 Hello, OsloadSync here. My channel is probably best known for talking about synths on a very technical level, very quietly for too long and also posting unpopular ambient and drone tracks. But for a while I've been thinking about trying to put out other content which is maybe not so technical and a little bit more about the vibes or the music or something. And so I thought as an experiment for this perhaps I should do something that is algorithmically optimised and put out a tier list, but at the same time try and make it niche so that not many people watch the video by making it about ranking the synths that I own for their ability or my preference for their ability to do ambient and drone music. So that's what we're going to do today and hopefully have some chill ambient music in the background while we do it. There are three main areas that I'm going to think about when it comes to ranking these different synths. The first obviously is going to be sound or maybe rather the sound engine. So the pure sound of the instrument of course, but also how you can bend and move that sound to make it appropriate for ambient and drone music, particularly how we can modulate things and keep things moving. My preference when it comes to that kind of music tends to be towards sort of more lo-fi or dirty or modulated sounds. So that will be a personal preference as we look at that. The second area will be more around what it's like to perform with the synths. So most of the ambient or drone music that I make tends to be at some level a live performance. So how an instrument feels to perform with is really, really important. Now that could be quite varied, so it could be that something has a really, really powerful sequencer that makes it particularly good at manipulating the sounds and moving the performance around in a generative way. It could be that it has a particularly inspiring playing surface one way or another. Or you know, some synths just have keyboards, lots of synths just have keyboards and that's maybe not as interesting, but paired with the right sound synthesis engine can be still very, very compelling. The third area that we'll be thinking about when it comes to ranking these synths is just vibe. There are some instruments that on a build quality or an aesthetic or just the way that they interact with the performance there's a vibe to them which makes me prefer them. So that's probably going to be the area that's hardest to explain when we are ranking these synths and probably the place where people are going to disagree with me the most. I suspect as well. There we go. This is my list and my preferences and it's all subjective. I am certain that there are going to be since you disagree with my rankings for and if they are then please let me know in the comments and I will try and defend my position where I can or you know, maybe it's indefensible. So over here in this box, I've got some slightly misshapen images of most of the synths that I own currently or have owned up until recently in some cases and maybe we'll just shuffle them and choose which one we're going to start with. And by shuffle I mean I'm just going to wiggle the mouse a bit down. So where are we going to start? Okay, let's start. Let's start here with the Korg monologue. So the Korg monologue obviously is a monosynth which in some cases is going to restrict its use for certain types of ambient music but certainly having one note at a time is absolutely fine for drone music. The thing with the monologue is that it's somewhat limited when it comes to creating movement within the patches because you've only got the one LFO, you've only got the one fairly limited envelope generator as well. So any movement you're going to build into the performance has to be done via the sequencer but then that then locks you down to something which is obviously repeating. The other thing I guess is that the sound of the monologue is very particular and works well for certain things but in terms of getting grit into it I actually don't like the distortion sound that it has for drone type stuff. It tends to fizz out a bit. Some people really like the distortion on the monologue but it's always been a weak point for me. The distortion I really like on a Korg product actually is on the Volcker kick. The distortion on that thing is amazing and if they put that in the monologue perhaps that would be the thing. So for this particular area of music and for my taste this is going to have to go into the seed here I think. So what's next little shuffle again. Okay well we've landed it with some more Korg synths so maybe we'll continue down the same road here with the monologue. Now the monologue is a slightly different proposition to the monologue in many ways and I think the thing that's most different with the monologue is that it inherently has a more textured and gritty sound. Because of the cross mod, because of the filter design and because especially because of the way that the delay operates there's a lot that it can do to get movement within a single note via all of those different areas and using the delay to introduce either repeats of those modulations and noise. It has to be said but noise isn't always unwelcome. Yeah it actually offers quite a lot more. Leaving aside the fact of course that it's also polyphonic which is going to help in a number of circumstances. The sequencer is still really really limited more so than on the monologue and the keybed isn't the nicest in the world. I don't mind mini keys it's not the mini keys bit that bothers me with the mini log but it's not the most inspiring keyboard to play on it it has to be said. But with all of that yeah it's got to go higher than the monologue just because of the dirtiness I guess. So that's going to go B tier. So a little shuffle let's have a look. We've been landing on a lot of corks since. Let's take the Ops 6. So the Ops 6 is one of my all time synths for sound design. I love this thing. When you stop thinking about it like an FM synth and start thinking about it as a small modular system with all of those different operator types available to you and ways you can route them back into themselves for feedback just you can do such amazing things with it and I've said this for years I think Corg really undersold the Ops 6 by talking about it as being an FM synth primarily and I get that that legacy relating it to things like the DX7 is powerful marketing but it's so much more than that. It's one of my favorite synths for creating soundscapes. You've got a mod matrix which is fairly extensive each mod slot in the mod matrix allows you to scale the modulation via another modulation source which is huge expands what you can do there quite massively. It has multiple modulators three envelopes and three LFOs. I do wish that the envelopes were a bit more powerful so on the mod way for example you had a lot more power with the envelopes and does a retrigger and stuff so it's definitely some things that would make it even more compelling. The effects on it are really really good. It's in stereo and you have panning per voice and you have multiple multiple voices and although it's mono timbral you can create patches which essentially have entirely discrete sounds within them either through keyboards splits or even just per note because of using various modulation in there. Yeah if we need to talk about some downsides I think to be balanced you probably should the key bed is fine but it's not inspiring it desperately would have benefited from after touch on the keyboard for the types of sounds that it's good at for sure. The sequencer is fine it's the same sequencer that you find on a lot of the called products fundamentally it's not as powerful as some but it's also a lot more powerful than say the mililogs but anyway this is easy yes to easy peasy just don't even have to think about it. So I mean while we're here we may as well look at its cousin here which is the mod wave I don't have the mod wave anymore that was a loner from from Korg so that's gone back now but I did use it fairly extensively and dig into it in quite a lot of depth and the mod wave is a very very interesting machine but for me a lot of the interest of it sits within the mod part as in the way that its modulation is set up so you have many many LFOs you have many many envelopes and those envelopes are very very flexible in terms of the way that you can trigger them and re-trigger them with other mod sources I love that on any synth any synth where you can trigger a an envelope using something else whether it's the crossing of a threshold of another modulation source or whether it's the end of cycle on an LFO or anything like that just expands the usefulness and creativity available for those envelopes. It also has a functionally infinite mod matrix you can modulate things with other things you don't have a limited number of slots you still have that level scaling that the Opposix has which I really really like to and of course you've got the chaos pad stuff with all of the physics tricks that you can do there as a alternative more interesting LFO or envelope shape now having said all of that I never found the synthesis part of the mod wave as interesting as say the Opposix not even close really I don't know whether it's because I just don't find wavetables as interesting and there's definitely things you can do that allow you to evolve the sound like massively but I always found it just slightly limiting compared to the options you have for the modulation now if you took the modulation stuff and tacked it on to the Opposix's synthesis engine you would have the ultimate synth as far as I'm concerned but I just never found the actual synthesis part of the mod wave that interesting the other part of the mod wave that I did find interesting however is the sequencer which is not really a sequencer in the conventional sense at all I did a whole series of videos about the sequencer on the mod wave and yeah that's another area where it comes to creating generative patterns particularly the mod wave is really really strong and again what I really want is for that to be on the Opposix basically I want all the mod part of the mod wave on the Opposix that's what I want Cork please um there's one other thing I have to say about the mod wave and this comes down to a vibe a bit in terms of its user interface compared to the Opposix it's just not as nice to use it looks on the surface with the mod wave that there many many more controls sort of more knob per function stuff than the Opposix which is true there are more knobs per function except a lot of those functions are hidden behind switches and toggles and then a whole host of parameters or the interesting parameters are all modified by using a single edit knob and it was just a little bit tiring to use compared to the Opposix which borrows heavily from kind of the electron layouts of pages and a single interface which is just generally a much nicer interface to use even though there are fewer knobs on there so it loses a point for vibe now does that put it into B tier I think it does I think the the limitations of the sound engine for me um and its user interface again it's going to be top of B tier if I'm allowed to do that we're allowed to move these around yeah cool it's top of B tier but it is B tier I think okay now the little shuffle uh okay let's do something it's not corg let's go with yeah let's go with mini brute 2s so mini brute 2s some mono synth has two oscillators two LFOs two envelopes one which can cycle as well well both of them can cycle actually um if you patch them appropriately and of course it's so modular which allows you to patch it to do other things it has an inherently very dirty sound which I like um I think the brute factor is a lovely thing to have and given that it's essentially just a feedback loop more synths should have something along those lines and certainly on the s2 and the mini brute 2 as well they've refined the sound and the way that the synth operates it was a really good follow-up to the original mini brute both of them were the sequencer on the mini brute 2s is also so brilliant um the fact that you can have envelopes and LFOs per step and straight voltage sequencing per step all of that stuff makes for a really really interesting sequencer environment and you can mess with the sequencer more directly as well a lot of people overlook this one criticism that I've seen of the mini brute sequencer is that it doesn't run slow enough but if you clock it with an LFO it can run as slow as you want so often um in the music I make with the mini brute I will clock the synths with the LFO which gives me much wider range and control over the speed of the sequence which can make for really interesting sequences that sort of evolve into arpeggios and stuff that raw sound of it is very compelling the way that the oscillators can interface and interact with each other through the various different mod patches for the different waveforms yeah um I like it a lot actually for for drones stick a reverb or a delay at the end of it and you're set for a wide range of both sort of um traditional synthy drones but also very experimental west coast kind of drones as well I would like it more if it had one more LFO perhaps or maybe not one more LFO but one more um dedicated source of randomness uh that would just expand the things you could do with it there's also certain things that are missing from the patch bay which has always bugged me but they're never like really really big deals does this put it into A tier hmm it's either top of B tier or it's A tier I'm going to put it so go above mod wave I think it does so I think this goes above mod wave I think because of the vibe rule here um it might give me a it might move up to a it might move up to a later okay let's move on okay yeah so this is an interesting one I think so let's do the two stylophones because this is going to be somewhat contentious I think so the gen X one is a really basic synth you play it with a stylus or um you can use the the ribbon controller for it has a single oscillator it has a very limited LFO it has a very very limited envelope uh and it has a very very noisy delay and a fairly aggressive sounding filter I'm tempted to put this in A tier but I can't put it above I can't possibly put it above the the mini brook the raw sound of this synth is glorious there is something about the way that this oscillator is made how unstable it is how noisy the delay is how aggressive and characterful and resonant the the filter is it for drones it is absolutely glorious you've also got the sub oscillators for adding additional weight you have the sort of cross mod in there from adding additional movement into the sound so it actually has quite a lot of movement within a single note partially because of the instability of the oscillators it's constantly burbling and because you're not making perfect contact with the stylus lot of the time it's just this beautiful sound and you pair it with say a looper or a long delay for sort of drone leads or for it's just a single droning note underneath something I really really like it I think it's an incredibly underrated synth for that kind of music now is it a pain that you have to hold down the stylus on the note to keep the note playing of course so if we could perhaps I'll try and mod it to have a crocodile clip instead if there's a way of doing that just a way of holding down one of those single notes but yeah I think it's great it can't possibly go above the mini brook is the styler phone gen x1 going above the mod wave I think it might be this is a vibe decision I think it might be I'm going to do it it's my it's my list you can't stop me that's okay rearrange no there we go right okay let's do the other styler phone now so the other styler phone is the gen r8 here which I haven't featured on the channel a whole lot and the reason for that is that it is a characterful synth and characterful in this case is somewhat euphemistic because it has issues the envelope or the vca clicks at the start of notes because the oscillators don't reset now there's probably a good reason for the oscillators not resetting and there's a benefit to that as well the sequencer is slightly broken the legato mode doesn't work properly as far as I'm concerned also the knobs are incredibly light and flimsy I've never had a problem with them but they don't feel great the key bed the sort of capacitive touch key bed it's not the same stylus you can play with your fingers you don't need a stylus is also very easy to miss trigger notes however everything I've just said about the gen x1 in terms of the instability the noisiness the weirdness applies to the gen r8 as well for drone sounds it's absolutely glorious the distortion that's added on there as well that you can have quite complex interactions between the two oscillators that each oscillator got their own subs which again can have issues with tracking which actually only adds to the flavour of it yeah it's a beautiful drone synth you can also cross patch it with other things I did a tram in january where I cross patched it with the mini brute 2s and it was just wonderful for my tastes anyway just wonderful the way that the at the dirty dirty delay I was modulating the delay time with a square wave LFO and it was pinging all over the place and there was just this constant throbbing feedback that wasn't quite coming through a screaming resonance from the filter that came and went yeah it's another big vibe pic this is going to have to go above the other style of phone I think just because it has more features and it does sound better actually but I want to make it clear that this synth has issues in my opinion for for other things but yeah we're gonna you're gonna have to do this this is a weird beat here okay what's next okay I'm gonna go with this one here which is the souls be at megatron which is a digital synth an 8-bit digital synth that's I guess more geared towards chip tunes it sounds brilliant in that world for drone maybe not so much the interface is also a bit clicky and not so easy to make fine adjustments are on the go most of the parameters are on two rotary knobs so sometimes not easy to quickly change things during a performance although they can be mapped to midi cc so for drone and ambient I'm going to put it in the seat here this is not to say that it's about synth for its intended purpose far from it I think it's brilliant for the chip chain stuff I've done a bunch of stuff at multi tracking with it and just sounds great for that now I am however going to follow up on that with this here so you can load additional firmwares on to the app metatron and one of them is called the auditron which is an 8-bit emulation of the up odyssey I did a video demonstrating the whole firmware a little while ago and I did use it in one of the chams during january as well and this gets bumped to b-tier for sure it's got all of the stuff from the odyssey that makes the odyssey good for sort of dirty evolving drones you have the ring mod between the two different oscillators which you can then play duophonically which moves things around in really interesting ways you have the ability to send LFO to one of the ring-modded oscillators but not the other you've got the different dirty filter modes in there it actually makes for a really really interesting sound with quite a lot of movement within itself and like many things you pair it with a delay or something and it becomes really really cool so the megatron goes in c-tier but the auditron comes up into b-tier because it just has a bit more vibe from that perspective okay let's have another little shuffle here okay yeah let's let's let's let's take a look at the freaks now let's start with the micro freak so I've been kind of thinking about doing this video for a little while so I had some idea of where things were going and the micro freak was going to go c-tier for a long time the fact that it's mono in terms of it's not in terms of the polyphony but mono in terms of its output it's a synth which sounds better with effects for certain and then I started thinking well actually I'm missing a trick here because the playing surface actually is really quite inspiring in terms of having the polyphonic after touch the sort of very very tactile approach to playing actually you know being able to lean into notes to make them bend and stuff like that actually from a performance point of view especially with like the noise engineering oscillators c-tier is probably too low so okay probably probably somewhere in b-tier for that and then Altoria announced the sample and granular firmware upgrade for it and that changed everything because being able to do that granular processing of certain types of samples for ambient music and for sort of fluttering incidental sounds within drones paired with that playing surface granted probably need to add some effects to it but I think Arturo just put this into 80 and I really wasn't expecting to say that but that sample and granular mode that they've added is just such a huge huge deal so yeah that's going into 80 it's probably not the top of 80 but it's definitely in 80 so let's talk about the other freak as well and I'm a little bit torn here because I'm almost tempted to punish the mini freak for not having the sample playback and put it into b-tier because I know how great that would be so out of spite I might put this in b-tier until Artoria put the sample playback to the to the mini freak that's probably unfair might go below the the the micro freak though yeah it's probably unfair okay so obviously we have much of what is good about the micro freak in the mini freak in terms of its sound we've now got multiple oscillator types and you have the processing oscillator types as well so I love putting something on the first oscillator then using like the comb filter oscillator type on the second filter to process it and bring out these interesting resonances which ping and shoot out as you change other things about the first oscillator it can be incredibly expressive despite lacking the polyphonic aftertouch it does have the aftertouch which makes a big difference and then the effects are really really good and add a lot to it especially the distortion effects sound especially good for for drones and stuff and you can make it do sort of pseudo physical modeling things you can make it do very very strong synthesized drones it's one of the synths here actually most of the synths that we've been talking about so far other than the op 6 have been strong mostly on the drone side of things not necessarily on the ambient side of things but this is definitely a synth which is strong on both and when Artoria add the sample and granular functionality to the mini freak then this will be S tier the only thing that would it be S tier it probably be below the op 6 for me in terms of the flexibility of the synthesis and also we don't have panning per voice on the mini freak which is like one of the only main limitations of its synthesis engine for me I don't know whether it has stereo vca's in it at all so I don't know whether it's something that can be added in a firmware update or not I suspect not unfortunately so maybe some effects which spread the sound around a bit more might be interesting to overcome that shortcoming yeah it has to be A tier it can't be B tier but it is going to go it is going to go below the micro freak until it gets the sample playback and the granular stuff sorry sorry mini freak I love you it's your one of the best in class synths in your price range but you've just been outdone by your little cousin so yeah that's on you try harder okay let's do a quick fire round of some vulcas shall we so let's start with the vulca keys vulca keys does a lot of the things that the mini log does that I like but it is more limited so it's going to have to go C tier but above the megatron and probably above the the monologue too actually so that's C tier but high C tier and I think it's a bit of a sleeper hip in terms of the the general vibe of it uh let's do the okay so I've got the vulca fm in twice because we've got the old version the new version the old version goes in C tier and then the new version goes into B tier because it has the addition of the reverb it has additional polyphony obviously fm is fantastic for both ambient and drone stuff that goes without saying but the original velcro fm had its limitations most of which especially for the form factor have been overcome in the new one and also the new one has the color color scheme so that's B tier the vulca drum ah B tier yes I know it's a drum machine but it also does all sorts of very very interesting things in terms of its very limited but flexible synthesis and also the way that the delay and the physical modeling type stuff works on it as well is really really interesting and I've certainly used it as a melodic synth very successfully and I like it there uh vulcan modular this is tricky I think it's going C tier but above the vulcra fm and above the mega trunk I have a weird relationship with the vulcan modular because it feels like it's the vulca that I am meant to like the most in terms of my general tastes but I've always struggled to get it to do what I want it to do without a lot of faff basically and that's probably a me problem as much as anything else but its tone especially tends to be quite aggressive and although you can make it do quite sweet things it very much sounds like it's doing way folding and it's doing its particular thing I kind of feel bad of putting it in C tier but it's my list so it's where it's going okay right uh onto the home straight a little bit okay okay now the opz is a teenage engineering product so people are going to have strong feelings about this one way or another its sequencer is one of the best sequences on any synth that I own the step components way of doing things is amazing I wish a lot of the functionality that it had was found on other synths a bit more however in terms of its playing interface and the synthesis engine and even really the way that you can mess with samples for ambient and drone I've tried really hard to like I was going to do I plan to use it in January during when I was doing all the drones I've also tried to sit and do more ambient stuff with it in the past and I feel like I should be able to do it I feel like it should be suited to it but there's something about the sound of it that's quite stark and I always really struggle to get that nuance and that movement and that sort of fuzziness to things that I like so remember this is just for ambient and drone since don't get too mad at me in the comments it's going in the C tier and it's not going above much so don't hate me don't hate me um oh we should probably have done the NTS one alongside the Falkers it's going in C tier but it's great as an effects processor playing surface it makes it very very difficult to use yes you could plug in an additional controller for certain but you could say that about any of these synths that have a playing surface you might get it more out of it with an additional controller it can do a lot of things of course it can and but in terms of actually using its program sounds even with some of the more powerful synth engines you know menu diving constantly I don't really enjoy doing that side of things with it so yeah that's going down in C tier Zoya let's do Zoya before about a week ago this was going in B tier but they've just added the sample playback which is kind of huge in the same way that is with the micro freak now does it get out of B tier because of that because the reality is that the playing surface is a bit clicky and not necessarily all that enjoyable to use in terms of setting things up or indeed performing with it I've done some nice drone stuff with it and sort of generative things it's really really good at I can't I can't put it in the same place as the freaks can I no okay so that's still at still B tier but it's it's higher B tier than than it was previously so move some stuff around make it go higher okay okay what's next let's do the wingy one of the more esoteric entries on the list here so the wingy is a stereo resonator device it's kind of like having two lots of rings modules in a little box with an external microphone on it sort of like that it's very much designed for kind of ambient stuff and especially taking it out into an environment and allowing the resonators to resonate within that environment so I it should go A tier because of what it's made for but ah I don't know I don't know I can't again I can't the the the freaks of the gatekeepers here I can't put it in the same tier I don't think what can I so wingy works better with something else I think is the reality on its own it can be a little bit stark the tonality of the resonators can be a bit overpowering in my experience and when you pair it with other things that's when it comes to life so one thing that I've used it for is adding stereo movement and stereo width to things that are monophonic like the lyra 8 running the lyra 8 through the wingy allows you to spread out the sounds by way of having things resonate with different notes on different parts of the stereo spread but on its own and I think we have to judge it on its own it's going B tier but with other stuff A tier but B tier on its own right let's do another one with some level of controversy with it so let's do a Behringer product let's do the deep mind six so this is a slight cheat I don't own my deep mind anymore I sold it a couple of weeks ago there's nothing wrong with the deep mind I think it's a good synth but yeah it was time for it to move on I used it a lot for ambient and I use it a lot for generative sounds and generative music and it does really well there one downside of the deep mind I think probably from my perspective is that you have to work quite hard to make it not sound like itself sometimes has quite a distinct character to the oscillators especially the square wave oscillators that wasn't always totally pleasing and you kind of had to bring the filter down a long way to make that disappear in some cases for softer sounds there's also no real modulation or cross modulation between the two different oscillators which reduces the power there a little bit that said it has a really good mod matrix it has very flexible LFOs and envelopes in the same way that the mod wave does actually the mod wave reminded me a lot of a deep bind in a good way when I when I got the mod wave so been able to re-trigger the envelopes in different ways having modulatable control over the LFO speed all that kind of stuff allows you to do really interesting generative stuff but you have to work hard with the sound of it the effects also are a mixed bunch some of them are good some of them aren't so much I really like the sans amp emulation in there for the distortion and I used that a lot for dirtier sounds it also has aftertouch on the key bed which is nice the key bed wasn't the best but it's certainly not the worst by any stretch of the imagination so I think to be fair it's going to have to go in A tier it's not going to go above the freaks but just by virtue of what I used for and how much I used it you know can't really argue with it going in the A tier I don't think so leaving aside this break and continuity don't worry about that I think it's probably time to talk about kind of a wild card entry in a way which is my Eurorack setup which is represented by this little cat chappy here who you'll be familiar with if you've got your Eurorack yourself I'm sure so my rack originally was set up specifically to do this kind of drone and ambient music and like all modular systems it is an unsolved problem it's not a finished product it's very much a work in progress I think there are a bunch of modules that I've added to the rack which is twice the size over twice the size it was ever really meant to be that have really enhanced what I can do in terms of the drone side of things so some of the Bastille modules which are very aggressive in some ways but are kind of designed to bring together multiple signals and have them move about they've really helped things out but I think at the moment as I have learned more about what I want to do in modular actually I've really come to realize that there are some work to be done in order to affect what I'm trying to do and at the moment I'm not even entirely sure what I need to change I think a lot of it is down to sound sources and also effects so both sides the kind of processing and filtering and wave folding and distorting kind of stuff I'm happy with but there's something lacking with the range of sound sources I've got and also the effects so I can't put this in the S tier I think it's a tier I think I would just be more critical because it's something I've designed more but it's very bottom of a tier as I say there's work to be done it should be S tier because it's what it's meant to do but we're not quite there yet so I'm going to go away and reflect on the fact that I can't put my specially designed modular system in S tier for this kind of music yet what next what next okay yeah so the norand mono now my gut instinct I was listing out the synths I was going to put in this list was that this is probably C tier because you know it's kind of got that 303 kind of vibe from a distance but actually that's entirely wrong because it has two oscillators those two oscillators can interact with each other in very interactive ways through through zero FM so we can get lots of interesting movement going in on there and there is an LFO and essentially an envelope per knob of control on this synth which means in terms of getting movement into a sound it's probably the most sort of proficient synth out of the lot and you've also got the ability to overdrive the VCAs to get more character into the sound so it's probably not going to win any prizes for ambient necessarily although you know quite nice plinky sounds but actually what you can do in terms of getting drones out of it evolving drones that move about the fact that you can modulate things at audio rates to get extra grit in the fact that you can independently sequence the envelope per knob functionality as well independently to the notes that are being played in the new firmware there's duophonic as well I think this might actually be a bit of a sleeper hit I don't think it goes into A tier for this stuff but it's an easy beat here if the stylophones and the mini brook can be in here then certainly this can as well it's probably further up that's what just moves some of these down perhaps yeah so somewhere somewhere yeah somewhere around that I know that's too low anyway the audio isn't that important yeah so yeah I think it's actually a bit of a sleeper for doing drone stuff not necessarily for ambient stuff but for getting big character full drones yes or we're getting getting towards the end here I think people probably guess what these four are going to do so let's let's do the play so the play is an interesting one because on paper in terms of its feature set it comes in very similar to the dig attack which may well be getting ranked pretty high and I recently did a video exploring how you can make use of the plays algorithmic and generative functionality to create really interesting evolving sequences especially when it comes to sort of ambient movement and ambient harmonies and it does do that very very well and I want to put it high but the thing that is holding me back from putting it as high as I might do otherwise is that although the sequencing is incredibly proficient at doing this kind of genetic stuff and when it comes to the sound design side of things it is somewhat limited in what you can do to the individual samples it's very much an instrument where you prepare samples first rather than interact with them and manipulate them once they're on the device it also lacks the ability to do open looping infinite samples which for the kind of stuff that I do again is somewhat limiting so in terms of what it can do with the generative patterns on the sequences it scores highly but for me for ambient stuff and especially for drawing stuff the less fully featured sound engine that sit down so it's not seat here by any means but it's in beat here it's not necessarily that high up I think yeah probably above some of these here but yeah somewhere around there somewhere around the middle of beat here if it had more sound design functionality then it would be high plain and simple if we had some LFOs and some envelopes to play with you can't even envelope the filter for example on the play which is you know quite a limitation potentially right on to the electron voice so which one should we go for first let's go for the let's go for the digitate it's the one I've had the longest so digitate you'll probably already guessed if you've seen anything on my channel that's easy into the S tier it's just a wonderful synthesis engine that is able to do sweet things and bright things and dark and dewy things paired with an incredibly powerful sequencer and a bunch of ways to modulate the sound potentially on a per step basis it's multi-tomboral which makes a big difference when you're trying to layer up sounds and it's a joy to use and to create things with it's especially adept I think personally for me the way I use it anyway doing drone stuff the way that FM synthesis can create sounds which constantly move and evolve is so compelling when it comes to drones again as I say pairing it with that really really fantastic sequencer which can run very slowly and do evolving things with chance so that you have drones and ambient sequences which are constantly evolving and rolling over each other and never quite repeat the same way but still have some repetitive aspects of them to ground them in a musical way yeah it's fantastic synth it is arguably my desert island synth for anything not just for ambient and drone actually for anything but it does have some stiff competition from its cousins here so again let's do uh dig attack next so that's again uh straight into S tier all day long especially with the new firmware update which allows you to stretch and manipulate samples in whole new ways now they've introduced the different machines so a lot of what I said about the dig atone also applies to the dig attack in terms of the way that its sequencer works but the way that I will often use the dig attack especially when it's been used solo is to use it as a kind of uh sequence of all tape machine running multiple loops which I can mix live using the mixer page and have those loops be doing different things based upon the sequences on top of the actual loops looping if that makes sense so having the sequencer set it so that every now and again the loop reverses or goes forwards or goes to double time or changes its filter or you know any number of different things also with all of the various distortion down sampling bit crushing the ways that the filters can resonate really strongly to the point that they will ping um there's so much that you can do with the um sound design and manipulation of the samples once you have them in there now that we have two out of foes which again was something was added in a firmware update you can push and pull those samples even more is it better than the dig atone god that's really really difficult I have to admit that although the dig atone is my desert island since I probably on a day-to-day basis gravitate towards using the dig attacks more often does that mean it's better it might do we don't know yeah okay I'll commit to it I'll say so I'll put the dig attack higher um it's a dig attack higher than the op six yes we'll try that order I might change that let's grab the syntax while we're in here as well so the syntax ostensibly um is kind of a drum machine synth but it's also one of my absolute favorite synths for drone and that's not a joke it really really is again all of the things we can say about the signature also applies to the syntax but what the syntax has especially when it comes to drone is that beautiful beautiful master drive which rattles and howls and introduces inter modulation between the different synth sounds and you pair that with the the gritty and characterful analog oscillators which can do a ring mod again creating more movement amongst the sound and then you have various levels of fizz and ping and rattle and digital noise happening across all of the digital oscillators as well and I actually end up using the syntax almost more the way that I use the dig attack so with the dig atone it's all about sequencing things and putting together compositions or generative or or otherwise but with the um the syntax and the dig attack it's about setting things going and then doing live mixing and it's less about having a predefined sequence and more what happens in the moment it's a wonderful machine for drone yeah just just wonderful and of course you can use it for all the other stuff that it's good at which goes for the other electron boxes as well now where does it go in this list oh god okay it's going to go in third place here because these other two are better for ambient than it is but for heavy heavy drone if this was just a drone the syntax would probably be at the top honestly people keep asking me in the comments of my how I drone on the dig atone on the syntax videos okay well which one do you like more I guess I've just answered that question but um as I say I use them very differently despite the fact of their similarities I'll commit to saying that for drone and specifically for drone the syntax is better than dig atone but for all-round ambient and drone the dig atone wins okay there we go you've got your answer which brings us to our last synth here and the newest one in terms of my ownership which is the sama lyre 8 this again is probably no surprise to anyone but that's going straight into the s tier and it's going is this is that right I think that's right yeah it's going right near the top of the s tier of I mean of course it is and and the funny thing about the lyre 8 is that on paper feature for feature it's outclassed by so many other synths on this list if you just look at the the feature list it's got eight analog voices it's got um two LFOs which are shared between the voices it hasn't got independent envelopes it's got a distortion circuit it's got a delay circuit it's got two delay circuits you can't modify the timbre of the different voices manually there's so much about it on paper which seems like it's a lesser device and yet it's just one of the most inspiring instruments that I own it has a primitive sound to it and I mean that in the most positive way possible it feels to me like it it's it's some kind of alternate history birth of electronic music it feels like it's coming from the past it's primordial it's throbbing it's raw and it's dangerous sounding and I just love it every time I go to use it it's so limited and yet so expressive but then many many instruments are very very limited you know a violin is you know actually a very limited instrument compared to say the op 6 in terms of the types of sounds it can do and yet it can be just one of the most beautiful instruments and can be so inspiring for those that play it and the lyrate does that as well when I said that vibes was going to be a big part of this this is a big vibe pick for me because it just comes down to what it's like to use and the raw sound that comes out of it you know sometimes the sounds that come out of this synth maybe feel more emotional than any other synth that I own and it's just something to do with that primitive rawness and yet it gets beaten by the digotech by the looks of it I think I stand by that as well I don't think I can I don't think there's another instrument like gravitate more to you than the digotech so I guess that's it so anything that needs to be bumped a tier I don't think so I think I am happy with that well thank you for hanging out if you have indeed hung out for this slightly different kind of video I hope you enjoyed it if you did enjoy it then please do let me know in the comments if you want to see more sort of talky less technical videos on the channel because anything I can do that is different is going to reduce the likelihood of burnout basically when it comes down to it so if you want more sort of chatty more about the creativity less in-depth and technical videos then yeah let me know in the comments and of course please let me know in the comments what I've got wrong here and what you would vote highest out of this lot or indeed out of the synths that you own but I think that's it so as always a like and a subscribe is massively appreciated and other than that until next time take care bye bye