Xfer Records Serum
“Up until three years ago, I was still working with hardware synths because the sonic quality of the digital emulations was lacking. But now you’ve only got to look at something like Serum and it shows how much soft synths have progressed.
“This is a fantastic wavetable synth, but it also goes way beyond just trying to match the classic sound.”
FULL REVIEW: Xfer Records Serum
Ocean Swift Formula X
“It’s still a fairly small community, but I’m very impressed with the Sonic Core SCOPE platform. This is the latest one from the Tel Aviv company Ocean Swift.
“It’s not what I would call a ‘bread and butter’ synth; you can’t create standard synth sounds. What you get from this is unusual sounds… stuff that doesn’t feel like anything else out there.”
READ MORE: Ocean Swift Formula X
Memorymoon
“I stumbled across this when I was reading synthesiser stuff online… it’s just a guy in Norway, a very small company called Memorymoon.
“Yes, the Arturia Moog is pretty good, but, for me, this is the best digital version of a classic synth that I’ve ever heard.”
READ MORE: Memorymoon
Apple Logic
“When I switched from Atari in 2005, I went to Mac and Logic. Coming from Atari, I was used to Cubase, and I could have gone down that route, but the MIDI implementation in Logic seemed more comprehensive. The layout is also very… neutral. That might sound like a minor detail, but if you’re looking at a screen for 12 hours a day, it makes a big difference.”
FULL REVIEW: Apple Logic Pro X
Eventide Blackhole
“Like synths, I spent a lot of time researching reverbs online because reverb is such an important part of my sound.
“I actually feel that it took the industry even longer to match reverb hardware than it did to match synth hardware. The space didn’t sound… real. Well, that was before I heard the Blackhole.”
FULL REVIEW: Eventide Blackhole
Catch Ulrich live with Tangerine Dream in The Quantum Years, out now.
