Tusker

The OP hasn't established a budget but he has established a purpose: he wants to emulate various artists he mentioned. I've performed with the Logic/Mainstage plugins for more than a decade now. ES2, Sculpture and Alchemy are among my favorite synths. In some respects Alchemy is unrivaled. But two issues are worth considering: time and polish. First, the third party synths often have patches/effects/automation that speed up the process of building a mix. Third party patches accelerate this process even further. Second, some of the Logic synths don't sound as polished or three dimensional out of the box. They are not the newest code. But you can polish them up with effects. Skrillex used an ES2 sound in 2010 on Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites, but there is an effects chain polishing that sound. Polishing isn't rocket science: it's usually some combination of compression, chorus, delays, reverb and spatial panning to make the sound bigger. By contrast, many of today's third party synth patches sound great out of the box. So polish is also a question of how much time you want to spend. There's a question for our OP: what's your time worth?

I am not in the market for it. I already have a little Moog which does the job for me. It seems primarily useful as a bass synth or a lead/spacey synth in a live setting. The former it is very well equipped to do. The latter? Well, it's almost there as a spacey synth (with the very attractive ring mod and noise) but a player would need to add reverb/delay, complicating the gigging package.

You are already getting good advice on the other questions. I'll focus on this one. As good as the Logic / MainStage library is, you can benefit from third party synths. Everybody has their own preferences but for me the main contenders are: 1- In the generalist emulation camp - The Arturia and Cherry Audio bundles are great. 2- In the unique / best of breed-ish camp - U-he, Synapse Audio and Softube are great. 3- The do it all synth - Omnisphere is very well regarded. You can mix and match. Grab a package from group 1 and add a specialty item from group 2. Even though I own and love synths from Universal Audio and Native instruments I find that the companies mentioned above are simpler at covering the waterfront. Personally, most of the time, I reach for a U-He synth. YMMV. Two things you didn't ask about that you should budget for: Effects: Your daw/host can help you get started but carefully crafted effect presets can be magic in a synth-heavy mix. Third party effects often have beautiful tweakable presets. Patch libraries: Like you I enjoy programming synths but we all need to be shaken out of our comfort zones from time to time. One good technique is to find preset libraries and sound designers you like and then purchase the related synths. You will be tweaking from a different starting point. Personally, my favorite independent sound designers are The Unfinished and Luftrum. YMMV. Hope this helps.

Happy belated birthday Cap'n. Been enjoying these trips around the sun with you on the good ship KC. Cheers. 🍻

Sure, there was a lot of creativity in sample usage and there will be creative uses with this today. We can look forward to some entertaining lawsuits! I could see using it to deconstruct well known recordings. Isolate and reharm a Sinatra "My Way" here and garnish it with a "Goo goo a joob" from the Beatles there. Parody and humor may be the first fruits. Let's see what happens.

Thanks for sharing it. Seems quite mind-blowing. The value seems to hinge on the quality of audio separation. I could see it being invaluable as a practice tool, or for creating backing tracks for casual vocalists. But is it useful for creating professional quality content? Am I missing other useful workflows?

@GovernorSilver Loved the P-Thugg video. Thanks!

I use a 4TB external drive and store about a terrabyte of sample libraries on it. My Logic Pro library is on Intel MBPro’s 1TB hard drive. So are the third party soft synths. i do some gigs with the orchestral libraries and some without. No problems.

A good Mellotron thread (marvelously characterful instrument, where would prog be without it) can always benefit from a Rick Wakeman wisecrack. 😉

QFT. More of an expression controller than a pitch controller for me also. Only thing better than a Touche? Two Touches! But I see already knew that .... 😉

Matriarch. A slim doorway to a particular kind of infinity.

My current weapon of choice. It's not for everyone but I like it.

I guess I would ask if the distortion is happening at the output stage of the instrument or the input stage of the PA.

I've been using this Logidy UMI3 for about ten years. I use it for articulation switching, patch changes and CCs. It does note-ons, CCs, and program changes. Not sure about sysex strings. You might want to check that. I plug a Roland EV-5 into it for expression. What would I change? The middle switch can be tricky if you have big feet. There could be newer products out there. I've looked at something with more features like the Behringer FCB 1010, but that takes a bit of space and this one has refused to break.

You can hear the kinship with Joe Zawinul. 👍

Hey Jim, Thanks for your post and for clarifying some of your complaints about In-The-Box synths. Your complaints are valid and without meaning to pander, I share many of your feelings. Let's take the GX80 for example. I am looking at it right now and even on my favorite 27 inch monitor, I agree it's not inviting me to patch. The Ribbon actually works on my 5 inch trackpad and I am grateful for that. But I'd suggest that the GX80 is not representative of ITB synths. It's an epic miniaturization of possibly the largest hardware polysynth ever made: a 500lb monster. Mark Barton made it sound great. That’s not to say that all other ITB synths look great. However many do. The best interfaces are generally not the emulations, in my experience. Pigments is very informative. Massive X is clean and inviting. The new Zebralette 3 beta is very intuitive. But let’s be real. Interface problems aren’t just limited to virtual synths are they? Take the JX8P, a glorious pad and brass analog synth which I loved to gig and hated to program. I am generally not finding that ITB is stuck in the 1980s. On the contrary, with the better developers, it's getting better at exponential rates. It helps to have controllers (knobby or otherwise) to suck out the musical expression. I use a Touché, trackpads and sometimes a breath controller. It’s an exciting time to be making music.

Speaking of pedals, why do I feel a need to post a picture of Joe Zawinul's feet? .. and Vangelis' feet? 😄

No offence taken. None intended bro. 👍 👍 Mark's a terrifically helpful guy and he's been posting here. When we did a team review of his GX80, he was kind enough to dive into the weeds with us. So I thought it would help if he was introduced a bit. 🙂

Love this!! 💪 What do you control with it?

Yes for sure, one Zebrallete 3 oscillator is a whole universe. You don't have to mess with the other stuff if you don't want to. It's like a Moog. No velocity. No aftertouch. Just great sound. I totally get it's not for everyone. 👍

Let's not. His name is Mark Barton. 🙂 "Mark Barton is a brilliant audio engineer, with a list of accomplishments a mile long. In the 1970s, Mark designed the Pollard Industries Syndrum, which defined the sound of electronic drums for the disco generation. He's also done groundbreaking work in speech synthesis, including writing the MacInTalk text-to-speech system for the first Apple Macintosh computer, and designed the innovative Zeroscillator hardware synthesizer module for Cyndustries. For the past five years, Mark has been bringing his talents to Cherry Audio with modules and bundles for Voltage Modular under the MRB Labs and Cherry Audio/MRB brands, and has contributed to the wildly popular instruments Miniverse, Novachord + Solovox, GX-80, Lowdown, Eight Voice, Rackmode Signal Processors, and, most recently, Synthesizer Expander Module and Pro Soloist."

That's a fantastically ergonomic idea. I've sometimes found it hard to reach a hardware knob or slider once you have a few hardware synths around you. Interface re-usability would solve that problem. In some DAW controllers the hardware sliders and knobs remap to different channel strips as your area of focus changes from one channel strip to another. Something like that would be cool for parameters like ADSRs, which might appear 2-3- times on an interface. Maybe MIDI 2.0 (or CLAP) would allow soft synths to communicate these parameters to the controller hardware?

There are so many different use cases and preferences. I admit at the outset, digital tools can't solve every problem. Do you think a Fader Fox PC12 would address most of the need for knobs? And could one of the controllers from Soundforce address the need for a more precisely emulated interface? I admit I personally don't see a need for either. Just wondering, since these products seem to meet the needs of some folks who like their soft synths with knobs.

Indeed. It's a very human problem. How can we know what we haven't experienced? The past speaks loudly and the future is unknown. The most intuitive interface I have ever seen is for a recently released beta version of a free synth. For me it's better than knobs, because you can actually see sound and shape it. On an analog synth (and I love analog synths!) I have to imagine things like: - a pulse wave adding even harmonics as you change the pulse width - a triangle wave sounding like a low passed saw wave - A saw wave and a square wave (down an octave) together sounding like a saw wave But these all require imagination. Or blind chance. But in a freely drawable wavetable synth on a big screen, you can see sound and shape it. The free synth is Zebrallete 3. Draw a sound. Hear it. This changes sound design. And who knows what will come after that? Part of our discussion is the struggle between the future and the past.

Yes, I think we might all be referencing slightly different use cases as we think about our preferences. Some us are expressing a preference for OKPF (one knob per function) synths versus non OKPF synths. Others are talking about the immediacy of direct analog control versus a slower digitally mediated control environment. These issues matter. Still others (me) are thinking about how virtual patch cords never need repair and how nice it is to have an infinite number of them. YMMV. 😅