The new Korg Multi/Poly and Moog Muse are very popular new synths. Many say the Multi/Poly can do just about anything with its numerous filter and oscillator types, multiple LFOs and envelopes, extensive routing capabilities and amazing digital effects. And the Muse, with its just released firmware update, is also going in that direction with a crazy amount of multiple LFOs and Envelopes and extensive routing of everything to everything else.

The shear amount of control and options on these two new synths is simply astounding! People are saying they can make almost any sound imaginable. But they also say that there is a lot of menu diving and things can get confusing very fast.

So, the question is: Are these synths "Too Much"?

I personally like things a lot simpler and straight forward. Keeping things more to a knob per function presentation. Easier to get a good sound and keep from falling down a rabbit hole. Fortunately, there are a lot of other synths out there, including some new ones, that follow this alternative paradigm.

So, what do you think? Are synths getting to be "Too Much"? Too complicated? Or is the balance of what's available just about right?

Yeah

No instrument can ever be too much. It just becomes a new fun toy. To join the universe of fun toys.

That said, I might make my next track based on hand saws, wine glasses, and huge plastic water bottles. Empty Listerine bottles have a pretty interesting tone.

And maybe some kazoos. Or do you think kazoos would be too much?

You meant Korg Multi/Poly? Not too much, just right in my opinion.

Yes. Thanks! I made the correction.

We are all different in our approaches to music-making, so one of us prefers vast amounts of possibilities (Montage, Muse etc.), while another one is happy twirling their Volcas.

I'm somewhere in between: Some years ago I sold my Baloran "The River" because it seemed to inimidate me, and it gave me a bad concience knowing I would never use all of its features. Nearly at the same time I sold my Jupiter-4 because it seemed to say "no more, that's it!" whenever I was 80 % on my way to a patch I really liked.
And I know that exactly these two synths are judged as two of the most high-class synths of all times. Alas, they were not for me.
I love synths like the GS Music e7 or the Erica Steampipe: high-quality sound, reasonable amount of features, specialists in their games.
But I also love my SH-101.

Analogy: Have you ever been to the British Museum in London (River)? You can spend months in there and only get a glance of what they have to offer.
But there's the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford (e7): exactly the same, but reasonably-sized.
And then there's my own collection of fossils, artifacts and random stuff (101): ridiculous in comparison, but perfect for me...

Cheers,
Bert

At the end of the day, you the player decides what you feel comfortable with. No one is forcing you to buy any particular synth. You listen to YT vids, read reviews and get a pretty good approximation of what its all about.

Some people buy a complex synth because it does one or a few things well, that suites their needs and some of the other functions will probably never/or rarely even be used. You don't have to utilise the whole synth and every function.

ie, I was a little daunted by the complexity of the Prophecy when I first encountered it, but the expression options and it's sound fitted beautifully in what I wanted it to achieve with it. I sussed it all out later on and never felt like it was overwhelming, because I used/treated it in a way 'I' wanted to use it.

Because a lot of us are buying and selling gear we don't really give ourselves time with an instrument.

IMO you'll find your way around most synths if you use them regularly for a year or more. You tube tutorials make things much easier, the Muse has loads of content !

Too much = more features than the market is willing to pay for. You don't see many 64 voice analog synths.

Stuff like granular can seem a bit extra at times but in the right hands it sounds good.

I like both. I like the simplicity of something like the Moog Grandmother where it's very basic and sounds great, and I love something like the HydraSynth where I don't quite know how everything works but am happy having accidents where cool stuff happens. Somewhere in the middle is where the magic happens.

I rarely look at manuals because I like discovering stuff months and years down the road. That element of the unknown keeps things fresh and exciting for me.

I probably only use about 20% of the capabilities of what kit I have and the same probably applies to me. I does not bother me. Perhaps I am not worthy of such fair. just enjoy.

You answered it for yourself already.

Besides that for me the only criteria is: do i NEED=really really want this or that sound for MY kind of music on top of what i already got.

There are a few overcomplicated synths, but even one of those i would buy (if affordable for me) if i NEED=really really want its sound.

Muse and Mutlipoly sure can do a lot, but both i do not need or want soundwise for MY sound. No matter, how much they are offering.

It all depends on your taste, preferences, and the way your mind works. Some like the simplicity of a basic synth, while others like to dive into complex sound design on a jack-of-all-trades box.

I’ve tried the gamut at this point, and I tend to lean a bit toward the simpler side, but enjoy deep diving on occasion. The simple synths can reach their sweet spots quickly, but I also hit their limits fast, then I have to use a more complex synth to get the sound I want.

But if it’s too complex or menu divey, I tend not to use it as much or mainly use presets or patches I made previously on it. (*cough*Roland*cough*)

For me, the Sequential Take 5 and Oberheim TEO-5 seem to be the most ideal balance for me. Powerful enough to let me do just about anything I want (on an analog synth) but not so overwhelming that I just pull up a preset and play.

Sometimes though, it’s fun to grab my most basic synth (Moog Werkstatt-01) and just play within its limitations, as it still sounds good.

But there’s no right or wrong answer. Some people’s perfect synth is a deep rompler, while others prefer something like the SH-101 where you really can’t get lost.

I lean towards the K.I.S.S. (keep it simple, stupid) philosophy in most things in life, and that's what I usually look for in instruments as well. If something has a ton of features and functions I know I'll never use or be interested in, I just look elsewhere, simple as that.

The only time I’ve had a “this is a bit too much” moment with a synth is when I tried the demo of Madrid’s labs’ Sumu. It’s a nice sounding synth, the presets sound good, but whenever I tried to make patches on it the process was “okay that’s a bit plain, let me try that, a bit unworkable, let’s try that other thing, aaand now it’s not making sound and I can’t figure out how to get it back.” And I liked their Aalto plugin, I would’ve bought it if it had a higher polyphony, but Sumu was just too obtuse.

For me the Multi/Poly design means I can do whatever sound design I want to do. So, I want all the features, but what I do when designing sounds is sometimes put limitations on myself, and then you come up with something new.

I agree. I don't make complex sounds myself, and I only really use the kinds of complex sounds that come as plugin presets. To begin with, I have ADHD, so the more knobs there are, the more it stresses me out, haha.

When it comes to hardware, making sounds myself is only really fun on something like a Minimoog, a KingKORG or a Reface CS, and those simple synths usually sounds better when it comes to raw and simple patches. For example, KingKORG sounds better than Multi/Poly.

A lot of this comes down to design and implementation. A good synth will make a complex synth (or form of synthesis) intuitive and straightforward. I think Korg nailed this with the OpSix - it really simplifies FM synthesis IMO. For me, a synth becomes "too much" when it crams too much into a relatively small interface, requires a substantial amount of menu-diving for sound design parameters, and/or is just laid out in a manner that is not intuitive.

Too much features? no way, just don't use them all at the same time.

Too much sound? oh yes, I have couple of those who sound so big they're almost impossible to fit in the mix with anything else

A synth can be too much for someone who can’t deal with depth and complexity. Some people enjoy a great variety of diverse options in their synthesis, many can’t handle much more than a couple of oscillators, a filter and a handful of modulators.

You're implying that most people buying these take the time to program their synthesizer in depth or something, when we know from manufacturers themselves that, since the advent of patch memory, most people will never bother programming a single patch.

As for the "menu diving" , this simply the consequence of architecture complexity. This is normal and not a big deal. If that bothers you then buy simpler devices.

A synthesizer can't do too much, however, some synthesizers do not really work as advertised, because they fall short of delivering what their marketing promises, but it is a different issue...

For me a single synthesizer cannot do too much, as someone who prefers one synth that does a lot like an Access Virus, rather than having to hoard 10 monotimbral synthesizers to have 10 different sounds playing at the same time. In fact, modern digital synths don't nearly do enough in my book.

There's what I call the 'complexity paradox' with synths.

The more complex the synth and the more options for sculpting sound presented to the user the size of a synths 'sweet spot' tends to go down. It becomes harder to dial in specific sounds unless you are able to reign in all those parameters, shut off certain ones, or have a 'simple' mode on the synth that only lets you use a limited number of parameters.

The classic example I've always trotted out is the Jupiter 6 versus the Jupiter 8.

The Jupiter 8 is a very fine synth. It's very straightforward in its architecture, easy to learn and wrap your head around, and very easy to quickly dial in the sounds you want or have in your head. Not only is it one giant sweet spot in it's approach, the ranges of certain parameters have been tuned to make it even more of a giant sweet spot. You really have to work hard to make a Jupiter-8 sound terrible.

The Jupiter 6 on the other hand is in many respects a superior synth in terms of architecture and programming. There's a lot more interesting things to do with the JP-6 -- more filter modes, way more interesting cross modulations and LFO interactions, etc. That complexity comes at the cost of the sweet spot. It's a lot easier to take a Jupiter-6 out 'into the weeds' in terms of it's sound, it's more difficult to dial in specific sounds as there are more parameters to keep an eye on (or zero out), and in some ways the increased control signal complexity means that the overall sound may not be as nice as more straightforward synths. By it's very nature the Jupiter-6 can't be turned to be one giant sweet spot... it's more like it has multiple sweet spots but they are much narrower to dial in.

On paper, more complex synths seem like a better dollars-to-feature deal. I'm sure that's the appeal of things like the Polybrute -- there's more stuffed under the hood of some synths than you could possibly explore in a lifetime of noodling. I hear less said about the overall sound of the Polybrute but that may not necessarily be a function of it's extreme complexity -- or maybe it does play a role.

Sometimes though you just want to dial in a specific sound and get to work with the music and this is where the supercomplex synths like the Multi/Poly fall down a little bit. There might actually be too much in there to play around with and the end user can become 'parameter paralysed' and more likely to simply surf presets to find what they need rather than program it from scratch. For sure, the Multi/Poly is a sound programmer's dream but not every musician is a programmer (and for that matter, not every programmer is a musician).

There's definitely a happy medium in there somewhere though.

There are great examples of companies that get it right. The Prophet 12 is probably the gold standard of a pretty complex synthesizer that doesn’t feel like a mess.

Not everyone agrees with me, but I feel like once a synthesizer gets to a certain level of complexity, a software editor, or just software instrument, is preferable to hardware that’s got a lot of menus. A lot of people seem to like the Hydrasynth, but I found its wavetable editor and mod matrix to be clumsy in comparison to something like Serum.

I think one of the issues with complex synthesizers is that some people feel obligated to use everything, all at once, to get the best value. That’s not why a complex synthesizer is good, in my opinion. While you can get really complex and interesting results that way, many sounds just don’t call for it. In fact, they can be ruined by being over complicated.

But the way I look at it is more like a buffet. You can take a little bit of everything, but maybe you just want 2 or 3 things, but a different 2 or 3 things each time you go. Of course, you can order from the menu too, and just get the one thing you want and get it every time you go. Some restaurants serve one thing, and that’s that.

Better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it.

I don't think so. Necessity is the mother of invention, and being short on something can actually have a positive effect on creativity. But that’s only if you’re a creator, not just a consumer.

We had many great instruments when synthesis was invented. We sure didn't need it. Are you against synthesizers?

No, that’s not really what I meant.

I would not call the Multipoly overly complex.
Everything is laid out well and I can reach for something if I need it.
IMO one of the best wavetable synths out there and I did not need to break the bank.

I guess you've never run into a wall when programming.