Should you actually care about Synth Specs?
Do they make that much of a difference?
In the past year, it has been way more common to see a whole lot of YouTubers and influencers for music gear (yes, it is officially a thing now) simultaneously release their reviews and videos about a new piece of gear. And we are also guilty of this! I happen to watch a lot of these videos and read a ton of articles about new releases and it’s pretty obvious that they are almost identical. The company’s press release which we all get a few days or hours before the official launch is been reproduced in videos or written articles so that their product is well represented.
So that means that the music gear industry is now the same as the technology industry. Just like you see a ton of YouTubers release a video about the new iPhone at the exact same time you also see that for synthesizers. But what more have we inherited from the more mature technology market? The Spec War.
There is so much analysis going on on how many features a synthesizer has that has become impossible to review a musical instrument without focusing on its specs. That’s not inherently bad, but it’s often misleading. Because it’s not all about the specs. It’s super easy to make a horrible synth with 10 LFOs, 3 Oscillators, and a 1 million step sequencer so specs are not objective at all.
Making a musical instrument has to be a labor of love and creativity. And to compete on the specs only, certainly makes the whole creative process boring and uninspiring. It requires craftsmanship, innovation, and attention to detail so it’s not about the quantity but about the quality.
If you actually sit down and think of it, you don’t really need all those features to make a good sound. Iconic synth sounds have been made on the most basic vintage synthesizers that cannot compete with modern synths spec-wise. Also, a thing that most producers do to create an amazing sound is to layer multiple sounds and that again is something you can do with a basic synthesizer or sampler.
Instead, just like in the smartphone world, synths have a ton of unnecessary features that you’ll probably never going to use but when they are presented to you, you get excited with all the stuff they can do. I couldn’t care less if a sequencer can run forward, backward, in a pendulum, randomly, semi-randomly, or in any other way! New releases and new features massively feed your G.A.S. and you can’t help yourself but want that new thing that can do all those things you never actually needed. I know it’s been said a million times, but actually taking advantage of what you already have to its full potential is 100% better than just buying something new.
A thing that I always stand by, is to value your workflow and productivity more than your impulse to get another synth. Find ways to make more music and make it faster, and more intuitively, and get things that get you inspired to work with. And if companies stopped focusing on their spec sheets, they would probably focus on innovating into things that improve your workflow and not only give you that extra oscillator.
If you have followed this website for some time, you’ll know my love for the OP-1 (full review & 6-month review). And I think that its success is the perfect example of what I’m trying to say here. The OP-1 is so successful not because it has X amount of synth engines or X amount of effects. It’s successful because it revolutionized the way music is made. It is a beautiful combination of basic functions that enable you to make music wherever you want and has a workflow that becomes second nature very fast. Every synth engine on the OP-1 is inferior to almost every synth out there in terms of specs. But the way Teenage Engineering implemented it in the OP-1 makes it so powerful although it has a minimalist approach.
So to make my point. It’s perfectly fine to check the specs of a synthesizer or any piece of gear. But be aware that this is only half the story. The amount of precision and testing that some companies put on, let’s say, their oscillators differs. And that goes for everything. You can have a synth with way fewer specs sounding better than a fully featured one (sound it’s way too subjective but you get what I mean). And another thing that’s true is that quality costs more. It just does and it will always will. So when you see a 300€ synth that can do everything, be cautious. In order to keep prices low, companies will have to sacrifice something and it’s important for you to understand what the sacrifice was. A good example of this would be the Dreadbox Nymphes which we’ve reviewed (check it out here). It’s a 6-voice polyphonic synth, fully analog that costs just 400€. And it sounds amazing and beefy! That’s why Dreadbox decided to have only one oscillator, a very small enclosure that comes with a lot of menu-diving but they haven’t compromised on its sound. But you do have to know what they sacrificed to sell it at such a low price in order to decide if you’re okay with that. So, on paper, you have a 6-voice synth with just one oscillator but in reality, it sounds a lot better than synths that have 2 or even 3 oscillators at the same price point. It’s not about the specs after all…
Disclaimer
And since I’m also a part of this industry, I think I’ll have to be transparent about Sinesquares too. We have the privilege of getting a lot of stuff for reviews so we can only write reviews for things that we actually own. Whenever you see the word Review in an article, it means that we actually have and use that particular piece of gear. Or at least used it a lot in studio sessions. So it’s always our own personal opinion on it. And we’ve never got any money for a review by any company. Whenever I write a review, it depends on my taste and workflow on whether I like something or not always under the prism of making songs with it. Not just for fun and jamming. So keep that in mind.
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