I switched to phase plant after using vital for a year and serum since 2015-6. Although I still use serum ALOT il never doubt that phase plant is undoubtedly the greatest synth of its kind. It literally blows my mind everytime, the routing and modular capabilities are levels above. Cheers for the interactive streams and tutorials on it, il never look back lol👍

Phaseplant is my go to but one thing you didn't mention is that each synth sounds a little different. For example in my latest project I wanted to make a very simple reese bass and I basically made the same patch in both of them (tried serum too lol) and I liked the one I made in vital better. I could probably match the sound in phaseplant by adding more fx and stuff but I just thought it's worth mentioning.

Interesting video, I totally agree with the conclusion at the end. Vital and Serum are more similar than Vital and Phaseplant. I think it would much more interesting to compare Falcon 2 and Phaseplant because they are more alike (both marketed as be the 'everything' synth).

very good review/comparison. thanks!

The one thing that vital did better is nondestructive wavetable editor, this way you can stack as many signal processors as you want and be able to tweak every effect separately. Much more flexible solution than applying every effect, I would like to see something like this in phaseplant.

After looking at this I realize I really need to give Vital a shot. It looks like it's got plenty of hidden features that at the very least rival Serum. Nowadays I use Serum for sounds I anticipate will use heavy unison (bass stabs/yoinks and supersaws) and phase plant for basically everything else. The ability to stack voices to get exactly the timbre you want is one of my favorite things about phase plant

I wish Vital had more flexibility with the unison settings. Some stuff just can't be done with just the three spread options available; maybe Unison Index should be one of the modulation sources along with velocity note pressure etc

Great video!

Great video... I've already got the kilohearts plugins but not phaseplant. Is it still worth getting phaseplant under the circumstances?

PhasePlant has an a lot of crazy depth, like you say, but it is also very complex that way and makes me feel bad for not making the most of all that complexity. If I set out to design a pad in PhasePlant, it feels like I should go on a soul-searching trip to Tibet first, then dive in and emerge years later, a master of the craft, otherwise I'm not worthy. Laugh all you want, but that's how I feel about PhasePlant 🙂I look at some of the factory presets with forty sound sources and sixty-four effects (a slight exaggeration, lol) and I shudder! If that's what you need, then by all means pick PhasePlant, because it is awesome, but I believe newcomers would be better suited by starting out with Vital. Not just because it is free, but because it is more approachable, is as easy to use as possible, and does have its unique features, which somehow don't detract from its simplicity. (In fact, before Vital, Matt Tytel wrote Helm, another free synth. It's much simpler, but it was the synth that taught me how all of that stuff works, when I was a complete novice and the sight of FL's Harmor made me want to run away. Helm, and now Vital, are perfect for learning this stuff.) And with all of PhasePlant's depth, Vital has features which are missing from PP and which have become indispensable to me, like the ability to easily stereo-ize any parameter and any modulation. That one thing is why I love Vital. (That, and the fantastic unison tweaks. And the beautiful LFOs, the superior random sources, the mod remapping, and other such small-ish things which I now miss in every other synth I have).

13:32 if you highlight the modulation amount in Vital it shows where the modulator is mapped, no need to go to the matrix tab

Goal: To design some weird/very unique patches with lots of flexibility. Synth: Phaseplant it is. Goal: To design something that takes less time with better workflow, and doesn't need to be unique level 9000 Synth: Vital/Serum it is! I personally choose the latter 98% of the time.

Everyone should check phaseplant new update which is massive 🙈. They released it couple of days ago. So much new features . I own both synths and they are even ✌️

I demoed phaseplant and found the modulation to be very convoluted on patches that have a lot of modulation. A mod matrix makes it way easier to keep track of modulations in my opinion.

possibly dumb question: I couldn't use something like Slice EQ or Multipass in Phaseplant if I don't own them right? A version inside PhasePlent doesn't come with it?

Honestly the chorus and flanger in vital is just SO much better than in phaseplant. You can’t freeze the chorus or flanger in Phaseplant. Also the multiband just sounds better to whatever I’ve done and found in phaseplant

I have Serum, but after getting Vital, I don't really use Serum now. Crazy. For a quick bass or whatever, Vital loads up faster than Serum and gets the job done. I like Phase Plant as I've tested it a bunch, but it's soooo deep. Definitely a winner for complex sound design and neuro bass and stuff like that. Still gonna buy Phase Plant eventually though probably, but at the moment the only thing holding me back is that they give you everything for $10/month, but buying Phase Plant outright means you lose the content banks and the stuff like Faturator and such. That's kinda a drag. I'd rather rent the kit for a month or two and pump out some work and then turn it back off when I don't use it.

I prefer phase plant for weird shit vital for quick shaping of shit

Do you think Serum is now superseded in a big way?

Serum and Vital are practically the same in terms of usefulness and overall possibilites, there are differences here and there but considering Vital is free I'd recommend it 100% of the time. Never had trouble recreating my Serum patches in Vital. Another great synth that is often overlooked is Surge, when you learn how to use it you'll ask yourself why it doesn't cost 200 bucks. This beig sad, Phase Plant is above the rest by a mile, it changed the game.

Odd that there isn’t more love for Phaseplant in the comments of the video. Phaseplant is amazing. Workflow requires a touch more learning but not much. Also It’s capabilities blow Vital out of the water. But there’s no reason it can’t do the really simple stuff very well as well. Visually Phaseplant is much nicer to look at. ilo hearts Ensemble sounds amazing generally if you want a nice Chorus/Hyper effect. Vitals flanger sounding so great is the default stereo imo not hard to do. I mean Vital is great, but serum usually sounds better and has the same workflow. Phaseplant can do so much more than both with such ease and just seems like the next logical step. I just think the price although fair is the one reason more people don’t have it - though you can just wait until Black Friday and it comes down 30%. Fun video - interesting to see a take on a comparison and agree that vital is no brained if your starting out and that Phaseplant is the logical next step after vital/serum.

What about Pigments? Have you ever tried?

I don't understand why people would even compare the two, vital is a great capable synth but screams serum clone(better or worse is subjective), meanwhile phaseplant screams modular jank, different modules you can link together in a myriad of ways, only thing it's lacking is some sequencers as using the lfos is... well... even more jank.

This video needs an update, now that Kilohearts v2.0 has dropped.

A mention: the paid version of Vital has text to speech synthesis

Vital FTW! first post

vital is free !!

I own both serum and vital I use vital a lot more because I'm more use to it now, phase plant looks awesome but I'm not interested in paying for more synths I'm sure it probably is more advanced but vital serum and phase plant all seem to be the same overall package with a few differences between them to me.