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I played FL studio for few months and I suck at it, yeah, I'm a newbie, and I created a song, and I have seen some synthesizers that are popular, and I'm deciding to get one, they are Harmor, Massive and Harmless, I actually want to produce dubstep, electronic music, so guys, any suggestion on which one I should buy?

Buying one of those synths won't automatically mean you won't suck any more. Learn the synths that came with FLStudio (3xOSC, TS404, Toxic Biohazard, Morpheus, Poizone) inside out before you buy another one, IMO.

There is more than enough variety there to get a range of sounds, and long term your sound design will be benefit a lot more than if you just get a new synth as a result of hitting a roadblock.

^^^ Best advice this thread will throw at you tbh. You could have one synth, and still be able to achieve most sounds.

You could have one synth and use that for every element of your track, drums, bass, pads, everything.

While it is true that simply purchasing a decent synth wont automatically make you a good music producer, I believe that it can open more possibilities.

It is worth learning the synths that come with your DAW inside out, and this will help you get to grips with other synths. I disagree with the opinion that all you need is the native synths that come with a DAW; if this were true other synths wouldn't exist and the big producers would only be using native synths.

Personally I've never used Harmor or Harmless, however I do use Massive and I'll always recommend it as a beast of a synth; definitely worth buying if you can afford it.

That being said though, it would be worth your while just fully getting to grips with your DAW and the plugins that come with it for now; you've only been producing for a few months, who knows, in another couple of months you may decide producing music isn't for you and you'd have wasted a lot of money on a synth you'll never use!

If you suck at using your DAW (FL) then having a decent synth wont make any difference, you need to learn how to use your DAW first.

You have to take into consideration that EVERYONE uses massive. So clearly he would want it because everyone else has it. Nothing wrong with that. It's a really great synth that you should have. It's also dead easy to learn and has about a billion youtube tuts on how to make sounds with. It's also easy to get inspiration from even the presets (and 3rd party banks).

So, in effect, buying massive could (arguably) make you a better producer seing as it's hard to not learn how to use it to its potental.

Honestly there nothing wrong with wanting new gear as a noob producer (that's how I ended up worth Maschine). As long as it inspires you to create and/or learn, than its a good investment.

wub wrote:Buying one of those synths won't automatically mean you won't suck any more. Learn the synths that came with FLStudio (3xOSC, TS404, Toxic Biohazard, Morpheus, Poizone) inside out before you buy another one, IMO.

There is more than enough variety there to get a range of sounds, and long term your sound design will be benefit a lot more than if you just get a new synth as a result of hitting a roadblock.

Everything but no 3xosc, please. It has aliasing problems. When you play a higher note on it, it tries to synthesize harmonics that are higher than the sampling rate - and the digital-to-analog converter interprets them as subharmonics. Horrible synth. Well, actually it wouldn't be horrible if it didn't have that problem. But that is what makes it horrible.

So... what about harmor guys? massive is easier to learn, what about harmor? is it good? which one is more suitable for certain type of music?

Get Zebra instead of Massive. Same basic idea but miles ahead in terms of flexibility. It would also make a good synth to learn on, as it's fairly intuitive.

Crimsonghost wrote:You have to take into consideration that EVERYONE uses massive. So clearly he would want it because everyone else has it. Nothing wrong with that. It's a really great synth that you should have. It's also dead easy to learn and has about a billion youtube tuts on how to make sounds with. It's also easy to get inspiration from even the presets (and 3rd party banks).

So, in effect, buying massive could (arguably) make you a better producer seing as it's hard to not learn how to use it to its potental.

Honestly there nothing wrong with wanting new gear as a noob producer (that's how I ended up worth Maschine). As long as it inspires you to create and/or learn, than its a good investment.

Good post. I recommend Massive and I'm a huge fan of Harmless as well. I wouldn't waste time with 3osx or a couple of those others. Just my personal experience.

Grab some demos and try a few out
Youll find some you like and some you dont
Its that simple!

mromgwtf wrote:

wub wrote:Buying one of those synths won't automatically mean you won't suck any more. Learn the synths that came with FLStudio (3xOSC, TS404, Toxic Biohazard, Morpheus, Poizone) inside out before you buy another one, IMO.

There is more than enough variety there to get a range of sounds, and long term your sound design will be benefit a lot more than if you just get a new synth as a result of hitting a roadblock.

Everything but no 3xosc, please. It has aliasing problems. When you play a higher note on it, it tries to synthesize harmonics that are higher than the sampling rate - and the digital-to-analog converter interprets them as subharmonics. Horrible synth. Well, actually it wouldn't be horrible if it didn't have that problem. But that is what makes it horrible.

you do realise everything gets anti-aliased upon rendering? and 90% of synths do this anyway, play a sub note with massive and boost the high end if you dont believe me.

i find it hard to believe that a stock synth in a modern daw wouldn't have an anti-aliasing filter built in

I remember seeing a comparison between soft samplers that had quite a bit of aliasing when re-pitching. I agree it'd be dumb as fuck to not do internal AA on a synth. The anti-aliasing done by convertors or rendering afterwards doesn't make a difference if the aliased frequencies are already folded back into the audible spectrum.

the thing with 3xosc is, unlike other synths, everything is done via the host (FL itself)
so maybe thats why it has more aliasing than other synths.

Thank you for the replies, but I want to know, Harmor and massive, which one does better in bass? in dubstep production? which one of them is better in certain genre?

Donaldbeebi wrote:Thank you for the replies, but I want to know, Harmor and massive, which one does better in bass? in dubstep production? which one of them is better in certain genre?

Neither is better, they're different but can both be used for dubstep.

Harmor has the nice ability to resample stuff (check out SeamlessR's tutorials for an intro to this) but I personally found it had a much steeper learning curve, to me Massive is more intuitve and I was able to make the sounds I wanted quicker - I put a lot of that down to the GUI and the way you can link paramaters using drag/drop. Massive also has the wide variety of wavetables you can mess around with.

By the sounds of your posts you probably want to make some bro/tearout basses... if you pick Massive you'll be able to achieve these but as a beginner your sounds will probably end up sounding like every other person who uses Massive for bro bass, but as you progress it's possible to develop sounds to become more original. With Harmor imo you'll be able to come up with more original sounds from the get-go (especially if you start messing with the resampling engine), however it may take you a while to get something good out of the synth rather than just squelchy distorted mush.

In terms of learning your DAW's synths vs. purchasing something new, I'd say go for it. Something like Massive offers different possibilities and a different style of workflow to FL's native synths. That's not to say FL's synths are bad, but it's always good to expand your sound palette, in the same way very few people stick with the samples that come with your DAW.

SunkLo wrote:Get Zebra instead of Massive.

Seriously. Zebra is like Massive on steroids minus the shrunken balls. Incredibly powerful and flexible but also suited to a beginner thanks to it's intuitive adaptable interface.

Thank you for the replies guys, I decided, and I bought harmor , this synth is difficult to use but looks like it has a tons of potiential, ty!

SunkLo wrote:Get Zebra instead of Massive. Same basic idea but miles ahead in terms of flexibility. It would also make a good synth to learn on, as it's fairly intuitive.

I don't necessarily disagree with the overall idea of this post, but the reasoning is FUCKED. Massive is SO easy to use and learn. Still is my go to synth when I want to make a sound as I'm working. I do sound design sessions and just use whatever strikes me, record that stuff. All good. But if I'm in a track and I need a sound, BOOM massive. Just so easy to get what you want, and a little more. Easy to learn, easy to use. Fast. There are downsides. I think the filters are sucko, and the envelope does shit I don't want, and doesn't do shit I do want. Lfo's are cool, but a little inflexible. There are other synths that do envelopes and lfo's much better. But the oscs sound good, and routing/wiring up the synth is a breeze.

Zebra sounds great, but it is cryptic, hidden shit all over the place. Steeper learning curve, especially if you are just learning subtractive synthesis. I don't recall, but does the innit patch even have an oscillator loaded?

Anyway, I think massive is gonna go 2.0, cause they gave massive away with maschine 2.0 They also gave away prisim in the same deal, and then just released prisim 1.5 for paid upgrade. Now the third time I've bought massive.

Gotta remember, they gave away massive with 1.8 over a year ago. I think if it was gonna go massive 2 it would have done it by now (maybe end of year, but I doubt it). It's still a massive cash cow for NI ( pun intended) and one of the best synths out there. I think they have too much focus on maschine to put out a new synth right now.