Advantages/Disadvantages Syntronik/M.Philharmonik in ST4?

[DenisAzzellini]

Hello everybody, my first post here.

In the past few months I have been purchasing and familiarizing myself to various IK products, notably ST4 Standard, Mirsolav P. Classic ed. and Syntronik Deluxe.

Looking through most presets and playing with all three, it seems that both Miroslav P. and Syntronik are reskinned versions of Sample Tank and they have the same controls as ST4.

Presets can be loaded without issue
The effects rack on Syntronik and Sample Tank seem to be identical
The effects on Mirsolav P. seem to be reskinned versions but are otherwise available in ST4

Sonically from what I can perceive, they sound exactly the same whether loaded from Sample Tank or Syntronik or Miroslav P. (minus the overall reverb which is set by default in Miroslav P. which can be very easily added in ST4)

If the above is correct, then I would much rather use everything within ST4 as it brings more flexibility for the following reasons:

1. All your instruments are available in one place, which means you can create multis etc.. across all your libraries. Syntronik & Miroslav P. will only load their respective sounds. ST4 brings everything together.

2. When the novelty of the various synth interfaces in Syntronik wears off, I find that the different layouts to what are effectively the same controls is counter productive. They clearly are not identical to the original synths, and they do the exact same thing but the layouts are all over the place. Sometimes sliders, sometimes knobs.. In a DAW environment this becomes a down-side in my books. In ST4 you get same interface regardless of the sound you load.

3. ST4 has the strummer and phraser. Syntronik only has the arpeggiator and Miroslav P has none. Using everything in ST4 will give you all three, for all your sounds.

4. Resource-wise when loading plugins, loading everything in Sample Tank seems to make more sense than having the three plugins loaded separately. Also the 16 channel capability of ST4 trumps the 4 channel capability of Syntronik.

So it brings me to the question: Are there any features or functionality that is lost if you simply use ST4 for all your sound library and simply forget about the native Syntronik and Mirsoslav P interfaces?

regards to all,
Claude

[Trensharo]

ST3 has a better browser than ST4. So, finding stuff in the native plug-ins is a lot easier - particularly for Philharmonik 2. The ST4 browser is quite sluggish.

Apart from that, no major disadvantages. There are actually some benefits to using ST4, like the better UI scaling and the sound engine has been updated. The UI is generally better, but being able to easily browse a large sample library is kind of important - so I never use ST4 for those libraries.

[DenisAzzellini]

I agree... finding it rather frustrating to use the browser. First thing to go was the icons in the first column - that made it a bit better, but it's hard to find what's needed - particularly as the collection gets larger.

I do not have ST3 itself so I cannot comment, but I am finding that being able to treat the sample library as a whole is somewhat more efficient than having Syntronik and Philharmonik separately.

[Trensharo]

Syntronik has some features that may not be available to those instruments in ST4 (as they as ST3 instrumentd) and the UI is more appropriate for what they are.

Miroslav's ST3-based plugin is faster for building multis, and has a keyswitch panel that is very convenient when building articulation maps. You're going to do a ton more clicking around just loading patches using ST4, due to the way the browser is implemented.

They're just more productive to work with.

I find the other stuff distracting when I just want to work with one of those libraries, and I want a plugin that doesn't show unavailable features like ST4's edit page.

Plus, the documentation uses the native plugins, so it makes referencing things easier.

[DenisAzzellini]

Hi, thanks for that. Aside from the navigation/interface, would you have an example of what features could be missing (particularly on the audio side) ?

The reason I ask is because in the documentation it appears that ST3 libraries are fully supported in ST4. I've already determined that I much prefer working in ST4 despite it's browsing - the main reason being that I can create multis which aren't limited to the individual packages, but at the same time i don't want to be missing on anything which is only available in the respective packages.

I really am trying to familiarize myself with all aspects of these various packages ..

cheers,
Claude

[Trensharo]

Hi, thanks for that. Aside from the navigation/interface, would you have an example of what features could be missing (particularly on the audio side) ?

The reason I ask is because in the documentation it appears that ST3 libraries are fully supported in ST4. I've already determined that I much prefer working in ST4 despite it's browsing - the main reason being that I can create multis which aren't limited to the individual packages, but at the same time i don't want to be missing on anything which is only available in the respective packages.

I really am trying to familiarize myself with all aspects of these various packages ..

cheers,
Claude

The differences are mostly usability and GUI-related.

ST4 has a ST3 Legacy Engine built-in to support Legacy ST4 Instrument Libraries, which includes both Syntronik and Philharmonik 2. They are fully supported.