Firstly, a big thanks to everybody who responded to my shout-out on Facebook and Twitter asking about your Top Five softsynths. Over 150 of you responded.

The results were… interesting, informative and sometimes surprising!

Let’s start with the most popular synths. Three synths were way out ahead, all featuring on more than half of the answers: Omnisphere, Zebra and Diva. Pleasingly, these are the three synths I’ve released the most soundset for… including the upcoming Diva Nordsund.

Behind them comes Serum, Pigments and RePro; all featuring in more than a quarter of the replies. Rounding out the top ten were Phase Plant, Hive, Vital and Massive (old skool!). Not going to lie, was slightly surprised to see Massive still scoring so high, and still doing better than the newer Massive X.

Results at the top were relatively similar on both Twitter and Facebook. All the synths above fared well on both social media. However, Massive and Vital relied a little on Twitter votes to make the top ten, whereas it was Spire and Avenger that featured in Facebook’s top ten without making the overall top ten.

I was a little surprised by Pigments doing quite so well. It’s relatively new on the scene but, I guess, alongside being an amazing synth, does well by being part of the Arturia collection. Vital’s “Serum for free” vibes probably saw it a little higher up the list than might have been expected. It rarely featured in top fives alongside the “big ticket” synths, for example.

Another synth that did better than I was expecting but, didn’t quite make the top ten was Spire. I’ll confess, I didn’t see that coming at all! You secret little trance-heads, you…

So, what didn’t fare as well as I imagined it would?

Firstly, Generate. It came 17^th overall, which doesn’t sound horrendous but, once you’re outside the top twelve or so, synths aren’t registering many votes at all. This surprised me because my soundset for it sold really well and there was a lot of love, in general, for Generate at the time. I’ll assume it’s everyone’s sixth favourite synth.

The great collection of synths from both GForce, Synapse Audio and Togu Audio Line scraped together far fewer votes than I was predicting, with only Oddity 3, Dune 3 and Uno LX getting more than a couple of mentions. You philistines, haha!

There were 32 synths registering just the one vote. These included big hitters such as Bazille, Model 82 and Arturia’s ARP2600 V. As well as more obscure stuff such as Loom 2, Crusher-X and Sytrus!

Finally, how does this all play out in reference to what synths I have and haven’t released for? Well, favourably, my most regular synths (Omnisphere, Zebra, Diva, Serum, RePro) all did very well. Phew! The same can’t be said for the likes of Uno LX, FM8, The Legend, Phonec 2 and Bazille. Sad times.

And what about synths I haven’t released for? There’s an argument for releases for Pigments, Phase Plant and Hive. They all scored very well. Both Pigments and Hive featured in my 10^th Anniversary Collection last year. Watch this space, perhaps? Perhaps? I promise nothing…

OVERALL TOP TEN

1. Omnisphere
2. Zebra
3. Diva
4. Pigments
5. Serum

6. RePro
7. Phase Plant
8. Hive
9. Vital
10. Massive

FACEBOOK TOP TEN

1. Omnisphere
2. Zebra
3. Diva
4. Pigments
5. Serum

6. RePro
7. Phase Plant
8. Hive
9. Spire
10. Avenger

TWITTER TOP TEN

1. Omnisphere
2. Diva
3. Zebra
4. Pigments
5. RePro

6. Hive
7. Massive
8. Vital
9. Serum
10. Phase Plant