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Trying to decide between Uvi Falcon 2 or MSoundFactory as my next synth platform.

José Herring

José Herring

Lost in Cyberspace
I like them both but to be honest I have so many synth and synth platforms that I'm only willing to learn one this year. Plus with HOOE and expanding my OT sample plus two new computers. This year is going to be expensive. Not to mention money allowing I'd like to finally get some Spitfire stuff either BBCSO or SSO.

But..... I really like UVI Falcon 2 and MSoundFactory. Both have very capable samplers. Melda's stuff is always more complicated and at 3 in the morning, I'm not looking forward to trying to remember what sub, sub,sub menu I need to access to route my modulators. But, I so love MpowerSynth and MSoundfactory has Mpowersynth osc plus everything else in that synth and way way more.

On the other hand UVI Falcon 2 is truly a musical instrument. Rob of this forum has it and he's secretly one of my favorites on the forum. So that's a big plus.

A few questions. I honestly think that UVI Falcon 2 has a bigger user base. Also, I think there will be more 3rd party support for sample libraries. But, will the sample format take off for UVI? I know that they have their own libraries, ect... Also, given the fact that fewer people know about MSoundFactory will this effect their library support. Will Melda start getting into more instruments like their piano or are they going to stick to mostly vst effects?

I think that now UVI has more to offer sound library wise, but should I be concerned about that? Melda Mpowersynth is sonically one of the best synths out there but admittedly that's all they've done instrument wise before MsoundFactory so there library and sound support is minimal so I'll need to be programming myself. Which takes time.

Tough call.
Click to read more...
 
I can't help you with the choice sadly, but I was wondering what other synths you have that you like.

I do own the Falcon 2 and I love it. You got me looking at the Melda stuff which looks like a designer's paradise. What got me initially interested in the Falcon was the sort of sharpness to it. I've seen people call it clinical in sound. When someone says clinical it seems a little negative but I get the comparison. It is sharper and cleaner than most synths which by nature soften everything which I don't like. I didn't get to hear too much with the sounds on the Melda stuff but it does seem to have some of what attracted me to the Falcon 2 in terms of sound.

Falcon does have it's own preset packs, but I have to admit I'm disapponted with 3rd party support for it. I think I've only ever seen one thing that was independent of UVI and it sounded bad so I didn't buy it. The UVI preset packs are pretty good for the most part. Some are for music genres I'm not interested in. I hope that changes and there is more 3rd party stuff, but everyone just makes Omnisphere packs. Omnisphere sort of has a lock on that market because of the base. I think there is an unmet demand for it with the Falcon though. One can hope.

You got me thinking about the Melda synths and they are going on my want list. I should probably just buy omnisphere next, but after that there are like 10 synths I'd like to get, but at best I might buy one or two over the next couple years so I know how hard the choice is.
 
When evaluating third party support, keep in mind that Falcon is a sampler/sample library player as well as a synth. There are a lot more third party sample libraries in UVI format than there are Falcon preset packs. I don't know anything about Melda's instruments and can't make that comparison.
 
rrichard63 said:
When evaluating third party support, keep in mind that Falcon is a sampler/sample library player as well as a synth. There are a lot more third party sample libraries in UVI format than there are Falcon preset packs. I don't know anything about Melda's instruments and can't make that comparison.
Click to expand...
Is there? I haven't see too much stuff out there in UVI format but I guess I wasn't looking for it. Stuff that I guess would work in the UVI workstation, will open up in Falcon and you can use Falcon on it, I usually don't do that because Falcon takes up more resources, but you can manipulate it with Falcon if that's something you want to do which is quite nice. I have Meteor for example, but Meteor has most of what I'd ever want to do with it built in, still it's like adding a bunch of Falcon presets on top of what you already have which is nice.
 
Macrawn said:
Is there? I haven't see too much stuff out there in UVI format but I guess I wasn't looking for it.
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Acousticsamples, VI Labs, Virharmonic and PSound have libraries in UVI Workstation + Falcon format. So does Gospel Musicians although their products have more recently been released in Kontakt and/or a proprietary format. I suspect there are other developers that I'm not familiar with. It's nothing remotely like the Kontakt ecosystem, but it is more than just UVI's own libraries.
Macrawn said:
Stuff that I guess would work in the UVI workstation, will open up in Falcon and you can use Falcon on it, I usually don't do that because Falcon takes up more resources, but you can manipulate it with Falcon if that's something you want to do which is quite nice. ...
Click to expand...
Yes, exactly.
 
rrichard63 said:
Acousticsamples, VI Labs, Virharmonic and PSound have libraries in UVI Workstation + Falcon format. So does Gospel Musicians although their products have more recently been released in Kontakt and/or a proprietary format. I suspect there are other developers that I'm not familiar with. It's nothing remotely like the Kontakt ecosystem, but it is more than just UVI's own libraries.

Yes, exactly.
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Cool, but none of those companies had anything I'd be interested in. I'd say my disappointement with 3rd party support is pretty much the same, and that the only thing of interest I've seen are directly designed Falcon presets, of which only UVI seems to do, or at least do well to date.
 
@josejherring

Are you a Mac or Windows user?
With Meldas developer high level of frustration with everything Apple I would be hesitant to put my 💰 & resources into anything Melda with all of the changes Apple’s planning.
I really don’t want this to be construed as a Apple vs Windows argument but Meldas strong dislike for Apple and the path 🍎 have chosen combined w/ the requirements they impose on developers is well known at this point.
So a @Jose if you are a Mac user my vote will be Falcon.
 
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Macrawn said:
I can't help you with the choice sadly, but I was wondering what other synths you have that you like.

I do own the Falcon 2 and I love it. You got me looking at the Melda stuff which looks like a designer's paradise. What got me initially interested in the Falcon was the sort of sharpness to it. I've seen people call it clinical in sound. When someone says clinical it seems a little negative but I get the comparison. It is sharper and cleaner than most synths which by nature soften everything which I don't like. I didn't get to hear too much with the sounds on the Melda stuff but it does seem to have some of what attracted me to the Falcon 2 in terms of sound.

Falcon does have it's own preset packs, but I have to admit I'm disapponted with 3rd party support for it. I think I've only ever seen one thing that was independent of UVI and it sounded bad so I didn't buy it. The UVI preset packs are pretty good for the most part. Some are for music genres I'm not interested in. I hope that changes and there is more 3rd party stuff, but everyone just makes Omnisphere packs. Omnisphere sort of has a lock on that market because of the base. I think there is an unmet demand for it with the Falcon though. One can hope.

You got me thinking about the Melda synths and they are going on my want list. I should probably just buy omnisphere next, but after that there are like 10 synths I'd like to get, but at best I might buy one or two over the next couple years so I know how hard the choice is.
Click to expand...
I have a lot of synths. I was an early adopter of Reason and now it is also a vst plugin so all my Reason synths are now used in Cubase. My favorite Reason synrhs: Expanse, The Legend, Europa, Grain, Parsec and Antidote. Loved coplex-1. Sounds great but is limiting in a weird way.

For VSTi, I also have Zebra, Obsession, Mpowersynth, Reakror. Reaktor is of course also a host so i use Monark and Form in Reaktor. Plus 2 hardware synths and a 10 units of modular.

Except for Zebra I stay away from synths that everybody has. I noticed in listening to the Westworld competition. Everybody has the same stuff and 90% sounded same'ish. Then people complain that the one that didn't sound the same won. Jesus, what did people expect would happen?

So I have stayed away from Serum and Omni, but Omni is getting harder to resist.
 
kgdrum said:
@josejherring

Are you a Mac or Windows user?
With Meldas developer high level of frustration with everything Apple I would be hesitant to put my 💰 & resources into anything Melda with all of the changes Apple’s planning.
I really don’t want this to be construed as a Apple vs Windows argument but Meldas strong dislike for Apple and the path 🍎 have chosen combined w/ the requirements they impose on developers is well known at this point.
So a @Jose if you are a Mac user my vote will be Falcon.
Click to expand...
Pc user for sure. Though curious about the ARM Macs coming out soon. So between my love of PC's and my new intsrest in Macs, you could say I've become bi curious.
 
josejherring said:
I have a lot of synths. I was an early adopter of Reason and now it is also a vst plugin so all my Reason synths are now used in Cubase. My favorite Reason synrhs: Expanse, The Legend, Europa, Grain, Parsec and Antidote. Loved coplex-1. Sounds great but is limiting in a weird way.

For VSTi, I also have Zebra, Obsession, Mpowersynth, Reakror. Reaktor is of course also a host so i use Monark and Form in Reaktor. Plus 2 hardware synths and a 10 units of modular.

Except for Zebra I stay away from synths that everybody has. I noticed in listening to the Westworld competition. Everybody has the same stuff and 90% sounded same'ish. Then people complain that the one that didn't sound the same won. Jesus, what did people expect would happen?

So I have stayed away from Serum and Omni, but Omni is getting harder to resist.
Click to expand...
Thanks. I knew you were a fan of synths I was just cuirious about which ones you had already, and what appealed to you.

I agree with what you are saying about samey stuff. I also noticed that in the Westworld comp not only were the sounds the same, but people were following an old tired formula for the compositions. I can see how after listening to hundrends of those things that the ones that stand out are the ones that are good quality but have their own mojo and stand out as being a little different. The paint by numbers approach is surprisingly popular. I sort of equated it to everyone taking Evenant courses and composing all the same way, but add in that everyone is using the same libraries/ templates/methods, and it just makes the samey even worse.
 
The MSoundFactory has me fascinated (have and love Falcon2). Are there any actual users / beta testers out there?Like you I love more exotic and deep synthesizers. Although I also have a lot of emulations and plain vanilla ones.

Couple of questions, slightly on topic. I’ll put them here since I suspect only true synthheads will find and read this thread, like I have.

1. What’s the deal with MPowerSynth? Will that still be a thing? Worth having a look at, or will it be abandonware as soon as MSoundFactory gets a proper release?

2. How does MPowerSynth sound? Any good examples out there? Forums? SoundCloud? YT?

3. Anyone use Biotek 2 by Tracktion? Not like I need another FM synth, but this one kind of intrigues me. Seems powerful but some of the Youtube demos only show “layers” with drum samples and pads and so on, layered in a patch. That Indian Native Dance / Wavestation loopy stuff was nice in the nineties but doesn’t get much love anymore over here. 4 OP FM with samples could be interesting albeit unpredictable though. Enlighten me...

4. Apparently the same developer is coding a new FM synth for Tracktion, funnily called: “F ‘em”. Kid you not. 11 oscillators, first and last ones are samples, 8 in between are sines / FM operators. One noise osc. Samples can be modulators and carriers as well I believe. Source: a small thread on KVR. Anyone know this one? Sounds a bit like a Yamaha FM-X engine in the box?

5. Any more cool new synths out there?

No intentions to hijack here, just want to add to the discussion. Falcon 2 is a great synthesizer, the oscillators and filters are great, and the envelopes are fast and snappy.
 
My two cents, maybe melda’s synth sampler will become a “thing” but at this point I would consider it a new territory of exploration. Uvi definitely has decades of experience building samplers and synths and OEM sound engines in other products. There is most definitely a lot more third party content for falcon then melda, not to mention a wealth of experience.

melda is a crafty developer that does some interesting things sometimes, I own a couple things like his mcabinet plugin and a coupe others but I rarely use it because in reality I have better solutions. Melda tends to put out plugins with approximately one buzzillion parameters in each one for total sonic flexibility but I find that to be cumbersome and often leading to poor results. In my mind they tend to lack foresight to direct users to good results. Their paradigm is provide a gui to change every possible parameter you can think of. And hey some people may like that ability in which case he is very likely to have a Swiss Army knife plugin that will give that power with a very utilitarian kind of interface. But I usually find someone else has made a more crafted plugin that does what I went with only a dozen parameters to think about and is directing me towards good sound.

will be interesting to see what melda does with software instruments but honestly I thinkfor now falcon wins in spades
 
doctoremmet said:
The MSoundFactory has me fascinated (have and love Falcon2). Are there any actual users / beta testers out there?Like you I love more exotic and deep synthesizers. Although I also have a lot of emulations and plain vanilla ones.

Couple of questions, slightly on topic. I’ll put them here since I suspect only true synthheads will find and read this thread, like I have.

1. What’s the deal with MPowerSynth? Will that still be a thing? Worth having a look at, or will it be abandonware as soon as MSoundFactory gets a proper release?

2. How does MPowerSynth sound? Any good examples out there? Forums? SoundCloud? YT?

3. Anyone use Biotek 2 by Tracktion? Not like I need another FM synth, but this one kind of intrigues me. Seems powerful but some of the Youtube demos only show “layers” with drum samples and pads and so on, layered in a patch. That Indian Native Dance / Wavestation loopy stuff was nice in the nineties but doesn’t get much love anymore over here. 4 OP FM with samples could be interesting albeit unpredictable though. Enlighten me...

4. Apparently the same developer is coding a new FM synth for Tracktion, funnily called: “F ‘em”. Kid you not. 11 oscillators, first and last ones are samples, 8 in between are sines / FM operators. One noise osc. Samples can be modulators and carriers as well I believe. Source: a small thread on KVR. Anyone know this one? Sounds a bit like a Yamaha FM-X engine in the box?

5. Any more cool new synths out there?

No intentions to hijack here, just want to add to the discussion. Falcon 2 is a great synthesizer, the oscillators and filters are great, and the envelopes are fast and snappy.
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Sorry for the late response. Sometimes I seem to lose track of threads and I haven't figured out exactly why.

But, MpowerSynth is a great sounding synth. It's just not setup in the same way as what I'm use to and the results while very good aren't that different that many other synths so it sits there not getting used then I pull it out and have to reteach myself again how it works. Then it has the added bonus of them changing certain things during updates and OMG, if I have to figure out one more time how to adjust the envelope depth of that damn filter I'll scream. It ain't intuitive which doesn't bother me if the results gotten were unique.

That being said, It was my first serious softsynth other than Reason's Thor. Thor got dated and MpowerSynth was like a sonic breath of fresh air. The osc sounded amazing. It was my first foray into Additive synthesis. My first real crack at audio rate modulation, they call it FM but really if you only have 3 osc then it's audio rate modulation. The first time I heard a supersaw in real life. There were so many first on that synth. It was my first real synth love. It was also one of the first times that I felt comfortable using a synth upfront on a film cue. I had always buried them before. But, I could get MPowerSynth to sound like the big boys.

In the end now that I got Zebra2 and Reason has updated their synths and I've got Tons of RE's and many more VST, while MPowerSynth is still in my template it's the last to get called and I feel like it's like the last kid that you want on your team. After you've picked all the other players, then you pick that one.

In the end, besides Reason's Parsec which isn't really fully additive it's the only true additive synth I have where you can build a sound from partials. I don't particularly dig additive too much but one day I might get into it and I'll pull out MpowerSynth again.

I feel that MpowerSynth will eventually just get folded into Melda's new platform. It seems like it already has all of MpowerSynth in it. Which would be good because I can use that as a starting point and learn the rest of MSoundfactory from there.

As for now, I'm going to give it a year or two on MSoundFactory. It's seems like its in its infancy and Melda mentioned that it's the last instrument they are going to build so I have a feeling that it's going to included a whole lot of stuff in the near future with a lot of refinements.

As far as UVI falcon I've invested so much in Reason over the years and with RE's I nearly have everything that UVI Falcon offers now. So it's kind of redundant for me, but never say never because UVI falcon sounds sooooo good to me. I just want to wait for what Reason is going to do with Reason 11.5 and 12. They signaled they are heading in a new direction and that seems like it could be interesting.

So for now I'm switching my focus to libraries and a decent romplers. I'm in geeky love with 90's Roland and Korg romplers so I'm looking into Roland's Zenology and Triton VST. I just got to get me some of my first loves in my studio again :) Looking into more modern rompler's too like Nexus 3 and DNA labs for Reason.

I feel like I have a purpose and I'm getting to it in a weird way, but part of my was so happy when I just had my Korg and my Roland I headed to the studios to record with real people. Part of me is yearning to get back to that way of working. So in this day and age, I'm half leaning towards just getting 4 rack mount computers and a main DAW. use two computers for softsynths and two for sample libraries and cap it at that. Using the DAW for midi and audio only.

That's why I'm looking into getting synth platforms. I use Reason primarily as a rack and I guess i"m looking at other alternatives like Rolands Zenology.... I have a lot more to say but it will crop up from time to time.


As for how MpowerSynth sounds, I'll try and whip up something
 
José Herring said:
So for now I'm switching my focus to libraries and a decent romplers. I'm in geeky love with 90's Roland and Korg romplers so I'm looking into Roland's Zenology and Triton VST.
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Cool post José. A lot of stuff that I recognize. We’re hoarders, OMG. Going through the XSample fascination thing, investigating the Chris Hein realm (fascinating, more and more I like my samples to be very dry - ever since I have learned to use Seventh Heaven and VSR24 more really, and now that I’ve got EAReverb2). Which makes me wonder about DearVR Pro hahaha. Does it ever stop? Like you said earlier: first world problems for sure.

Anyway, I have just gotten Biotek1 and will check it out, FM has been a fascination ever since the late eighties when I got my first synth. Like you I will follow Melda from the sidelines and sooner or later will likely give it a listen again.

Now, romplers you say? I suppose you own AIR Music Tech Xpand2! already? If you don’t, check it. I bought ALL of their stuff a while ago for $50. Vacuum Pro is a nifty little synth I find myself using a lot lately. Loom and Loom II are some of the coolest additive synths I’ve ever come across. Velvet2 is actually a very nice Rhodes / Wurly sim. Dial up a sound, play it and it cuts right through any mix. But my favourite of the bunch happens to be Xpand2!

Instant nineties rompler feel. Like you’ve bought an JV2080 with all expansions goodness haha. That guy Paolo who does Synthmania on YT has a bunch of cool videos. And the best thing is; you can no doubt find it today somewhere for a couple of bucks and get giddy like you just bought all E-mu 19” boxes in existence hahaha. Cheers, and thanks for your contribution. Very informative & appreciated, as always.
 
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doctoremmet said:
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Xpand!2

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Yes, I've been looking into Xpand2 for a while. It's got some good stuff. I quite like it. Just don't know yet if I like it as much as Roland and Korg Romplers.

I cooked something up with MPowerSynth. Nothing fancy but it was good to break it out and realize its strengths. One things is that everything has an envelope and they go down to the microseconds, so it's good for getting snappy attacks.

My example is just a quick Rhythmic synth followed by a pad synth. I could get more fancy but in order to assign LFO's and stuff to modulate you have to go menu diving and like 3 submenus later you will start to connect it up. It's not intuitive and makes the synth not fun, but it does sound good.
 

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José Herring said:
Yes, I've been looking into Xpand2 for a while. It's got some good stuff. I quite like it. Just don't know yet if I like it as much as Roland and Korg Romplers.

I cooked something up with MPowerSynth. Nothing fancy but it was good to break it out and realize its strengths. One things is that everything has an envelope and they go down to the microseconds, so it's good for getting snappy attacks.

My example is just a quick Rhythmic synth followed by a pad synth. I could get more fancy but in order to assign LFO's and stuff to modulate you have to go menu diving and like 3 submenus later you will start to connect it up. It's not intuitive and makes the synth not fun, but it does sound good.
Click to expand...
Love that sound! Percussive, snappy envelopes indeed. Love the harmonic richness of those arpeggios, instant synth bliss! <3
 
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