Best free virtual synthesizers (Windows)

It depends on the sound you are looking for.

Do you need realistic sounds (acoustic instruments or voices, ethnic instruments)?

Reproductions (with all the usual limitations) of analog synthesizers?

The list is long and almost everything produced to date runs mostly on Windows (unfortunately, I say this because it is a system that often has stability problems), then on Mac, and finally on open source operating systems (Fedora, Linux, etc.).

So in a certain sense, there is no best synthesizer on Windows, but rather the (presumed) best piano developed with physical modeling, or sampled, just as there are sound libraries usable with "third-party" software, meaning not produced by the companies that developed the sounds.

One must therefore distinguish the various software into:

Sample players (single sounds or multi-sampled, soundfont, wav, aiff, etc.)

VST standalone and non-standalone (sounds in proprietary format and non-proprietary converted into the latter).

VSTs that utilize physical modeling.

Sound libraries (of every type).

This is a topic that cannot be exhausted in a few lines.

Why not consider VSTs that digitally reproduce oscillators, filters and modulators? Such as TyrellN6, or Zebralette, or Triple Cheese from u-he...

One needs to see what they are looking for, one or more synthesizers that are immediately usable or tools to create almost from scratch (as you suggested) oscillators, filters, amplifiers, etc..

I don't think I have ever heard of U-He, but usually companies "unknown" to most are often the best, because they focus on quality and not too much on advertising.

Piccinesco wrote:

One needs to see what they are looking for: one or more synthesizers that are immediately usable, or tools to create almost from scratch (as you suggested) oscillators, filters, amplifiers, etc..

I don't think I have ever heard of U-He, but usually companies "unknown" to most are often the best, because they focus on quality and not too much on advertising.

Zebra, u-he's flagship, is the favorite synth of Hans Zimmer... I am quite sure I read a statement from him some time ago on the VI control website.

Zebra as a name is not new to me, but I wouldn't want to have confused it with something I heard or saw a few years ago.

I will do some research.

In any case, these synths are ready to use straight out of the box, they come with a list of ready-to-use presets...

I checked, I wasn't wrong, it was indeed the synth that I had noticed quite some time ago, but I hadn't looked into it further.

U-he makes incredibly powerful synths! Zebra, Zebralette (which is the smaller but free version), Tyrell, Podolsky, Diva which if I'm not mistaken is the latest arrival.

tyrell, podolsky, triple cheese and zebralette are free. And also Synth1, which however is not U-he.

Then there are the various Arturia, Native Instruments, Sylenth... but those are all paid. Anyway, there are excellent sites that review free synths,

www.pluginboutique.com , www.musicradar.com and then there will be millions of others, they need to be tested

A while ago I downloaded some free synth VSTs that feature different types of synthesis; some don't seem to be bad, I will make a list for next time.

So, I'm downloading these free ones from U-he just to try them out.