I think one of the most "forgotten" thing when it comes to compare both synths, is that serum has been around for several years, and in the process has evolved a lot. Vital is still new, not even a year since it was launched and it's an amazing achievement for a free plugin to be constantly compared to one of the best synths in the market. We gotta wait to see where Vital si going to go, how's going to change and evolve.
On the other hand, Steve Duda came with Serum in 2014 as a unique design. In almost 10 years tech has moved forward so in my opinion (yeah I work in IT / development) it became easier to create software. And the idea already existed, Vital used a lot of what was completely new in Serum, also easier imho. But in the end, both are great synths, a lot alike but here and there a touch different, always fun to have more options. Glad the video did not zoom in on the price difference too much, it should not matter in a comparison like this. And a one time fee of 189 is not that expensive in my opinion, while there is a valid free alternative in Vital now still worth it's money.
I never bought Serum, so when Vital did come out, the value of the Serum just plummeted for me. Nearly all of the free and paid Serum tutorials out there can be applied to Vital for a sound that is plenty close. If I had bought Serum already, I'd definitely use it, but now that Vital is there for free, there's just not nearly enough justification for me to go buy Serum.
@@alpiina5425 lol, as if searching for and buying presets of other people's work can ever compare to gaining the wealth of experience and practice that comes from learning how to make any sound you'd ever need on your own. For free. Don't get me wrong, though. Presets are great, but they are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to synthesis. For me they are only demonstrations of technique that I can examine and learn to apply in my own homemade presets and projects. Plus you can buy thousands of presets for BOTH Serum and Vital to your hearts content, so I'm not sure what your point is. Tutorials are a nearly free long term investment which will earn me interest in the future, whereas buying presets is a short term fix that will end up eating at your income in the long haul. I'd advise you to closely examine your financial decisions for inefficiencies to remove or restructure.
@@tantaloss8682 thats what processing is for . you can have something and make it sound completely different. i can use a preset as an idea and freeze and flatten it or however u wanna do it and process it and it can sound totally different but the idea for me to work with was always there. its like making yourself not use loops when you can use them the correct way and play legos. i can hear an element i like and use it and cut everything else out. ya most people wont mess with it because they are lazy and wanna sound like someone else and sound like "skrillex" but i see them as a foundation for creativity. and if i can do that without spending forever making stuff i may or may not use then why not? when you buy synth you have presets for a reason. if you want to be lazy and not do anything it shows and thats why those people dont do shit with their production. music production has endless boundries. "you" are stopping yourself from making something from a better suited foundation (a preset) its all about how you implement things. you think i wanna make music and use the same shit everyone uses ? loooool. no but if i can use a sound cause its closer to what i want and make it weird and unique and different then why not? no one gives a shit if you made some sound from scratch. they care if the music is original and good. or else you're essentially showing them some junk and some new sound you learned to sound design to say "i made this from scratch and didnt use any presets" and they wouldnt know wtf youre talking about. lmaooo "worry about my finances". ill be fine.lol
Serum has more overtones in that bass patch, which is why you're hearing a bigger sound. You've got an additional oscillator on vital. Why not add a sawtooth, high pass filter, and envelope to accent it during the sustain phase.
The most significant difference between Serum and Vital is $189. So the only question is, are the minor differences worth paying that much. Maybe it is for someone, not for me.
@@FenlonAcoustic From the Splice Rent-To-Own FAQs: "There's no interest, extra charge, or hidden fee associated with the Rent-to-Own model. You will pay roughly the same amount through Rent-to-Own as you would if you were to buy the plugin directly from the manufacturer at a non-discounted price." ---------------------------------- How is this a "contradiction of terms?" Please explain instead of just making vague statements without substantiation. So, what's your explanation?
@@arnoldziffel112 Okay, sorry for the vague statement. Let me try to explain... You don't own something you rent... As an example: If you are renting a property, you don't own it. Therefore 'Rent-to-Own', as a concept, is a contradiction of terms.
"Rent to own" is a fairly new buzzword that doesn't make complete sense. In the old days, the term would be "Paying for it in installments", like when you ordered a sofa or a TV from a catalogue. You'd get full use of the item on day one and eventually own it, but if you failed to keep up with the payments, it would be taken away. As you pointed out, if you rent something, you never get to own it, so "rent to own" is a strange phrase, but I think people know that it's supposed to mean "buy in installments".
For me an analog sound is in the stability/starting point of the oscillators. Serums are not really my taste . A bit too perfect . Discovery pro from disco dsp is very good followed by softube model d . Vital is a great exploration tool but there isn't much to me between vital and serum
Serum is pretty expensive, if it was around 100 bucks i would buy it but 190 is a bit to much, Vital pro 80 bucks, can deliver the same thing for less price and user friendly
If I remember correctly, according to Steve Duda's manual, the "fat" knob on filters in Serum does nothing about the "analog vibe" it is purely volume, in contrast to the drive knob which is on the other hand supposed to have a model dependant distortion curve. also, though I have to be that guy, though it happened too many times to me as well, the first link to the soundset in broken and sends me to a 404 Nice video though, sorry if my comment sounds mostly critical :)
Just tested the link, worked on my end, not sure what happened. RE: - fat knob - you're right that it's not algorithmically adding any vintage juju. This is more what I meant, I just didn't explain it as in depth as I should have. The way it works with a LP filter which is what I used in the video, it will add a volume boost to the frequencies under the cut off point and if your resonance is above zero, it plays really nicely with that as it boosts it making the reso more curved right at the cutoff point. This is actually how some vintage synths naturally behave and it's an old school filtering trick with EQ when using steep dB per octaves slopes. So I guess I'm saying all this because when I said that it can help make things sound more more analog, I was meaning/thinking more about warmth (more pronounced low mids with a LP filter). Critical comments are always welcome! Lead to improvements and discussion - two things I'm all for.
Tested again the link myself from my phone, and I agree, it works as intended, no idea why it didn't work from my PC, got myself the patches, will definitely browse trough them asap :)
"Serum does this sound better but also I intentionally did not try to make the same sound even though I could and the different sound that I made had a different character" wut? if you can replicate the sound, do it and then tell us specifically why it was harder
The best thing about your Origins patches for Vital is that they aren't detuned, they aren't warbling, and they aren't 5ths. They actually sound like you're meant to play them... with a keyboard, no less. I love the emphasis on keys as well. Great stuff.
Might as well! Something I didn’t touch on in the video is with layering, you can make the same sound in two synths and layer it and it’s kinda like double tracking a guitar or a vocal because of the subtle differences
I’ve never been able to get on with Serum. I’ve created maybe 5 patches. When I downloaded Vital a month or so ago it just clicked with me, and I’ve created probably 30 presets just in the last few weeks. It just seems to be more intuitive for me. Regardless of whether serum sounds better than vital when replicating the same basic sounds for me, if I’m making unique sounds on one synth but I’m not in the other then that synth is the better one, for me.
True, the fact is these synths are pretty similar, once you mix it all down the difference in sound will not be recognised by the listener, I think these synths are hand in hand
Thanks for this video and your packs...always quality work. I bought the mid tier pack of Vital and am loving it for it's ease of use and sound. I demoed Serum and while I think it's a great synth Vital is just a better deal.
If you ensure the exact same waveform and phase, vital and serum will null each other out. I think people get fooled a bit cuz the init saws are actually different in the synths, but if you copy wavetables from one to the other, they will cancel each other out. I do prefer the workflow in Vital though.
No they don't. I have tried to do what you say, and they don't cancel at all. The sound is definitely not the same, even with the same wavetable file loaded.
@@bensilicate Ok, so the process for getting the null is to isolate just a few cycles in the middle of the wave and normalize them to the same amplitude and manually shift the phase after the render. The key differences are in te way the phase is displayed and thus sometimes confuse 90 and 0 between the 2. The envelopes are also very different. Also the actual init saws are pretty different in each synth so be careful of that too wen trying this.
The unison controls in vital is nuts. You can assign them to different wavetable frames, different positions in modulators or tune them to chords, octaves, harmonics, etc. You can make really wide pad sounds with just "one" oscillator. Now I do wish there was option for more than 16 voices, although you technically can have infinite of them if you just slab stereo LFO everywhere lol. Custom tuning of each unison voice would be cool also.
Thanks for the great video. Wow! I loved your guitar analogy in this. But this is more an apples to apples than Strat and Les Paul. More American Standard Vs. Player Strat 😂
Always need to remember, as musicians we 'listen' to and 'hear' things differently than most music consumers. I'd say 95+% of people who listen to songs created with either of those synths don't know, or care, which one we used. They care if it moves them and if we wrote a good tune. I don't make music for musicians, I make music that I like to make, for people that enjoy music without using analyzers to judge a song. Remember: if you have to explain why it's better, then it probably isn't.
I agree 100% that we producers get too in our heads and listeners don’t care about that stuff. BUT As the people who make the music, we should be knowledgeable about the tools at our disposal to create and know about how one tool differs from the other.
both are amazing , but I experienced Vital more, I think it is easier to make the sound you want with it. but IMO vital needs a more powerful single thread performance CPU
Serum has better oscillators than Vital. It has better textures, it is more clinical and clean than Vital. But I find it is somehow a little bit sterile and quite agressive. Vital is dirtier, but softer and warmer. A priori I find its sound more pleasant. Moreover I feel like Vital's routing capabilities weren't shown much in this video, and I think they are much more powerfull than in Serum, which makes Vital a more creative synthesizer. But technically, yeah, Serum sounds better than Vital.
Bro that mini moog 204e segue makes the video…I kept seeing Vital in Dan Worrall vids where he generally shines Vital hard…but this helped peak into possible why…2023, still legit. 🖤😎🙌👂🍭
@@leiocerayt LFO point modulation maybe? Serum’s option to modulate the LFO points was introduced about 1 or 2 years ago, probably about 1 and a half year. I’m not totally sure if this is also possible with Vital but if it isn’t then that would be something Matt Tytel might add in the future.
@@greedokenobi3855 you can modulate them in Vital as well + I think Vital has a better mod remap. Not saying this as an argument which synth is better I`m just adding to the discussion here. I actually think that the these two plugins despite being so similar are not interchangeable rather it depends on what type of sound you want to create.
The reason behind that thought process is modeling technology improves and so does processing power of computers it doesn't correlate directly 1:1 with hardware/ physical instruments. In the end they are tools use what works for you.
I love Serum. Many of my favourite tracks use it - the harmonics are so rich. Today was my first time using it. As soon as I heard the basic patch initialise I felt the same feeling I had for music 20 years ago. Better than my first line of Oxy! Ok, almost. Who knows my new addiction to Serum could be amazing!
bro Vital is basicly makes the same sound witch is crazy... and if you really REALLY want to same sound just ever so slightly boost the low mids for that Analogue sound
The first bass exmple is really juicy in serum and breating also wide, in vital is a liitle poor and static and not wide, but with some tweaks you can get closer, great video!
I never bought Serum. Just started using Vital a couple days ago since they have a monthly subscription, similar to Splice and Serum now, but I can honestly follow along most Serum tutorials, it's just figuring out where things are in Vital vs in Serum, other than that, you can make basically the same sounds for roughly the same price. I may give Serum a try and see which I prefer more.
I use a keyboard with a sustain pedal, and I can't find any way to get the pedal to work with Vital. Pull up a preset or make your own in Serum (or Pigments), and the sustain pedal just works--don't know how I would get it to not work...except, you know, to not step on it. That's a significant difference for me, a deal breaker actually. I don't want to spend time making a bunch of presets and then not be able to use all my expressive possibilities when playing them.
I presume this has been fixed since your comment. A quick look at Google suggests there were some bugs in the MIDI implementation of Vital when it was first released, such as sustain pedals and MPE not working quite as expected.
Both channels are at unity in the daw. I might have gain compensated a bit (not flawlessly) but things should be fairly equal. I think the only things that sound inherently better in serum are the filters and the fx (reverb, ott, distortion).
You can do anything and more with Vital if you know how to use it properly. I create EDM tracks, and ill never use something else than Vital. Serum is not worth the money
@@EchoSoundWorks anything that vital doesn't have can be made from scratch. Any synth and sound. I have not yet come across something that's better in serum that i can not do in vital. If you need additional stuff, just search the internet, plenty to find there. But like i said. Serum is not worth the money if everything and more can be done in Vital.
That’s not true. Serum can store samples in both the sample osc and wavetable osc. Just drag a sample into the serums sample osc, the sample must come from outside of the file browser for serum (so like on your desktop or from your daw) and then save the preset. Serum saves it’s in the preset.
The filters at 5:05 aren't exactly the same. If you look closely, you can see a little bumb at the Vital filter that lets some of the higher mid range frequencys through. But I don't really know if that would have made a difference.
Finally, some who hear the difference in this software. Serum sound more like a real synthesizer. The same thing pigments 3 just sounds like a thin mono-sounding keyboard from the early 90s. You have a very good ear, guitarist hear more detail in their music than others to me.
One thing that’s over looked are the years of RU-vid videos on how-to operate Serum. I’m new to really diving into synth work and so that makes Serum a no brainer for me, REGARDLESS of how good another synth may sound, or if it’s free. Look at it like this: you’re paying for Serum but you’re basically buying a template with 10s of thousands of RU-vid lesions, and dope packs that are out there now. Famous songs used by Serum. How you gonna dial in the banger tricks if you’re on a different synth? How Willie how? The industry speaks Serum. Make that your bottom, and sidepiece the rest.
you can apply literally any of said videos to vital and pretty much any other synth out there but nvm that`s besides the point ... imo your argument goes against what music creation should be and this way of thinking is exactly why the scene is oversaturated with uninspiring and boring music. I see this way too often ppl commenting things like "Oh I just need to get Serum/Omnisphere/whatever and I`ll make awesome music!" Plugins have nothing to do with making "banger tracks" it all depends on the person who is writing the music. The use of terms such as "industry", "templates", "dope packs' etc. is actually making me think that you were being sarcastic..
@@isellcrack3537 my life isn’t music. And I’m over the “the scene” and don’t care what others are doing. But if you want to pick up synth then why would you learn on anything other than a proven system? If you can take what you hear on the radio and then adjust a synth to that, with the help of RU-vid, why would you want to make that learning curve more complicated? I don’t have time to look for other buttons or sub screens while learning on something “counter culture” just so I can feel “original”, fresh or edgy. Over it. Maybe after I have some sort of workflow figured out and I’m growing out of the gold standard, maybe then look at changing things up for creativity sake. But too often this stuff is complicated enough for most people without an adderall prescription.
