Phase Plant Vs. Falcon- The Rant.

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apologies for the redundancy. It's a lot to cover lol
I like falcon, It's got some great stuff. It just feels like I have to xp grind just to get it going though.
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[@elliotr9095]

Your comparison between "making sounds with phase plant" and "making expressive instruments in Falcon" I think is the best take I've heard on the two and that's what I'll be sharing from now on with people who ask this question. I get your caution between drawing parallels between Falcon and Kontakt, but I think you're right. I still try and manage to make expressive-enough instruments in Phase Plant but it won't be really like what Falcon can do (just in terms of the number of generators and the scripting/multisampling capabilities), but you can sure as shit load up a sample(s) into Phase Plant and make some amazing playable multitimbral patches, even with keyboard splits if you really wanted, it's just "limited" by comparison (and far less limited than basically every other softsynth out there, before even taking into consideration just how fast and easy it is to use). I'm already in the Kontakt camp (and MSoundFactory for what that's worth) so Falcon is probably not in my future at this point barring a workflow overhaul. Kontakt is for the intensive expressive multisample scripting instrument libraries and Phase Plant for just about literally everything else (barring Harmor/u-he and pigments/Avenger until granular comes to Phase Plant HYPERS)

[@Alckemy]

It’s coming! I just don’t know when

[@paulegavin]

I'm using Falcon exclusively for the UVI presets and expansions. They're almost always amazing starting points because they're all so well designed. I treat it like Kontakt. I pick the sound I want, remove anything I don't want inside Falcon (usually the reverb, delays, and some of the effects), and then use BW tools, and other tools to design it. Actual sound design in Falcon is just unacceptably slow for what I'm trying to accomplish. I definitely wish BW had better sequencing options tho. That's what got me interested in Falcon last year.

[@Alckemy]

Surprised to hear you say that about sequencing as I feel like bitwig had incredible tools for the task. I use shone sort of sequencing device to start all my glitch tunes as well as coming up with Melodie’s and chords. Plus the note grid… which ironically I don’t use. 😅

[@paulegavin]

@@Alckemy I might just need further education on it. Thanks for the reply, I'll dig into it more. Very much appreciate the channel!

[@capitanmission]

Falcon for sequencing instead of bitwig? seem weird, i will chek

[@garyhendrie4001]

I agree with most everything you say. Ive got both, though ive just bought phaseplant so still learning it. It is very intuitive, more so tham falcon. An easier to use interface and falcon would blow most every synth out of the water but it does take time and effort, the results can be incredible though.

[@shinyisshiny7780]

Falcon is such a pain to learn, but well worth it. once you learn it, the possiblities are ENDLESS. the multi granular engine is WILD. the stretch algorithms etc, just so good.

[@Alckemy]

I think the granular synth and physical modeling engine are the highlights of the synth for sure

[@Greenstorm33]

In addition to Falcon being a massive pain to use my take is that Falcon has more and more complex pieces but they fit together in less interesting ways. Phase Plant is all about cross modulating generators and modulators; Falcon is about creating a bunch of layers that don't really interact with each other. Both are fine approaches but when it comes down to it Phase Plant is just so much more fun to use both because it's easier to have happy accidents and because it's far faster to iterate on an idea.

[@Alckemy]

That’s the summary of the video pretty much lol

[@Swangorapofficial]

Sequencer and arpeggios should be next step for phaseplant for sure

[@Alckemy]

I’d personally like a granular engine but these would be nice too!

[@moontan91]

i'd recommend you try Stepic for arp/sequencer duties.

[@Swangorapofficial]

ill check it out. I just switched from Nerve to Geist so currently tinkering with that i have no idea what the best beat machine is but trying this one @@moontan91

[@futur_sunds]

I learned a lot about Falcon in the video. I don’t see it around much. Good info.

[@Alckemy]

Thanks for watching! This was definitely a rant

[@joechapman8208]

Totally agree. I don't get on well with the Kontakt style. It feels like, and is, a distinctly older generation. If Falcon and NI's lumpier instruments were being designed for the first time today, there's no way anybody would build them that way. Phase Plant can be daunting to new users too, but once they get it they're faster and faster. With Falcon, you can obviously improve your speed at least a bit with time but it's always going to be far slower than the speed of thought and it's always going to be frustrating. I love UVI single products but Falcon feels hostile to anything I want to do, even though I know the theoretical power is high.

[@Alckemy]

Phase plant to me was like an evolution of serum once you hover your mouse over a couple things. It intuitively guides your decisions and encourages that “just one more effect” mentality. Serum was definitely a stepping stone to where I am today but mseg aside I can’t see any reason to look back. It’s way slower to me and way more limited with fm/effects/modulators

[@joshuahu1721]

Great recommendation, after tried out, I found that the IRCAM sampler is a killer! And for daily workflow, it is definitely more intuitive than Kontakt, and keeps all sound design unit just in one plugin, in this way, you won't really worried about piles of Ableton/Bitwigs racks not being saved properly for later use.

[@Alckemy]

I’m glad you like it! I personally don’t have the patience for it but it will be worth it if you put the time in

[@joshuahu1721]

​@@Alckemy Yes, IRCAM sampler is especially good at bringing more texture and dramatic feelings for acoustic sounds, that's what I missed in most of samplers. I can live with it just for doing that one thing. Plus it has got many effects and sequencers for further tonal shaping. But the downside is really the modulation section, still not intuitive enough, especailly for someone who has get their hands on phaseplant.

[@No.0.o.0]

Fuck apples, oranges forever

[@5stepsmusic]

17:51 ik that I paid 350 for the kHs Ultimate Toolbox back when they still had their old pricing and that wasn't even the cheapest it got, on Black Friday it was like 300. So with the pricing changes that happened recently I think it's going to be easily cheaper than 350 on sale. And if we're talking about just Phase Plant on its own (so without the other hosts and premium snapins) that's 200 even without a sale (and with the current sale just 100). idk what price falcon would be on sale (and how frequently they put it on sale), but looking at the price for just the synth itself without sale, Phase Plant would be cheaper.

[@buckycore]

This is one of those times where I 1000% agree with some one while being on the other side of the fence with the alleged "argument" Phase Plant is a beast, and one of the most fun synths ever made. Its so easy to make amazing, beautiful, chaotic, insane patches. I can't sound design for shit on Pigments or other synths, but with Phase Plant I came up with dozens on my own, and even copied a few decently from Falcon when I thought I wasn't going to continue with my SonicPass. However, I had to switch temporarily to Falcon until I have the means to keep both subscriptions only because of shear magnitude of options with the Sound banks. Its terrifying. The work flow is totally like Kontakt, but with a way better interface an options that go above and beyond including with the instrument presets and such. Its a bit like Kontakt is a Solar system and Falcon is an entire galaxy . So, I don't really plan on making anything custom patches with Falcon so much, as just treat it like a band in the box scenario with all the drums and percussion and strange presets along side Zebra and Arturia things to balance out the sound. But believe me: I fucking love love love phase plant, and even with all these insane amount of presets in Falcon, there's nothing like the sounds found like the ones you can make in Phase Plant. But that's why we want to use both!

[@Alckemy]

If you get value out of the plug-in there’s no reason to not use it^^

[@buckycore]

@@Alckemy absolutely. But I love your insights and humorous, yet direct reviews. I remembered the one you did for Equator 2. Once I got more knowledgeable about sound design and work flows, I was like "Yeah, Alckemy nailed it"

[@TonyThomas10000]

You can take the sound libraries in Falcon and manipulate sounds to fit you needs once you understand a bit of what is going on "under the hood". Phase Plant is better and quicker for designing sounds from scratch, although Serum is my favorite for that kind of thing.

[@Alckemy]

manipulation of presets can be done in any synth though, no?

[@TonyThomas10000]

@@Alckemy Yeah, but the ones in the libraries are typically very complex. You can turn layers on and off...and change the sounds dramatically without a ton of effort.

[@Alckemy]

I’m not sure if you’ve been around my channel much but a large majority of my tutorials are dedicated to extremely complex sounds. That’s why I’m so disappointed in falcons workflow. You’re definitely right in being able to tweak presets but even still the layout and approach to routing are not friendly at all

[@TonyThomas10000]

@@Alckemy I think that is because Falcon is not just a synth--it is also a very powerful multi-sampler. It has a lot of functionality that is similar to Kontakt (including powerful scripting) and the somewhat convoluted workflow is also similar.

[@TonyThomas10000]

BTW, Falcon has an interesting history. The UVI Engine was used to build the precursor to Spectrasonics Omnisphere (called Atmosphere). It is also the basis of MOTU's Mach 5....and the GUI is pretty much the same. From the MOTU Mach 5 page: "MachFive 3 isn't about limitations. It's about limitless possibilities. That's why it places no restrictions on the number of creative elements you can work with. Are you inspired to build a sound with 14 oscillators? Go for it. Feeling compelled to build a monster multi-sample instrument with 120 sample layers? Gotcha covered. MachFive 3 has been engineered with a modular, extensible architecture designed to facilitate multi-faceted sound design with highly efficient CPU performance."

[@user.08994]

The best comparison I’ve seen so far is this: to keep it brief, Falcon's individual components are remarkable. The reverbs, filters, effects - everything feels truly premium. However, the sound design feels quite static because elements aren't designed to interact with each other. It follows a linear workflow, not a modular one, so forget about anything involving cross-modulation; even the effects section can't be controlled with an envelope. On the other end of the spectrum is Phase Plant, which is quite the opposite. Its oscillators, filters, and effects are somewhat average, nothing extraordinary compared to your stock plugins. But the true strength of Phase Plant lies in its modularity! From simple blocks, you can craft very complex and rich tones. If Falcon had the modularity and workflow of Phase Plant, it would be the undisputed best synth in the industry, period

[@Alckemy]

Is that your comparison? I agree with most of it but there’s more to it. A lot of falcons oscillators are pretty mid; the fm synth and additive leave a lot to be desired. It also can run scripts and has midi modulators where phase plant does not. Falcon has a few good effects but most of them don’t have an interface and are like, one knob.

[@user.08994]

​@@Alckemy Sonics are usually better, especially for the effects that are being sold separately + there's waaaay more to choose from, Oscillators and filters tend to sound very good too, like the pluck or additive for exemple, but are not quite as tweak-able as the others, accent is being put on the sound quality, not the implementation, if you were to design a very simple patch, it would sound better in falcon in most cases

[@user.08994]

the mere fact that Falcon offers oversampling up to 16x options shows how much they care about sound quality

[@frankwalders]

I more or less use Falcon just for the beautiful scripts, mostly with a pretty simple sound (one or two layers) combined with the awesome effects it's worth it, but yes I totally agree with you when you start modulating stuff it's just so incredibly hard to keep track of everything.

[@Alckemy]

It’s got some nice presets and to be honest scripting is not my strong suit. That being said if you like it and have use for it that’s what matters ^^

[@hip_hopwar8844]

phase plant👑

[@AndreasR86]

I see Falcon more as a device to build sample libraries and synths. You can and probably will spend a lot of time on making one patch, so you might as well go all out and make what is basically an entire vsti with lots of controls and macros and whatever on the main page so you you don't have to fiddle in its guts to change parameters. But for building a regular patch, almost anything is so much faster. Also regarding synthesis types, while Phase Plant has fewer dedicated oscillator types it can sort of fake a bunch of the things that Falcon offers like a faux granular patch with the sampler, additive approach by using the wavetable editor, the resonator adds an option for physical modeling esque sounds. But I would love for PP to add at least a dedicated granular which I thought they were working on. I can only dream about them adding the sequencing options of Falcon though. Or maybe Falcon needs to just start sending midi

[@Alckemy]

Yeah, that basically summarizes the video:)

[@AndreasR86]

@@Alckemy that's what I get for commenting before finishing, though I did add more just now

[@Swangorapofficial]

Be curious to see a comparison with M sound factory also

[@Alckemy]

It’s too expensive to even fathom lol

[@moontan91]

Falcon: too hard to use. PP: presets are underwhelming, it's CPU intensive Pigments: just perfect for me

[@Alckemy]

Hey watch it bud, some of those presets are mine! ⚖️

[@dizzlermusic]

I bought Falcon like 3 years ago and havent used it ever since the first month after purchase. And the reason is just the same you described, the workflow is TERRIBLE. Modulating stuff in particular, which is so essential for todays sound designers and producers, thats why Serum became so popular, because its just so fast to add modulations and other stuff. But in Falcon everything is nested in itself and a big mess and nobody wants to spend time in it who just wants to have some fun with creating sounds. I WISH they would just release an Update ONLY for Workflow and UI improvements, but they for sure wont. I still feel bad that i spent 350 euros for it ...

[@Alckemy]

It’s unfortunate how much of a pain the ui is because there really is a lot to love inside, hope they streamline things in the future though

[@Milan____]

Thanks! You just saved me 244 EUR. Which I'll be spending on VSL Synchron World Winds instead of Falcon. Oops! That said, in between Reason, Pigments, MSoundFactory and Phase Plant I already have way more than I can meaningfully use. Sure, Falcon scripting can potentially be mega-powerful, but realistically, I can get faster results for pretty much everything with automation, routing, tools like PSQ-1684, various Reason players, Scaler and RapidComposer. Falcon fans seem to believe that it's very powerful if you spend a few months/years learning it --- and I'm sure it's true! - but it's not like I'm spending that time NOT learning other powerful tools.

[@Alckemy]

Thanks for watching! I’m glad you were able to make an informed decision

[@stephenroldan5107]

I have both.. Falcon!!!!!!!

[@No.0.o.0]

I’ve never used a falcon preset, it’s annoying but i love it, granular alone it’s worth it. Until kilo gets granular….always going to be using both

[@Alckemy]

I think it's important to say that most daws don't have a granular engine, even Ableton's has to be downloaded. However I think Bitwig's granular sampler filled that gap for me as it has a multi engine that's nuts and more integrated with the daw

[@Barnet310]

Bought falcon Used it for a week Took too long to do anything in it Never used it again *Regret*

[@dizzlermusic]

hahahaha thats actually me. Bought it like 3 years ago because it was looking too damn good and there was no demo for it (i now know why they dont have a demo), and now i havent even installed it and havent used it for 2 years 11 month. Worst plugin decision i ever made, and i still regret it till this day !

[@Alckemy]

Sorry to hear, it was good when I didn’t have the other tools that replaced it but for my needs it doesn’t suit me anymore

[@DimensionFlux]

That person that previously said falcon was better probably didn’t nearly go into the level of sound design you do, I’ve been designing complex basses for over a decade and falcons interface looks too much time for too little result.

[@Alckemy]

I'm not out to rob opinions, just giving my own. and I agree with you lol. but, that is one kind of sound so you have to find your needs. not every sound has to max out your cpu I guess... though they are the funnest to design

[@rikkshow]

Falcon, tried it, to adjust the reverb I had to scroll sideways back and forth multiple times. Crazy poor UI design. And you can still adjust stuff in the Workstation. So, did not buy it. Anyhoo, Halion 7 may be out in a couple of weeks, and it comes with a lot of Yamaha's library.

[@Alckemy]

I haven’t tried halion but I’ve heard good things about it

[@traveler263]

17:54 the monthly subscription for phaseplant is much cheaper tho

[@BenedictRoffMarsh]

I wish there were a way to Demo/Trial Falcon as it could be Best Synth Eva! or just a PITA and therefore a waste of coin. (and no I am not subscribing to try) Phase Plant is pretty cool but it has some hard limits past the usual suspects. V2 has really opened the modulation doors a lot which makes it it far better, but still it is (compared to Reason Rack) fairly same-same. Then again I don't Serum, Vital etc. :-)

[@Alckemy]

It is missing some types of engines but as far as an effect processor I really can’t think of a better one, especially when you consider snapheap and multi pass

[@hip_hopwar8844]

falcon slowwwwwww👎