Macs may be the de facto platform for music – but Windows users still get most of the freebies.
Case in point: Kriminal has released Oktagon, a free soft synth for Windows.
Features:
- 8 VCO’s, each with independant control over tune/pan/gain.
- Saw/Ramp/Tri/Pulse Waveforms (Global).
- PWM – LFO/Manual.
- Filter Freq LFO.
- Pitch/Amp LFO.
- LP12/LP24/HP/BP/BR Filter.
- Seperate ADSR for AMP and ENV.
- Poly/Mono (with Portamento).
If you give Oktagon a try, leave a comment and let us know what you think of it!
Meanwhile, Mac users are going to be waiting for the AU version to come out….for a long time.
In consolation, much of the free VSTis on Windows are uncomplicated (yet CPU hogging) and same-sounding SynthEdit patches. Oktagon unfortunately does not deviate from that generalisation.
I'm a Mac user and I never eat my heart out: I'm using Logic 8, which is bursting with STABLE synthly goodness. I'm not immune to the charms of a few other instruments, but the growing number of EXS24 formatted goods and the blizzard of WAVs are making them increasingly unnecessary duplications. Between my few hardware devices and Logic, I'm satisfied and 3/4. Don't waste time dissing a platform; instead, sculpt your own rig until you can put a speaker in the window, hit a high E and make that yapping crap-machine Fluffy next door explode into a shower of fur. Fluffy must die by ultra-violence.
Fungo – I want links to audio demos of these sounds of Fluffy humiliation.
There is usually a high "get what you pay for" factor in these free VSTs. Meh.
No suffering going on here. MPS is right. You get what you pay for.
Still, when I see all these Windows soft synths that are free, I'm curious whether they're any good or not.
I own and work on both Mac and PC, for both music and graphics. My analogy runs like this; Mac; Nice, stable, expensive synth. PC; Cranky, dirty, cheap modular. Take your pick, but for me, the PC has it.
That's perfectly cool. We are each drawn to slightly different things and those are the ones that give us the right voice for US. I'd never own a modular, as I am not an oscillator-head, but a Buchla is the ideal tool for some. It just depends on the way you see the line from what's in your head to shareable audio. I don't crack or use freeware because its worth the $ to get a (hopefully) refined, stable instrument. One man's spaghetti-like cord-knotting nightmare is another's Xanadu, complete with magic vibrating fingers. If a PC makes your work turn into play, that's all that matters. That's what synths are ABOUT.
I suppose also running a PC is a bit like driving a Ferrari on the motorway… fast and with this great, powerful image, overtaking everyone in sight.
By comparison, the Mac is more like sitting in … your own private jet. ;p
I suppose also running a PC is a bit like driving a Ferrari on the motorway… fast and with this great, powerful image, overtaking everyone in sight.
By comparison, the Mac is more like sitting in … your own private jet. ;p
Anyway, I apologise for fuelling a stoopid Mac/PC divide. Just joking, honest.
What I really want to see is the furry animal / UHF interaction. Preferably in neighbouring apartments in a skyscraper. Nice twist on the 'moggy places monosynth in outer space'.
places = plays
you bunch of pricks, ie.
i'm a mac user with ripoff 8 full of synthly goodness-what the fuck does that mean?
synthly goodness for fux sake!!??
money dont equal talent, knobhead.
just a bunch of nevergonnabe wannabe's
i bet your 5'6", tubby, balding with a moustache
fuck you
lotsa love,
ViperRadio
xxx
Hi, Anal Lock!
What does complication have to do with fuck all?
Tough shit if you were stupid enough to buy some expensive gear and software and then found you cut yourself off from access to the wealth of software floating about for free.
Couldnt have happened to a bigger sack of talentless shite. Ha-fucking-ha!!
Have you tried marbles as an alternative outlet for your talent?
Enrico del Fuego
You're quite the charmer… I think I'm falling for you. 😉
But to answer your question, by uncomplicated I mean to suggest you're not going to see anything on the scale of say, Absynth, for free. And that despite the simplicity of many SynthEdit-derived plugins, they are disproportionately CPU taxing. The SynthEdit engine itself causes a bit of overhead.
cheers.
Dudes still jealous that he can't get Garageband on the PC.
OSX 10.6 will run Windows by partitioning HD……..No?
Can a PC support OSX ?
Firstly, allow me to apologise for the ferocity of my response last night. (I had a bit of a head on, I'm afraid, and the 'I'm a Mac-user' standpoint-more so of another correspondant rather than you-brought the red mist down!).
secondly, thankyou for your polite and rational, (under the circumstances), response.
To be honest, I was being deliberately belligerent to test Mac users out generally. It does piss me off that lines are drawn between apple users and pc users. After all, we are all seeking the same results, and therefore should be 'brothers in arms', not sworn enemies.
I appreciate even a fool like me can create vst/vsti's with this software-it doesn't take that much knowledge-but the more reputable synth-edit developers, I believe, still code with C++ or assembler or whatever, and use synth-edit to create the UI and automation links, etc., and do their best to optimise their coding to minimise cpu overheads. (This would be less of an issue, I believe, without Microsoft, and their obsession with repackaging and reselling their software continually with more and more resource-hungry interfaces).
I understand there is a lot of shallow crap out there, (you dont need to be a rocket scientist to weed it out, and reject it as such), but there is also a wealth of excellent software out there too, admittedly not on the scale of Absynth, but I still believe in the old adage 'Small is Beautiful'; I dont want to spend 3 months fiddling about with a complex piece of software before i can use it-I want to make noise NOW!! (I could be dead tomorrow…!).
Lastly, without the pc and free software, (and overheads!), would there be any Mac-users? Would Absynth actually exist? Would we be discussing this now?…..
Probably not.
I certainly wouldn't have got into digital audio if I had to pay out the horrendous costs for the software to get started.
Be honest, unless you are professionally trained to start, you must have started out with a pc, (or even earlier machines such as Atari), and some free software?
Anyway, I shall leave you in peace now.
Once again, my apologies.
Viper Radio
Ps. There is a piece of software called jvstwrapper, which will allow you to use a plugin across all platforms due to the portability of Java, if any of you Mac users want to get a taste for free stuff. that too is Open Source and free!! Check it out….
No worries about the outburst, I'm sure we've all been there.
I can't say whether the advent of the PC lead to the eventual development of Absynth and whatnot but you do correctly assume I got started on PC with free software, I only switched to Mac a few years ago.
cheers.
absolutly, via Hackintosh
Im not decideded on what to consider as my hair loss does not seem to halt and everyone thinks it will start to increase, is it really possible to stop it?
Thanks for sharing more info!