Seeking soft synth recommendations

Garry Sharp

Garry Sharp

Lost Cause
I did search, but couldn't find. Can you help with comments on soft synths?

I'm really looking for nice, pure piano and orchestral sounds, for example the East West collection which I think comes bundled with Kontact at £200 or so for the entry level version. I'm happy running with VSTi's in Cubase, but after my recent head bashing experience with DFH Superior I'd rather have something with a nice user interface; in other words if 10% better sound quality equals 100% extra configuration hell I'd rather go for the user friendly choice. Call me a wimp :) (I'm a songwriter, no pretences to be a professional producer.)

Basically I'm hoping for something that I can select an instrument and play off my mid keyboard. My PC spec is AMD XP2800, 1GB of RAM, 120G and 80G drives.

Budget is about £200, which with today's pricing is about the same as US$200.

Thanks in advance for any guidance.

Garry
 
check out the edirol website. i have edirol orchester and edirol super quartet and they are pretty cool VSTi's (they also come as DXi's). If you want to bump up the quality of the orchestra, check out garritan strings. it is a very cool and awsome sounding app but way to much overkill for me. another cool softsynth is absynth, not really the type of synt you were looking for but myabe check it out anyways.
 
I gotta disagree on edirol. It's all right, but after Quantum Leap Silver and Garritan Personal Orchestra came out, nothing competes on the low-end of the orchestral spectrum.

Kontakt and Kompakt are slightly different tools. I believe Quantum Leap SO Silver comes with Kompakt and is, IMO extremely easy to use. Personal Orchestra uses Kontakt, which is also what a lot of the the Prosamples Platinum series use, and I personally have 0 problem with that.

The Edirol just doesn't come CLOSE to the sound quality provided by these two. Granted it's a lot easier to use...but that's because it doesn't provide you with the features and soundset of the other two.

Also, the other two are very VERY memory heavy. GPO actually recommends a minimum of a gig...

If you really need just ease of use, Edirol is fine...but if you can, go for the other two. The sound quality is that much better...
 
yup very true sklathill
personally, i don't think anything sound better than garritan strings as far as orchestra samples go. I have checked out the competators and i like the garritan the best. totally opinion though. As far as Edirol goes though, i have used the strings to beef up a few of my poppy/ballady songs. I woudn't use them as a front line instrument (as in i woudn't write a classical piece with them featured) but they do ok for adding that nice presence to a song. Like that new Seether song with Amy Lee (broken), there is a bit of orchestra work in there. or another example is Goo goo dolls (iris). you could probably get away with using edirol on stuff like that (but not on a professional level).
 
Mountain - just missed your post. I spent most of the day looking and settled for the Garritan, bought it this evening. Looks and feels like a labour of love by Mr G, haven't had time for more than a quick play, but first impressions are very good. The Steinway is impressive! The Eastwest Silver was a contender, but it came with a fixed reverb and is very "Hollywood".

So, with live vocals, guitar and bass, the authentic Garritan and the very authentic DFH Superior, I might produce rubbish but at least it will be authentic sounding rubbish.

Thanks again for your help, and for turning me on to Garritan.

Garry
 
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