What's your favorite synth? I'm posting current versions of the synths I discussed because since some of these are pretty actively updated, some of the stuff I said in the video might not necesserly hold up in the future. Serum : V. 1.363 Vital : V. 1.51 Pigments : V. 4.1 Phase Plant : 2.1

And now PHASEPLANT is back and better than ever too

Wow! Thank you for the info! merci! It's awesome that you tagged your sections!!

This is a great roundup man, thank you for your time on this. All these synths are amazing for the reasons you laid out so well. I love Pigments but Im really tempted by Phase Plant. I have been trying out the demo and I appreciate the layout so much. Its like modular snap-ons that you connect together from generation to modulation and FX- it really simplifies the signal flow. New empty presets might be overwhelming for complete beginners, but if you have a little bit of fundamental synthesis knowledge, Phase Plant's layout makes it so clear what is going on with the signal flow. It helps you feel like you really understand what you are making and invites you to experiment. From then you become more interested in how other presets have been put together and learn through your curiosity. Its almost like an educational instrument! Thanks again for the great overview

Deep but very accessible review. Thank you.

Ok. This is a great subject. Thank you for this video man! ❤

Amazing video❤

Very interesting observations on these synths, thank you.

Great video ❤I use and love all these synths. If I had to pick one it'd be Phase Plant. For me, a few of the positives for Vital over serum are 1. Vital's LFOs and randoms have more options than serums. The differnt types of random in Vital a big plus, and also the LFO has things like point cycle, loop point etc. which I find useful. The ability to easily do stereo modulation from the LFO and randoms in Vital is something I wish Phase Plant had at the fingertips. All that combined with the remap too. 2. The spectral warp modes in Vital are really nice and offer something a bit different than Serum's warp modes. 3 - and this is a big one for me, the ability to have the osc snap to pitch so easily is really really great (espically combined with the stereo modulation). Snap to pitch also pretty easily done in Phase Plant with a remap, but I still find myself reaching for Vital over phaseplant when I want to do this (also another plus for Pigments, cuz it has this implimented in much the same way). Also, while I do find Vital's FX and filters a bit limiting like you said, I think the FX themselves sound pretty great.

Oh, for God's sake, it all depends on your needs and preferences. If your goal is to create music, i.e. move forward and not stuck tweaking, you absolutely have to be limited! That's why I would not recomment Pigments / Phase Plant. Actally, even Serum may be a bit too much, but I think is the best balanced synth among those you've mentioned. Also, Serum's filters are great (U-He's level of greatness). PS: why no one ever bothers about memory foot print? It is about time it take to load/open a plugin which you do many times, and it is just a sign of a well-thought piece of software (shout out to U-He once again). Absolutely hate when you load a synth which takes 1gb+ of RAM. How the hell a very versatile Zebra2 takes only 30 Mb in memory while Vital is taking 1gb?? Btw Serum takes "only" 300 Mb and is the winner among the mentioned in the video synths.

Multipass goes on my kicks and my basslines. I will then put different transient shapers and a touch on f phase distortion on the different bands. I own all of these but really only use vital and Phaseplant due o familiarity.

Steve Duda is working on Serum 2 but it takes time and he hasn't promised any date. One of my favorite plugins is Synplant, i'm so excited for Synplant 2! Such a quirky weird little piece of software

Awesome

I have phaseplant and vital i love them both

This was a very informative video. I am new to all this, and it gave me all the information that I would need about these programs. I was looking at how to make sample packs. I bought Arturia pigments. It's amazing, but I couldn't find any sample pack tutorials. I will go ahead and download the free one, as you mentioned. I think I will also give serum a try as I found a sample pack tutorial. It's also lole $10 or something a month which is fine.

i really wanted to love phase plant but it felt really really limited when you're used to bitwig and grid. The same feeling when comparing the pigments to Phase Plant, Pigments feels really limited. when you compare Phase Plant to BitWig, Phase Plant feels really really limited.

The steppiness of Pigments filter is noticeable on a lot of their soft synths, including the Minifreak VST (obviously not heard on the hardware synth). I’ve seem to notice it mainly when I use the mouse and move the filter knob but when I assign modulation I don’t hear it. Regardless, it is weird that there is stepping with the filter in this day and age when other synths don’t do that.

Thanks for the interesting comparison. I will check out your preset packs. I recently bought Phase Plant and some of the paid effects snap-ins, and I was blown away by how powerful the Kilohearts ecosystem is. The modular synth architecture in Phase Plant is limited only by your imagination and CPU power. You can modulate everything. One person can save both synth patches and snap-in effects racks as presets that anyone else can use, even if they don't own all the snap-ins used to create a given preset. I agree that Phase Plant needs a sequencer/arpeggiator. I would also like to be able feed in audio or virtual instrument output to be modified by Phase Plant and other Snapin hosts, for real-time effects such as Vocoder. Before I bought Phase Plant, I already had Pigments, the Arturia V Collection, and Cherry Audio's GX 80 and Voltage Modular. I had purchased these on sale, with the idea that I would learn advanced sound design on them when I had the time and inclination. I retired several months ago, but have not done more than playing with each a little. None of them inspired me to put in the work to climb the learning curve. Phase Plant seems worth my effort. Again, thanks for this and your other videos. Peter.

Although this is an older video, I would like to share my thoughts on these synths. Serum: I started with this one. I struggled to understand what made a patch 'work' despite being able to create cool sounds by following guides or looking at presets. Although the UI is an improvement over older plugins, the matrix was hidden away on another tab and the modulation process was clunky compared to modern plugins. This discouraged me from learning more about it, and I mostly created simple, even barebones patches. I found it difficult to engage with the central aspects of sound design due to some details, such as the envelopes not scaling well with durations or the finickiness of LFOs. Overall, I do not believe this is the best option for beginners. Personally, I found experimentation to be challenging. Pigments: This was my next synth. Its excellent UI and intuitive drag-and-drop system unlocked the 'hidden knowledge'. The deciding factor was being able to see everything on one page and how it interacts with each other, trying out different things, switching modulation sources, and having access to the different engines. It may not have the same level of complexity as Serum or Phaseplant, but that is precisely why I believe it is the ideal synthesizer for beginners. It hides away its complexity until required and it does it much more elegantly than Serum. Pigments was the synth that got me into reconstructing sounds I heard and liked. However, I always struggled to accurately reproduce certain sounds. I also felt Pigments was missing "depth" in its engines. I honestly never liked the sound of it, especially compared to things like Diva or Dune. So while I think it's the perfect synth to start out with I also think, once you are more comfortable with sounddesign you should start looking elsewhere. Pigments was necessary for me to truly get into synths, but I rarely use it nowadays. Ironically I started using Serum more, now that I am more comfortable with navigating and using synths. I'll skip Vital, cause I haven't played with it much. Phaseplant: While I don't have it, I know it is THE synth. I have Snapheap and how the UI handles is perfect. While certainly overwhelming for a beginner, as an intermediate it is perfect. You can modulate everything, drag-and-drop and rearrange, so experimentation comes incredibly easy and it is probably the gateway drug into modular synths. I don't know about its sound quality, but I'm sure it's in the same ballpark as other industry standard synths. If I could start anew, I'd start with Vital (cause it's free) and Pigments as my first payed plugin. I might even skip serum completely and go straight to phaseplant. After that I'd probably get specific plugins for specific usecases, like Diva for that analog crunch or UVI Falcon for that modulation maddness.

Now you have to update this list to include Current :)

Thanks for the great video! The one question I'm having a hard time getting clarity about is how great is Phase Plant if you don't have a subscription. Is it still powerful and great or is it limited in an undesirable way?

I would like to hear your opinion about u-he synths. I love Zebra 2 and Hive, I have not used Diva so much but I think it's a great synth. I^m waiting for Zebra 3 😝

Hey man amazing video, thank you! Phase Plant is on sale now for $99. Do you recommend buying it even without any premium effects of the eco system?

Can you recommend a virtual analog synth besides diva? I just don’t like looking at it. Obviously it’s a great sounding soft synth but the visual aspect is important to me. And btw GREAT comparison going on here!

I have to say that I love Vital for pads.. some how its just flows better in Vital.. I don't have Pigments as audio quality wise I don't see it being better than Serum or Vital.. its options are none the better or the worse. I have yet to really dive into Phaseplant after buying everything on their site. LOL Just because Vital is free is very tempting. but I reach for Serum more than I reach for Vital when looking for a none pad sound. & then there is Surge XT & the pads that thing does is other worldly!!!!!!!

See im not a Big fan of serum i use parawave rapid and Avenger 2 but out of the 4 you mentioned serum is the best

I have to say that I love the subscription model of phase plant. You get the whole collection for 10€ and you get a payback for kilohertz stuff about 100€. Effective you pay 20€ for the service. I think the overall collection is over 1300€.

Phase Plant is great!

please keep doing reviews so cool on soft synths, for instance pigments 5 is out, what about alchemy, what about vcv,cardinal, surge xt

What about Omnisphere?

Which one is the easiest on the CPU?

Strange, I use Pigments all the time for granular I think it sounds great. No clicks here

Current :D

Vital is good for beginners and broke…. But serum is if you want to be very specific.

42:02. from a pro perspective. but.. you only spoke about the FREE version ... did you really try. the PRO version of Vital that cost $80 ? ... so this entire video is unclear... did you. use the free Vital ? or ? the PRO version ?

'Xfer' is pronounced 'Transfer'. It's amazing how many "pros" are unaware of this. I laugh every time I hear 'EX-fer'. 🤣