Soft Synth bare bones setup

R

raab

New member
I've never used soft synths, so I've never scoped a set up on somebody's system yet. Here's what I wanna do:

Put a good soft synth of my computer, get a soundcard. Then midi up a synth cotroller to the computer to run the soft synth, with the sound going out from the computer into an adat. I'm not looking to sequence on the computer. Just turn my computer into a synth and record to an external source.

Can I just throw the soft synth on there and it will run by itself, or do I need software in addition to the soft synth to get things to work like I'm describing???
 
raab,

There's two kind of soft synth. Plugin and stand alone. Plugin means you need host application to run the synth (eg. DXi in Cakewalk, VSTi in Cubase, etc). While stand alone is... well, like you said " will run by itself" without needing any host application (eg. Giga Studio, NI-Pro53, VSampler 3, etc).

What sound / music do you intend to make / play the most?

;)
Jaymz
 
If you just want to hear or program the softsynth standalone mode will work. If you want to record what you play you need a sequencer. I use Tracktion, and you can get it for free here until the end of the year.

Then go here and scoop up some free soft synths. I recommend Triangle II, Synth One and Superwave8.
 
I play alot of funk, and old school fusion. I'm looking for something with good vintage analog Bernie Worrell P-Funk and Zappa (George Duke) tones ala Junos, MiniMoogs, and ARPS.

I'm definately looking for a stand alone synth. I'm trying to keep the number of softwarre programs running as few as possible.
 
Not so fast there... ;)

There are small programs that can host VST/DX effects and VSTi/DXi's like THIS ONE

They're cheap, simple to setup and work just fine. This means that you could use most any softsynth not just those available in a stand-alone version.

Ted
 
jeskola Buzz is another free host for VSTi, DXi, and it's own native soft synths. Very low overhead, I can run more stuff at a much lower latency on Buzz than I can in Sonar.

It's a little old and the interface takes some getting used to, but it's quite powerful nontheless.

www.buzzmachines.com
 
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