ANSWERS REVEALED - Identify the Synths Challenge!

[NekujaK]

[Catblack]

Amazing, thank you. I wouldn't have guessed any of them correctly.

[FLVZ]

Pretty impressed with myself for guessing Mono/Poly & Vk2 correctly. But I've been playing exclusively with these 2 for about a month now. Mono/Poly has that strings-ey sound to it and is widened & fattened up by the unison architecture, VK2 just has the premium analog sound but also you can hear the behaviour of the oscillators in the sound (atleast i think its the oscillators delivering that thick sexy instability). All the others I literally was in the dark 6 of these i've never used ever!

[WongoTheSane]

I would never had guessed correctly either. But while listening to them all, it's clear that some sounds I like better than others. So I thought, hey, why don't we ask NekujaK to do the same for every conceivable type of sound? Like, 12 pianos in a blind test, then 12 pads, then 12 plucks, so we can pick and choose by ear? And then I thought, hey, why put that burden on NekujaK when tags would solve that problem in Reason itself, in real time, and for every aspect of the sounds? That would be real nice and this video makes it all the more apparent...

[EdGrip]

A supersaw-off without Megasaur!? For shame!

Thanks for making this!
It definitely strikes me that this is as much a comparison of patches as it is a comparison of synths. Especially the Antidote patch!

[Loque]

I am again quite surprised, how good Thor is sounding - it was one of my favorite sounding synths right from the start. Also i am surprised how clean VK sounds and i like the low end dirtyness of Antidote.

Very interesting comparison. But i think we all know, that it does not show with what kind of sound a synth can finally come up with after some tweaking. Very nice, very interesting stuff.

[jlgrimes]

I am again quite surprised, how good Thor is sounding - it was one of my favorite sounding synths right from the start. Also i am surprised how clean VK sounds and i like the low end dirtyness of Antidote.

Very interesting comparison. But i think we all know, that it does not show with what kind of sound a synth can finally come up with after some tweaking. Very nice, very interesting stuff.

Thor is a pretty good sounding synth to me even though its mono.

[jayhosking]

Thor is a pretty good sounding synth to me even though its mono.

They're all mono to start, unless you're using a stereo sample as your starting point, aren't they? And it's dead simple within Reason to build unison/stereo sounds within Reason (e.g. with a combinator). I'm surprised at how much I'm still leaning on (and learning from) Thor. I find myself feeling limited by the GUI and modulation options of Thor, not the sound. It's still a beautiful synth.

[NekujaK]

A supersaw-off without Megasaur!? For shame!

D'oh! Yeah, Megasaur definitely belongs in this group!

It definitely strikes me that this is as much a comparison of patches as it is a comparison of synths. Especially the Antidote patch!

Absolutely agree, hence the "non-scientific" disclaimer No attempt was made to establish true parity between the synths beyond grabbing similarly styled factory patches. In some cases the patches didn't really showcase the synths at their best. For example, I've heard Synth1 and Carbon Electra sound much better, but those particular patches got severely crippled with the on-board effects bypassed. And with Antidote, I probably should've transposed the MIDI (or the patch) up an octave. But then again, this wasn't an exercise to find the best-sounding synth, but merely to explore each synth's unique sound characteristics. Or in some cases (Hybrid 3 and Mono/Poly) how similar they sound.

It was a fun little project. I may do some more as I have time.

[DonnieAlan]

The only ones I would have recognized were Thor, Hybrid 3 and Synth1. I've used all those very sounds in some projects. The rest I'm not all that familiar with. Funny how a similar wave form can sound so different in these different VIs!