-=[THE SYNTH ZONE]=-

I realized that the Volca FM is all I need for those sounds

I might check one of those out, so cheap used it's like buying a soft synth

The Opsix reminded me of a wacky boutique guitar pedal called the Infinity Discombobulator that is designed to demo well at a guitar store cuz it makes all these "wow" sounds then you try to make actual music with it and you can't find anything that works

I know it's only 4op and not 6, but for FM/digital synthesis on the cheap, do not forget the Reface DX. It sounds great and is fun to use.

fun to use

ultimately this is what did the opsix in for me...just always found it somewhat irritating to interact with.

Stylophone Theremin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eupwp-EPMmo

Yall crazy. The Opsix rules. I get wild ass tones out of it everytime I go in for programming. The firmware update added some nice features like more sequencer program controls. I will never sell it.

They really nailed it with the Reface DX. Super fun and immediate, small and cute. That whole series is awesome. I sold mine when the Waldorf Quantum got 6-op FM. Not like FM plugs are anything new, buttttt...the Opsix plugin is only $99.

Has anyone tried the Opal synth plug-in from Fors FM? Seems to be a max-for-live device that does Elektron style sequencing. Would love to know if it's any good.

I bought it and never used it and forgot I had it until now. Thanks. Sorry I'm not more helpful.

Give it a try and report back!

have an ms-20 mini on the way for our 9 year old's birthday (shared present with my birth/fathers day). Same son has a cheap laptop, so I grabbed dexed and pedalboard/mido to work on some scripted midi/generative/transcription projects I'm hoping will be fun. FM synthesis is indeed crazy, but dexed has some decent patches built in. I'm hoping use python to set those eno patches upthread bc mouse+gui ain't the way. We will probably need a midi keyboard in case somebody wants to play chords.

this seems like it will be awesome

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPNNkyiakns

Love the Fred's Lab Tooro lofi wavetable synth but it's a bit of a chore to program, the screen on this looks like it will be a big help

SG, I like the idea of "scripted midi/generative/transcription" stuff, but haven't been able to brew up anything really satisfying... what's your workflow like?

I've only spent a handful of hours on the scripting so far. It's a fun learning and (within family) teaching tool. I'm using pedalboard, an open source spotify project, to get multiple VST instrument objects with different patches from Dexed.vst3. There's probably better python DAW stuff for this. I wrote some defs for generating 88 piano key scales from an input song key and chords from a root note. I wrote a def with numpy.random that takes a starting index to the array of notes in a scale and a number of requested notes. It builds 8-note phrases, randomly walking away from the start, and then resets to the start note for each phrase. I put the randomness in 'EchoEcho 3' over a progression in 'Chroma 5 Y'. It sounds like preset windchimes, which I'm guessing is a common landing zone for fast versions of this sort of thing. here's example output.

you get arrays out of passing midi to the vst objects, so you can mix, fade, and sum tracks by multiplying with envelope functions and then adding the arrays together before saving or playing.

for transcription, I'm hoping there are python models that can take a recorded clip and spit out reasonable midi that I can display on the dexed gui to quickly give the kids melodies from songs they know to play. a shazam music teacher, which is simpler if the student only has a monophonic synthesizer and wants to play a melody from stardew valley or the lead from calvin harris' "bounce".

are there other awesome and free vst instruments that, like dexed, don't require making an account or jumping through other hoops? it was so refreshing to just grab it from GitHub.

U-he's Zebralette 3 is in public beta (and will be free when actually released) - spectral, additive, wavetable, kind of a steep learning curve

https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=607153

TAL Noisemaker is a good basic subtractive synth, sort of like a Roland Juno

https://tal-software.com/products/tal-noisemaker

thanks, these are great examples of what I'm looking for. grabbed both installers to hopefully check out this weekend.

Full bucket music has TONS, primarily virtual Korgs, including a lot of the weird ones:

https://www.fullbucket.de/music/vst.html

oh wow. that is a great resource - thanks!

attracted to the PS-3300 simulator and as luck would have it -- the real thing's on sale!

the introductions in the manuals of these FBM synths are themselves wonderful

Korg announced a reissue of the 3300 or 3100 for only a cool $12k IIRC

pedalboard doesn't seem to wrap the FB-3300 plugin properly. looking around, it seems python VST loader instrument compatibility may be an issue

is anyone else checking out the Digitakt II? I've had my eye on the Syntakt for a while because I'm more drawn to synths vs samples, but this new Digitakt is a massive upgrade. I assume there will eventually be a Syntakt II, but that probably won't be for a few years.

Thanks for the rundown SG, that seems well over my head, but also sounds like you could get some very cool results that way... (or at least have fun messing around with it...)

I'm definitely not selling my Digitakt I at the reduced prices they're going for now (though mine is old enough I'm pretty sure I bought it for $550 during a sale) but if I'm ever not broke I wouldn't be mad at getting the II for 16 channels of samples and the option of stereo samples (though I don't really miss stereo, I like subtle panning better most of the time) and the other improvements seem nice. The new filter modes with single cycle waveforms should make it even more useful than the I for a lot of synthesis tasks.

For another good free synth, forgot the DSP56300 project - Virus A/B/C and now Ti, Waldorf MicroQ emulations
https://dsp56300.wordpress.com/

You have to get firmware (widely available for the pre-TI Viruses but I had to go to a shady warez site for the Ti firmware, Waldorf has the MicroQ firmware on their site) but no account creation/etc. required