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Looking for a hybrid synth

Pier

Pier

Senior Member
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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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.
 
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.
 
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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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.

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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.
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But it's actually just different ways of loading a sample to a wavetable, right?
 
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?
 
Pier said:
Ableton Live has a sampler but the modulation possibilities are not as great as having a dedicated hybrid synth.

Any thoughts?
Click to expand...
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 ;)
 
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.
 
StefanoM said:
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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ReleaseCandidate said:
Well, there are of course NI's synths, specially Reaktor.
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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).
 
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).
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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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