With new software synthesizers coming out almost weekly, it’s important to slow down and recognize that there are certain things that already work excellently. Ultimately it’s all about immediacy in use and how it sounds.
Sylenth1 is all about the sound and we really dig that. There are no compromises in its sound quality, oscillators, FX, arpeggiator, or other functionalities. Sylenth1 remains as the #1 pick for trance and EDM producers worldwide and can be heard on some absolutely smashing records. LennarDigital features some excellent recreations of popular track’s synth and bass leads on their website. Our favorite is the recreation of Booka Shade’s timeless track-
The bass line seamlessly morphs high and low, with a fat analog character reminiscent of a classic Moog synthesizer, a truly impressive feat for a software synth. A/B’ing between the recreation and original, it’s difficult to tell which is the original! LennarDigital also elucidated to us that one of their favorites of well-known productions where an original Sylenth1 preset was used is in Prodigy’s ‘Wild Frontier’. It uses the preset 392 – ARP FireFly, which was also used in the soundtrack for the highly acclaimed movie, Ex Machina.
To further illustrate the range of this instrument, we’ve created 3 minutes of samples which are also available to download for free from our DMNW Demos SoundCloud. This is the second installment in our sample pack/review series– we’re looking forward to providing you all with more free samples in the coming months!
We started by making a wide layered bass, which came with ease. The filters are very clean, with no unwanted sound distortions- there are many filter options to choose from as well. This patch was easily converted into a pad by increasing the detuning and voices. ‘Chilling’ is a good way to describe the shimmer and life created by the interplay of frequencies in these rich pad sounds. The lushness is easy to get lost in; we found ourselves drifting off listening to our patches through the arpeggiator. The oscillators in this synth are perhaps our favorite of all of the many synths we’ve reviewed, and there is an unbelievable amount of versatility in this synth, which is offered by few products on the market.
We’ve hardly touched on the FX section in Sylenth1: there are 7 professional quality effects that sound great. They also offer plenty of control, LennarDigital hasn’t taken a single shortcut, anywhere. It’s incredibly CPU-efficient as well. We didn’t encounter any problems running four to five instances of the VST in a composed Ableton project, which was refreshing after using some more CPU-intensive synths like Serum or ANA. And of course, despite its small CPU-footprint Sylenth1 packs an unparalleled punch.
The full version of Sylenth1 is available for €139 (ex. VAT) or only €9.95 Euro* monthly!
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