What is the best free wavetable vst synth in 2021? (Vital, Odin, Graphite, Surge)

[@johanrobson4593]

Yes, please do more on Surge! Some guidance through the 'nightmare' would be very much appreciated.

[@platipo]

Did one :) will make more in time

[@davidpetersonharvey]

Hey, what's helping me is taking one section at a time and playing with it and breaking it i also watched a two hour video Surge-XT The Movie. Search for it.

[@JasonPriebe]

We are so lucky to have all these free options in such a short period of time. I would watch Surge videos, but I would need you to start at the beginning. I can barely modify existing Surge presets, let alone program my own from scratch. It's intimidating.

[@platipo]

Will do :)

[@southhour5241]

Watch surge the movie!

[@sawtooth808]

@@southhour5241 I know, The Surge XT vst is an insanely powerful synth that is free (I will pick it over Pigments) and if you have VCV rack or Cardinal, you can get Surge XT as modules for the modular systems

[@oyajiru]

Clicked to learn which one was the best, stayed for the insightful and thoughtful review. They all have their strengths, I love using Surge and Vital myself.

[@platipo]

Me too, they're very different and quite complementary, but both insanely deep and powerful. I'm quite amazed by Odin2 audio rate modulation possibilities, even though I kinda struggle to get something significantly better than a fart out of those :D

[@leinexkeith291]

23:51 do you have sound design from scratch videos of awesome sounds like these via Surge XT?

[@platipo]

Thank you for the comment and the appreciation :) To be honest I don't, but I could and should make some, I have some videos on Surge, but less than I could. However you can download those exact sounds for free from my gumroad, there is a "demo video" in a more recent item on this channel. it's not a tutorial but it's something already :)

[@AlbertoZ70]

Love the cat in the background :-) :-) :-) he seems to appreciate your performance

[@platipo]

Unfortunately in this case, she couldn't hear it as I was in my headphones, yet, she often does come and sit in front of one of my monitors. And anytime I'm humming or whistling she comes very quickly; she is a music loving cat

[@studio_musique_audionomie]

Thanks you ! Very interessting vidéos

[@SidJ8300]

Odin is good, indeed, but I feel the sounds off it are rather thin as compared to the ones from Surge or Vital.

[@aspirativemusicproduction2135]

I'll mention few free synths that may not be too diverse but are good sounding and definitely worth checking out. GR 8-it souds amazing even before you put filters and effects. One trick pony but a good one. One by Kilohearts- it looks simple but it sounds very organic and it's very straight forward. It has a litle bit of FM, morphing between some basic wave shapes and a voice filter which adds some intrest to the sound. Apricot-cheesy sounding and basic but perfect for trance plucks and some trance leads. There is more, but for someone like me who doesn't want to get bogged into deep sond design and still want good sounds these are good synths. If you dig enough in the depths of interwebs there is more obscure synths that got forgotten that sound amazing but I will stop here. Of the shown in the video Odin is for me. I can easily open one generator and make some basic wave with unison, open second one and make another wave. Blend them together and put a litle bit of LFO and bam-new sound.

[@platipo]

This video was focused on wavetable synths, not free synths in general, at the time I made this, the ones I mentioned were the only ones I could find which were reasonably recent and feature rich in my view. Yes, Odin is a nice little thing, it does have a few unique quirks, and it is incredibly light on the CPU for how nice it sounds, but honestly, I don't find myself reaching for that nearly as often as I do reach for Vital or SurgeXT.

[@im2cxe4u]

Surge video would be cool.

[@platipo]

did one :)

[@studio_musique_audionomie]

Hello ! Besides more effects and physically modeling strings, is there really anything else Surge does that Vital can't? Also have you noticed a lower CPU consumption on the last version of Vital compared to that dating from your video? Thanks !

[@platipo]

Yes, Vital seems to have grown since I made the comparison video :) it seems many things have been cleaned up and optimized About the surge/vital thing... kinda yes, you can have 2 parts, more sources, and overall the routing can be set in many ways not feasible in Vital. On the other hand,physical modeling can be done in vital with its comb filters, and it can do a lot of things surge can't do, and is definitely more immediate to program... it is imho more about getting the right tool for the specific job at hand than about picking a favourite :)

[@studio_musique_audionomie]

@@platipo Thanks you !

[@dudearlo]

Is there any way to adjust the window size of wave tables in surge, like in vital? Ive got an ass of wave tables id love to try to process in surgeXT. Also, check out wave-edit and the wavetable library if you havent seen it yet. It has alot 😊

[@platipo]

Not that I know of honestly, even though there's actually 2 wt modes, and they work slightly differently Yes, I've seen those, but in all honesty, I'm kind of ok with the wt editors I have.

[@davidpetersonharvey]

I knew you were going to wimp out on "which is best" the answer. Everyone does. ;-) People would love you doing Surge-XT videos. Also, the forerunner to Vital is Helm by Matt Tytel and its very useful as well.

[@platipo]

Well... how could you not? :P On the other hand well... I didn't entirely, I surely kinda said the best two are Surge and Vital, at least in this selection, for a quite wide number of reasons. I did do a few SurgeXT videos in the meantime, I hope they were to your liking :)

[@im2cxe4u]

OT: Most people couldn't pull of that stache without a beard but somehow that glorious chin make it work.

[@platipo]

Yes please feed my vanity :D Btw, I'm a great fan of Moroder, Zawinul, and even though he isn't a keyboard player, couldn't but be impressed by Tony Levin's mustache and get inspired.

[@turbosinnermusic]

For me it's Whispair. I have a 2010 PC so it's easy on my CPU. Pretty old school similar to PPG Wave. It's just missing a distortion and 3D wave visualization in my list. If you're okay with that, you should check it out 💓

[@platipo]

First time I hear of that one, will definitely check it out :)

[@turbosinnermusic]

@@platipo It's a 2 osc wavetable, not that complex, but does the basic stuff well enough. You can add your own waves as well

[@Santi-pm9hq]

Can you talk about ZynaddSubfx? Is not wavetable but a great synth.

[@platipo]

I'm afraid I can't. Or well... i could, if I had the time to get it, understand it and have something meaningful to say about it. Not making any promises, but I'm going to think about it :)

[@diegovideco]

Wow, that FM+Karplus piano at 23:55 is absolutely wonderful, could you please make a tutorial with something alike?

[@platipo]

I have... Or well, sort of, I made a tutorial about FM in surge and I covered most of that idea, I could do something similar more in detail, let me know if the FM video is clear enough

[@diegovideco]

@@platipo Yes, the FM video is very clear, and thanks to that I've now got a great EP patch (I like it more than any other EP in the presets), it's very expressive. I was curious about the Karplus part, as I've heard about that technique, but don't understand it, and also because this one you showed is even better than the one on the tutorial. If you ever put it on gumroad, I'll definitely buy it; and if you'd like to share more of the principles of synthesizing keys and doing the Karplus thing, that would be absolutely awesome.

[@platipo]

You know what? I'll do both things :) I was just looking for something to talk about, and my channel needs content; thank you for the suggestion.

[@diegovideco]

@@platipo That's great news, thanks a lot!