Finding the Rhythm

I spend most of my blogging time talking about dance music while wearing my DJ/PD hat. But today I’ll wear my producer hat, since I’m pretty stoked about a particular new purchase.

I’ve known for months that I’ve needed and wanted a new software synthesizer (softsynth) that does really good analog modeling. As the proud owner of two of Cakewalk‘s flagship synth products—Rapture and Dimension—it seemed logical to consider z3ta+ (“Zeta”), the third rung on the Cakewalk synth stool. I’ve been playing with z3ta+ for awhile now, but have been pretty unimpressed with the quality of the factory sounds, and found it difficult to work with to create my own sounds. The factory sound banks are poorly organized, and not sorted, grouped or even named in many cases to know whether a particular sound is a bass or a lead or an effect. And just touring the factory patches left me with the feeling that I could actually use (or use as a basis for customization) about 10% of the sounds. Maybe fewer. So while it was only $99, I didn’t find it worth even that.

For the record, Cakewalk’s Rapture is an absolutely incredible wavetable synth, with an amazing array of sounds that meet a pretty wide range of needs. Dimension is equally good, excelling at reproducing real instruments; its pianos are probably the best, most realistic piano reproductions available in a softsynth, and I can spend hours playing some stunning grand pianos that are so real I swear I can see them in front of me.

Anyway, my aim initially was to look at softsynths that modeled specific vintage analog hardware synths, primarily, the Sequential Circuits Prophet 5. Back in the day, I wanted a Prophet 5 so badly I could taste it, but I was just a punk kid at the time, so there was no affording that. I’ve toyed with buying a Prophet ’08 hardware synth, and I still aspire to do so in the future, if for no other reason than to say “thank you” to the legendary Dave Smith for resurrecting it.

So the Prophet 5 emulation approach had me looking at Native Instruments‘ Pro-53, and Arturia‘s Prophet V, which attempt to replicate the nuances of the Prophet 5 in the softsynth realm.

As an aside, I even briefly considered Native Instruments’ synth bundle, but $1,200 or so was out of the question, and besides, I have found their Service Center software activation to be a pain on occasion. Like when their free Kore Player synth just magically forgot it was activated, and its included content just vanished. (And no, I didn’t touch a damned thing; it was working one night, and was completely broken the following night.) After hearing a similar story from someone who owns the bundle, I decided I didn’t want to buy a $1,000+ thorn in my side.

Arturia has a bundle as well, the V-Collection, which includes not only their acclaimed Prophet V, but their very widely respected Minimoog V, a nice Jupiter emulation, and a few others. For around $600, I could probably justify the cost. However, Arturia use a Syncrosoft USB dongle approach to copy protection. I’m not terribly bothered by that in and of itself, but amazingly, Arturia require that you already have a Syncrosoft USB dongle—just to run the downloadable demo! It’s absolutely insane, and absolutely arrogant to assume that all of your customers use Cubase as their DAW (which also uses the Syncrosoft dongle). Besides… Dongles? Please. This isn’t 1986, and this isn’t a copy of WordPerfect 4.1 for MS-DOS for chrissakes…

As an aside, I recognize that there’s a real problem with piracy of music software. (OK, all software.) But making potential customers jump through hoops just to try the demo is penalizing legitimate customers to thwart those who aren’t. They do allow you to buy a Syncrosoft key to try their demos, and return it for a refund; gee, thanks… Nothing like waiting a week or two just to try and demo, and even longer if you decide you want to buy it.

Besides, judging from the fact that Google search for Arturia has tons of results for downloading cracked copies of their synths, it seems that the Syncrosoft dongle system is hardly bulletproof. As I said, let’s penalize and make it as inconvenient as possible for customers and potential customers, while doing absolutely nothing to prevent people from pirating your software. Stupid. Just… Stupid. I’m not spending $250 for one synth, or $600 for the bundle, without knowing that it’s what I want and need.

So, Native Instruments and Arturia were both off my list for different but similar reasons, so the search continued. Two different artist friends of mine had mentioned a synth called Sylenth1, sold by a one-man company, LennarDigital, and representing (from what I understand) about two years of the life of its owner, Lennard Addink.

Sylenth1 appealed to me for a lot of reasons, and I’d like to spell them all out here.

• Sylenth1 uses a simple license file. No activation, no stupid dongle. It’s an old school approach that recognizes that every copy protection scheme… Every single one… Will be broken by someone, at some point, given enough time and motivation to do it.Unfortunately, Sylenth1 is widely pirated, as it too has been cracked. But I pay for the software I use. Period.
• The fact that LennarDigital is a one-man shop, and the fact it’s widely pirated, gave me extra motivation to buy the software. Lennard spent a huge chunk of his life making this software, and I rather like the fact that I can reward that. I want people to respect and support (and buy) my work; how can I have that expectation if I don’t treat the work of others with similar respect?  I can’t, and therefore, I won’t.
• Of course, I wouldn’t have bought Sylenth1 had it not sounded f*cking amazing! It’s easy to listen to demo songs and what-not and be bowled-over by how good they sound. But let’s face it… Shitty tools in the hands of a skilled craftsman can still produce pretty amazing work. The difference was playing with Sylenth1′s patches as provided with the downloadable demo. Which brings me to the next point.
• The factory sounds, even the limited number included with the demo, were absolutely stunning. Stunning! I was having eargasms left and right. There wasn’t one single patch that I couldn’t envision using in a composition at some point. Not one. The beautifully rich sounds just rocked, and in many cases, all I did was change the program, press a note on my keyboard, and I was transported emotionally to a different place. Playing a few notes, and I started to hear new compositions. That’s the sort of creative tool I wanted. One that inspires me, one that invokes emotion. And one that just plain sounds incredible. Sylenth1 does that.
• The user interface of Sylenth1, which I have heard maligned in forums, seemed perfect to me. In fact, unlike z3ta+, I found it to be completely intuitive. Starting with factory sounds, I tweaked and tinkered and it felt like I’d been using Sylenth1 for months, not just a half an hour. With the huge array of factory sounds, and the intuitive interface for tweaking them and building new ones, I suspect Sylenth1 is going to keep me occupied for a long time to come.

So it was a no-brainer last night before bed to pull out a credit card and buy a copy, and this morning, the license key and registered version download directions were waiting for me in my e-mail in-box. I can hardly wait to start tinkering with the full version and exploring its potential… And the timing is perfect, because I just started a new production project that will really benefit from this killer softsynth.

Stay tuned; I’m sure I’ll have more to say about Sylenth1 in the months ahead. In the meantime, my personal thanks to Lennard for creating such an awesome synth, and for not making me jump through hoops and promise my first born children just to try it, buy it, or use it.