12, 2020)

StefanoM said:


> I don't understand why this is a big limit, and you miss a lot of nice things...



You don't understand that I don't want to keep investing into a company that has let me down again and again for years?

Also, nothing they do is exceptional any more. The vast majority of their products have been improved by other companies, generally much smaller companies.


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## Jkist (Dec 12, 2020)

Pier said:


> You don't understand that I don't want to keep investing into a company that has let me down again and again for years?
> 
> Also, nothing they do is exceptional any more. The vast majority of their products have been improved by other companies, generally much smaller companies.



Kinda hate that I agree with you. I will say though, their synths hang with the top dogs still sound-wise, I just hate the Massive X UI.


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## jcrosby (Dec 12, 2020)

Pier said:


> Thanks, but like I've mentioned I don't want to get more invested into NI's ecosystem. I already regret having invested money into Spitfire and other libraries (eg: Nucleus) that use Kontakt. I wish I would have invested into companies/products with their own software (eg: Orchestral Tools, VSL, BBC, etc).
> 
> Been using NI products for 20 years and the company has been going downhill for many years already IMO. Massive X seems to be one step in the right direction, but they have plenty of products they either have let die or are in life support mode (Battery, Kontakt, Absynth, etc).


NI isn't going to kill Battery, Absynth or Kontakt. NI are just very slow at updating products. Kontakt v5 was released in 2011, and Battery's so deeply tied to Maschine/Komplete hardware it isn't going anywhere. Absynth is v5 and has been around for *20* years, almost 21. Hardly a dying product. Does it need an update? Desperately, but it will happen at some point, my guess is in the next next couple years.


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## ReleaseCandidate (Dec 12, 2020)

jcrosby said:


> Absynth is v5 and has been around for *20* years, almost 21. hardly a dying product. Does it need an update? Desperately, but it will happen at some point, my guess is in the next next couple years.



The Absynth update is Plasmonic. I don't think that NI will update it. Reaktor is the most active synth from NI. Active means new features (and synths) from NI, contributions from users and 3rd party blocks/racks.


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## jcrosby (Dec 12, 2020)

ReleaseCandidate said:


> The Absynth update is Plasmonic. I don't think that NI will update it. Reaktor is the most active synth from NI. Active means new features (and synths) from NI, contributions from users and 3rd party blocks/racks.


Time will tell the tale.


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## ReleaseCandidate (Dec 12, 2020)

jcrosby said:


> Time will tell the tale.



Oh, I really hope I'm wrong! Absynth is still something special, but with the interface I'm not that inclined to use it as often as it deserves


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## shponglefan (Dec 12, 2020)

StefanoM said:


> I don't understand why, this is a big limit Imho, and you miss a lot of nice things.



Kontakt is getting long in the tooth with its outdated interface and lack of high DPI support.

I can understand why some people might not be as keen to keep investing in Kontakt libraries.


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## Pier (Dec 12, 2020)

jcrosby said:


> NI isn't going to kill Battery, Absynth or Kontakt. NI are just very slow at updating products. Kontakt v5 was released in 2011, and Battery's so deeply tied to Maschine/Komplete hardware it isn't going anywhere. Absynth is v5 and has been around for *20* years, almost 21. Hardly a dying product. Does it need an update? Desperately, but it will happen at some point, my guess is in the next next couple years.



Slow is an understatement.

Battery 4 was released almost 8 years ago, and it was by far the worst version of Battery.

The UI of Kontakt has barely changed in the last 10+ years. This is a screenshot of Kontakt 4 released in 2009:






Absynth 5, same thing. Last version was released in 2009.

Etc.

There have been a number of new Reaktor synths released but nothing really transcendental. Razor was great but that was 10? years ago. Also the idea of moving everything into Reaktor was terrible IMO in terms of UX. I guess NI agrees seeing that Massive X works Reaktor.

Compare that to the trajectory of a company like U-He. In the last 10 years, and with a fraction of NI's resources, they have released Repro, Diva, Bazille, Hive, Satin, and other products, which are all groundbreaking in their own category.


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## jcrosby (Dec 12, 2020)

Pier said:


> Slow is an understatement.
> 
> Battery 4 was released almost 8 years ago, and it was by far the worst version of Battery.
> 
> ...


But applying the same logic about updates Zebra has been version 2 since 2006, and has been plublicly saying Zebra 3 will be coming since *2012*. Potato potato.

Is u-he's modeling good? Absolutely, but I wouldn't call any of their synths ground breaking. (Same with Satin. Yeah it's good, but I don't see anything it does being groundbreaking outside of giving you more parameters to adjust). You could say the same thing about Serum when it was first released, now it's just another wavetable synth.

Is NI slow to update? Hell yeah. But they're hardly the only company with a history of orphaning products. Izotope (even though I love their shit) have been pretty eager to 86 products that don't do well. Spectrasonics abandoned Atmosphere for Omnisphere. Not to mention countless standalone programs and non-music applications. Sadly it's just the nature of software development.









u-he Zebra3 virtual modular synthesizer pricing announced


Urs Heckmann of u-he has announced some pricing details on the upcoming Zebra3 software synthesizer for Windows and Mac. Actually, we’ve started to work on...




rekkerd.org


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## shponglefan (Dec 13, 2020)

jcrosby said:


> Spectrasonics abandoned Atmosphere for Omnisphere.



I wouldn't say they abandoned it. Omnisphere was the next evolution of Atmosphere and included all of the former's soundsets.


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## muadgil (Dec 23, 2020)

Pier said:


> I'm looking for a hybrid synth that can load my own samples.
> 
> Ideally I'd want something with the flexibility of Zebra that can also load samples. I imagine Zebra 3 won't be able to load samples though so I'm considering other options.
> 
> ...


I don't know if you found your synth. Just to give you my recent experiences : I got into synthesis recently, I started to experiment with Alchemy, with a detailed tutorial. Then went into Vital to explore wavetables. A bit of Iris too. I was starting to understand how all of this works. Then I took a shot at Falcon (as a protools user, I have an AAX license) 
I didn't want to start with it because it's intimidating. But... 
WOW!!! 
The deepness of this soft is incredible. And the workflow is in fact quite simple once you got the logic of it. As you add elements after elements, you know exactly what you are doing, and why. And you can do everything. Samples, granular, fm, classic... The effects are to notch. Well I'm in love 
I'll probably get Zebra for a bit of preset lurking and for the sake of diversity.. But I feel one can achieve everything with good skills and Falcon. 
Regarding the price its indeed something. But there's one on the classified at a good price.


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## Pier (Dec 23, 2020)

muadgil said:


> I don't know if you found your synth. Just to give you my recent experiences : I got into synthesis recently, I started to experiment with Alchemy, with a detailed tutorial. Then went into Vital to explore wavetables. A bit of Iris too. I was starting to understand how all of this works. Then I took a shot at Falcon (as a protools user, I have an AAX license)
> I didn't want to start with it because it's intimidating. But...
> WOW!!!
> The deepness of this soft is incredible. And the workflow is in fact quite simple once you got the logic of it. As you add elements after elements, you know exactly what you are doing, and why. And you can do everything. Samples, granular, fm, classic... The effects are to notch. Well I'm in love
> ...



I ended up buying Bitwig which is pretty amazing.

It can do almost everything Falcon does in terms of sound design and so much more since it's actually full DAW, has a modular environment, can integrate third party plugins in the audio chain, etc. It's like the whole DAW is one big Zebra.

AFAIK the only feature missing from Falcon are the IRCAM algorithms.


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## vitocorleone123 (Dec 23, 2020)

jcrosby said:


> But applying the same logic about updates Zebra has been version 2 since 2006, and has been plublicly saying Zebra 3 will be coming since *2012*. Potato potato.
> 
> Is u-he's modeling good? Absolutely, but I wouldn't call any of their synths ground breaking. (Same with Satin. Yeah it's good, but I don't see anything it does being groundbreaking outside of giving you more parameters to adjust). You could say the same thing about Serum when it was first released, now it's just another wavetable synth.
> 
> ...


Hmm. Repro was groundbreaking and is still the best analog emulation on the market (I think). Diva was groundbreaking because never before had something emulated so many different analog synths so well - and then be able to mix and match them. Zebra was groundbreaking... etc.

I don’t think you understand what that phrase means


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## jcrosby (Dec 24, 2020)

vitocorleone123 said:


> Hmm. Repro was groundbreaking and is still the best analog emulation on the market (I think). Diva was groundbreaking because never before had something emulated so many different analog synths so well - and then be able to mix and match them. Zebra was groundbreaking... etc.
> 
> I don’t think you understand what that phrase means


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## Pier (Dec 24, 2020)

vitocorleone123 said:


> I don’t think you understand what that phrase means



You reminded me of The Princess Bride


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## Bman70 (Dec 24, 2020)

Pier said:


> Slow is an understatement.
> 
> Battery 4 was released almost 8 years ago, and it was by far the worst version of Battery.
> 
> ...



I'm probably in the minority, but I like that Kontakt's UI hasn't changed in, OMG a decade.  As a musical tool, I like being able to get familiar with it, so it becomes transparent and doesn't intrude into my workflow. I also love that each instrument's UI can be modernized, without needing to change Kontakt. After all, my guitar and violin have the same "UI" they've had for hundreds of years, and I like them that way.

Back on topic: I would encourage you to consider Omnisphere more closely. It might be 3x more expensive than some other options... but over the next two years it could easily save you from buying 5 other, less complete instruments in an attempt to meet the same needs (ending up spending equal or more). I'm not sure if it's US based only, but Zzounds.com has a monthly payment system with no credit check, that's how I got Omnisphere.


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## Pier (Dec 25, 2020)

Bman70 said:


> After all, my guitar and violin have the same "UI" they've had for hundreds of years, and I like them that way.



Yeah but your eyes haven't changed either. 

We're now running much higher resolutions than 10 years ago. All Macs have been running retina monitors for the past 6-7 or so years and 4K monitors are becoming common in the Windows world too.

As for Omnisphere it would be a waste of money in my case. Its value is really in the presets which I have no interest in using. Falcon would have been a better choice than Omni for me since I'm more interested in sound design, although I ended up getting Bitwig which is even more powerful.


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## jcrosby (Dec 25, 2020)

Pier said:


> As for Omnisphere it would be a waste of money in my case. Its value is really in the presets which I have no interest in using. Falcon would have been a better choice than Omni for me since I'm more interested in sound design, although I ended up getting Bitwig which is even more powerful.



Omnisphere has a huge arsenal of samples that are unique, if not unlike anything available anywhere else.

Bowed bicycle rims, a bunch of Diego Stoccos custom/modified instruments, various instruments played with everything from dental floss to electric toothbrushes, Lightbulbs, & pianos burning of fire.. Not to mention a ton of of completely normal organic instruments, analog and modular synths all sampled immaculately.

While there's plenty of stuff Omnisphere has that you could find a similar replacement for in Kontakt, there's also tons of stuff in there that no Kontakt library comes close to touching, even 12+ years after Omnipshere was released....

Anyone who owns Omnisphere and doesn't fiddle with the included content to make their own patches might as well be getting half the value of the cost of Omnisphere they spent when they bought it. It literally can cover any genre of music imaginable. And there's plenty there to cover SFX design as well...

If you only use presets I could see your point. But if you aren't afraid to design patches yourself, even using basic settings, Omnisphere has so much more to offer than you can wrap your head around until you actually own it. As a rompler? An expensive choice... (Even then it's not like it's pricy compared to what $500 in Kontakt tends to get you...) As a sound design instrument it's still the best spent money I've spent on any virtual instrument by a mile.... 7 out of 10 times it's the 1st thing I reach for.


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## Pier (Dec 25, 2020)

jcrosby said:


> Omnisphere has a huge arsenal of samples that are unique, if not unlike anything available anywhere else.
> 
> Bowed bicycle rims, a bunch of Diego Stoccos custom/modified instruments, various instruments played with everything from dental floss to electric toothbrushes, Lightbulbs, & pianos burning of fire.. Not to mention a ton of of completely normal organic instruments, analog and modular synths all sampled immaculately.
> 
> ...



Thanks @jcrosby, that's an interesting point.

Something that really bothers me about most Kontakt libraries I own, is that I can't use the samples outside of Kontakt. Is this the case too with Omni?


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## jcrosby (Dec 26, 2020)

Pier said:


> Thanks @jcrosby, that's an interesting point.
> 
> Something that really bothers me about most Kontakt libraries I own, is that I can't use the samples outside of Kontakt. Is this the case too with Omni?


Yeah. They're locked to Omnisphere. Falcon's the same way with any of the libraries UVI makes too though. And the pre-made Falcon libraries are much less flexible in terms of editing parameters than Omnisphere unless you want to get much deeper under Falcon's hood than you would have to in Omnisphere. Some stuff (AFAIK) you can't access at all. (I'm still learning Falcon's more complex stuff though so I could be wrong... Falcon definitely has the steepest learning curve of any instrument I use, that's for sure...)

Both are great but I personally get a lot more milage out of Omnisphere. But that's probably mostly because I've had it for a long time and know it well.. Ultimately though I find Spectrasonics OOTB content a lot better in the sense that they're not going to up-sell you on anything outside of another instrument altogether... (Keyscape, Trillian, etc...) UVI has a kontakt-like model where you could ultimately sink more money into Falcon. Omnisphere's library however is so broad in scope that you wouldn't feel like anything was under-represented.

And while Omnisphere doesn't excel as a standalone sampler I still have an absolute ton of my own samples I've added to it... I also have a hunch this will change whenever we might see Omnisphere 3. I can't imagine the 1st major feature upgrade would be proper sampling...

Definitely keep asking around though... I see a lot of people who have it and say they don't use it but IMO that has to be related to them more or less exclusively working with presets... If you do any sound design, even basic stuff, I don't see how it's possible to feel like Omnisphere's overpriced...

Happy holidays btw, and best of luck which ever way you go!


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## Pier (Dec 26, 2020)

jcrosby said:


> Happy holidays btw, and best of luck which ever way you go!



Merry Christmas!

Already bought Bitwig though, and very happy with it


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## shponglefan (Dec 26, 2020)

Pier said:


> Thanks @jcrosby, that's an interesting point.
> 
> Something that really bothers me about most Kontakt libraries I own, is that I can't use the samples outside of Kontakt. Is this the case too with Omni?



You could in principle re-sample them, especially since Omnisphere allows you to build patches with just the basic sound sources. I've done that with samples from various libraries over the years.


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## bill5 (Dec 28, 2020)

cloudbuster said:


> There's also Synthmaster (2.9), pretty affordable with excellent sound and ....loads of features


Agreed but can you load your own samples? Didn't recall that.


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## ReleaseCandidate (Dec 28, 2020)

bill5 said:


> Agreed but can you load your own samples? Didn't recall that.


Yes, even more than one with different root notes


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## cloudbuster (Dec 28, 2020)

bill5 said:


> Agreed but can you load your own samples? Didn't recall that.


Yep, even multi samples (diff. notes & velocity ranges).


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## bill5 (Dec 28, 2020)

Thanks. I have it but obviously haven't used or learned enough about. Remind me again why I bought Iris??


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