Here's a few of my workhorses for getting those vintage synth sounds just right...

Arturia Moog Modular V 2

The mother of all vintage synthesizer emulations, which also happens to model the mother of all vintage synthesizers.

Before Bob Moog, there were mostly one-off academic forays into the world of electronic musical instruments. With his inventions of the late 60s and early 70s, public demand more or less forced him from the roles of engineer and inventor to one of manufacturer, and before long electronic instruments were everywhere in contemporary music.

Built of individual modules which are then connected via patch cords, the modular systems are complex to program but offer unlimited possibilities in sound design, and are an education in themselves when it comes to subtractive synthesis techniques.

The Arturia software version looks almost as cool as the original, but costs several tens of thousands of dollars less.

GForce Minimonsta : Melohman

Following the success of the modular systems, the Minimoog was designed as a synth for the masses -- the masses being those professional musicians who could afford one, but weren't among the half a dozen or so that could afford -- or be bothered with -- an entourage of stage hands and technicians to transport, repair and maintain a Moog Modular system on live gigs.

Considerably less flexible than its ancestors, the Minimoog is still regarded by many as the pinnacle of simple but useful synth design, producing lead and bass sounds that are still unmatched today.

Hence the need for another software emulation -- and in this case, there are several to choose from. GForce put its own spin on the design, combining a detailed emulation of a Minimoog with some crazy additions, making this one both a Moog and a Monsta.

Arturia CS-80V

Another expensive (and expansive) 70s synth, the monstruous Yamaha CS-80 offered things like 8-voice polyphony, factory presets, and (limited) user preset storage at a time when the competitors didn't, but it all came at a heavy premium in both weight and price. This was another one of those beasts which required a dedicated staff to look after on tour.

Taking an organist's approach to the layout of the controls, the Yamaha designers had clearly spotted a market amongst those musicians that were more keyboard players than technicians, and wanted an easy-to-play instrument with instantly accessible, tweakable presets, rather than something that took ages to program.

Although being produced in the thousands and used by quite a lot of people, its epitaph has mainly been that of "the Vangelis synth". It really excels at pseudo-orchestral strings and brass sounds.

Commercially, the CS-80 was somewhat overshadowed by the cheaper Sequential Circuits Prophet-5, which sported several of the same vital new features (presets, polyphony) and appeared the same year (1977).

GForce ImpOSCar

Moving forward a number of years, and we're in the 80s where synth-based popular music really took off.

The OSCar appeared at the end of the analog/beginning of the digital era, where expensive and unreliable analog components were increasingly replaced by digital sound generators and integrated circuits offering such novelties as programmable preset storage.

The OSCar, suffering from several simultaneous cases of bad timing, was not destined to be a great commercial success. No MIDI (in the first batch) and no polyphony made many go for its competitors instead.

However, with somewhat harsh and brittle-sounding digital oscillators combined with one of the fattest analog filters ever, this synth says "1980s" in a louder and clearar voice than almost any other.

The GForce ImpOSCar stays very true to the original, but, like most software emulations, adds some extras to bring it up to date -- like polyphony and on-board effects.

Other Emulated Synths