Soft-synth wars

Synths can be complicated beasts! While the on-board synths that install with all commercial DAWs will often do a fine job, third party synths often have a creative edge, and a little time and effort invested in learning how they work will help you get the best out of them. Just like hardware, all softsynths offer their own unique sound, and Pigments, Zebra 2 and Omnisphere are fine examples of software behemoths with capabilities which push sonic boundaries.

One great way of expanding the onboard content of these packages is with additional sounds, as found in the Premier Collection reviewed here, but apart from offering great inspiration, you can also dive deeper, examining how the mind of a programmer like Tom Wolfe creates his sounds. Reverse engineering patches is a great way to extend your patch-building knowledge, and using the Premier Collection for this task will bring knowledge and great sounds in abundance.