Synths for pads

[Materia]

Hi Desk

What are your current favourite synths for pads? I've been stuck with the same set for quite a while now.

Don't say Omnisphere, I don't have 50-odd gigabytes left on my laptop, sorry.

kthxbye

[Block Party]

The Wavesation is King! There is a VST version of that.

I like the flexibility of AAS Tassman as well.

[Materia]

Ooh, good old Wavestation eh.

I haven't checked out Tassman, maybe I should! Cheers.

[Block Party]

Tassman is a modular synth, which means it is endless and hugely confusing! Sounds good though. I use the preset builds and then make my own patches based on the modules present. Cubase comes with some good pad VSTis but obviously, you would need Cubase for that!

[x]

Wavestation rocks, but isn't as tweakable as I'd like (wavetable is always gonna be like that). The Polysix is one of my favourites, but can be a little thin. FM7 is also good at pads, but outside of the easy-edit mode it's the most unwieldy beast ever (and easy-edit is none too flexible). Probably my favourite for all sounds at the moment including pads is the Korg MonoPoly plugin. Hardware wise the Roland JP8 makes beautiful pad sounds (if a little dated). Not sure what emulators for it are available, and doubt you'd find a real one anywhere. Oh and also the Nord Lead. That is good at all the things.

[Block Party]

JP8000/JP8080 is a good alternative to the massively expensive Jupiter 8. I got a 8080 for £330 on eBay the other week and it is a nice synth. I prefer my Nord, but they do different things as the JP goes into self oscillation which the Nord can't do.