Breaking into the competitive world of VST instruments takes some doing. With big names like Serum, Native Instruments and Rob Papen so well established, it requires quality and originality to make an impact.
We believe Vital by developer Matt Tytel does a pretty good job of making an impact!
Vital Synth is a spectral warping wavetable synthesiser. It is beautifully designed and packed full of features. This is an incredibly visual VST that shows you what you’re doing as you shape and warp your sounds. You may think this will be a CPU destroyer like Serum but all of Vital’s animations are GPU optimized leaving your CPU free to focus on the audio processing.
Spectral warping acts on a waveform's harmonics and can create drastically different shapes and timbres from a simple source. This is where the real magic of the synth happens.
You can turn your own samples into wavetables using pitch-splice or the vocode wavetable converter. There is also the option to create wavetables from scratch or generate wavetables from text for truly unique sounds (if that appeals to you!)
In comparison to Serum, Vital offers a few additional features in several areas, such as oscillators, where it provides 3 rather than Serum’s 2, each with 2 selectable wave-morphing dials and their own unison mode. There are also 3 filters, as opposed to the 2 on Serum, with some more flexibility when it comes to the setup, with serial and parallel both available.
One very cool feature is the ability to preview modulations too, so you can quickly try things out before committing! And of course, another big difference between the Serum and Vital is the price….
Built to be affordable
There are several different tiers including a free tier to ease you in and a monthly subscription. The different tiers open up more controls like additional macros, wavetables and fx slots depending on which plan you go for.
Even the basic version gives you plenty to play with for free but if you just want to dip in for a bit the subscription is great value at £5 per month, unlocking everything the VST has to offer.
Cinematic sound quality
It’s worth noting, this synthesiser sounds great. Producertech tutor and bass music pro, Seppa, even believes it sounds better than the Serum and declares himself a fan.
His recent live stream for Producertech Members focused on sound design using the synth, running through a multitude of features and building a sound from scratch.
“I like the sound of the Ableton Wavetable synth but Vital is much more complex and in-depth. There are a lot more modulation options, by that I mean more envelopes, LFO’s and random stuff.”
How to route the oscillators
How to use the chorus
How to use the flanger and reverb
Serum has been the go to Wavetable synth for a while now and it’s still great. If you’re used to using it you’ll find jumping into Vital easy enough.
If you’re looking for a new synthesiser to get creative with, Vital could be the perfect option. Find out more here.
