Dune 3 Synapse Audio

[Kylee Mccandrew]

Still my favorite VST synth out of everything I've tried, and I've tried pretty much all of the popular ones. Sound of the synth and its filters are so excellent, there is something special about Dune. Very easy to program as well and its almost limitless what you can do with the ability to keep adding layers.

I just bought this recently. Immediately I can hear the quality. It just doesn't sound thin and digital and that I have to add 4 effects and eq to get it to sound good in a mix. Just try the demo and listen to it, you'll immediately hear quality. Something that felt worth the money when I bought it.

Dune 3.5 is such a high-quality synthesizer that it blows up synths like Korg or Yamaha in electronic sounds. You won't find 4 GB piano sounds or real strings, but the electronic sounds are tops. Consider the price you will pay for it. The power of its leads, the character of its pads and synth basses is unrivaled in the world of synthesis. The reason is the quality and path of the 'analog' signal that it brings inside. Also the drum kicks are powerful and unique. Hopefully in the future there will be improvements and expansion of sample editing so that eventually an acoustic piano or full drum kit can one day be triggered, but maybe Synapse isn't going that way.
In complex sounds in terms of power and quality it surpasses Falcon and Omnisphere by far. Dune's sounds have a unique analog-digital grain and characteristic, nothing sounds like the Dune 3.

Dune 3 is the one I'll reach first, and often last as well, VITAL often coming as second. Dune is not the deepest of all those (Zebra arguably still is), and its user interface isn't the best either (VITAL has). But it still has a rich feature set, and its UI is still good and rather simple to understand for someone who already knows software synths. Plus its skins look great.

But what makes it really stand apart is its sound. It just sounds better than all the other synths, and yes that includes the legendary Diva. I don't know what Synapse Audio's secret sauce is, but the oscillators sound great, the 24 filters sound great and the myriad of FX sound great. Including the reverbs, which are often not so good in synths.

The latest release has added a patch generation feature based on a genetic algorithm: choose 2 or more patches and Dune 3 will combine them to generate as many new patches as you want. The result is often surprising. After playing with it, I think every synth should include a patch generator.

Is Dune 3 perfect ? No of course. The browser, right now only has a few categories. You can add new categories but a patch cannot belong to more than one category (for instance a gated pad has to belong to the gated category or the pad category). This improvement alone and the possibility to search several categories would be the functional equivalent of a search by keywords.

Apart from that, there is really not much downsides to this synth. Due to the awesome sound combined to the super easy UI and the fact it's light on the CPU, Dune 3 is the definition of a workhorse.

* That's way more software synths than I need. But I simply never use Sylenth1 any more. I also own Dune 2 but I uninstalled it because Dune 3 is equal or superior in pretty much every way, and it comes with all the Dune 2 patches. BTW Dune 3 can read Dune 2 patches, contrarily to what is said in another review.

Amazing and flexible sounding VST synth, one of the best ones out there, if you are thinking of getting it, no need, just get it!
The range of excellent sounds is incredible, from the lush pads to aggressive lead sounds!
I would say this is one of those synths that can be truly used to make any type of music with an electronic element, very rich and diverse sound quality.
The addition of the new preset browser and the possibility to generate sounds from other presets just adds another dimension.

Authors decided to break backward patch compatibility, which is not good move. People often buy synth because there are presets pack they like and split between old and new Dune will discourage them. Why buy synth if next version will be incompatible and your patches useless? You can use old version but it will probably stop working after you upgrade to Windows 11.

Sound is very good too, audio rate modulation is supported. This synth can easily become your everyday work horse. We have cheap and simple synths and then premium 200 USD category. Buy 200 USD synth only if you can put it into every day use.

For life playing use, I don't remember seeing max glide distance setting and multi segment key tracking curve. Both are important for live use. Key tracking curve is hard to give up after you started to use it. Dune have velocity curve, which is still not very common.

Synth authors usually resist to implement these features because they do not play live. They often have all infrastructure needed in place but no will to finish features like routing different MIDI channel to selected layer. That's why Omni sphere is so much used for live playing- Team leader works in industry for a long time and understand what features are most needed. For example UVI Falcon is more like audio engineering workstation, it will attract much less users because it's more work then fun. Most people simply want just to play.

Dune is not very popular in the community, so less 3rd party patches are available. Splitting between incompatible versions didn't helped either. It's not a big problem, there are factory presets from various genres - you can tweak them.

An impressive synthesizer, this product will keep you happy for years. Regularly updated, very supportive developers, high-quality user manual. Generates high-quality sound, runs extremely efficiently and is as stable as you can get. Everyone agrees: this sounds like a hardware synthesizer. It is also very easy to program.

I've never actually owned a real virtual synth like this, all I've ever used have been freeware like Synth1. I've only owned Dune 3 for a short while now but I do not regret buying it, it is an amazing synth. Powerful yet runs even on my potato. Every time I use it, it makes me happy and I keep on returning back to it to explore more :D.

I began using synthesizers in 1982. I started with the Yamaha CS-70M analog synthesizer and then moved on to FM synthesis; I am one of the first American composers to score an animated TV series (The Adventures of Gumby) with only synths in the late 1980s.

I've used many software synthesizers, and still do, including FM8, Z3TA, Tera, Massive and Dune. Dune 3 is the most sophisticated and interesting softsynth I've used to date. The sound quality and the range of sounds that can be produced is incredible. The digital sounds have a clarity, beauty and purity to them that is unmatched. It is not only one of the deepest synths I've used, in terms of number of programmable parameters including occillators, waveforms, LFO, envelopes, arpeggiation, signal processing and many more, but is also, unlike many synths, not difficult to edit or program from scratch. It integrates seamlessly into the DAW I use (Sonar/Cakewalk) and I've never had it crash on me. The ergonomics are logical, the signal path is not difficult to learn and understand and the synth's visual appearance adds to the synth's programmability.

Simply awesome. DUNE = Differential Unison Engine. Up to 32 Voices per OSC that can be distributed with very harmonic Logarithms (..., perfect 5th, Minor, Major, ...) and 8 Unison Voices that represent separate Layers with the Full set of Capabilities for each. You can work and sound more "additive" than with any other Synth around. Really deep and huge Pads, evolving with lots of Modulation Possibilities (per Unison Voice).

Whenever I approach a new synth I start by initialized a patch and stripping it down to a single sawtooth with no filters or effects to reveal the basic quality of the oscillators. Dune 3 surprised me here.

Its oscillators are incredibly clean with a good analog thickness to them. I found them to be very well balanced overall in the frequency domain and pleasingly bright in the high end but with zero aliasing. The brightness is easily controlled by selecting one of a staggering array of low pass filters.

I've had experiences before with synths that start with great oscillators but fall flat when you turn up the detune because of cancellation problems, and this is definitely not the case with Dune. Also worth noting is that Dune's CPU efficiency seems to allow a significantly higher number of voices per oscillator than I'm used to, which might explain its capacity for orchestral thickness even before any effects are employed.

I have falcon, Avenger, Synthmaster, Serum, Ana2, Arturia V Collection 6 (on and on and on) Point is, i love all those synths a lot. But after trying Dune 3 things have changed a bit. This is simply the best sounding synth there is. The oscillators, filters and effects are best in class.

I have to admit that this is one of the best software synth in it's class and can be very addictive. I come to realize that the possibilities are endless that I'm just now scratching the surface of how easy it is to program. The most thing I really like about it is it's programming potentials and another best feature is the arpeggiator mode. You can even record and export your own MIDI files and then later import your MIDI files you've already recorded and play them as an arranging instrument. (Hey not bad). Not too many software synths has that kind of feature as what Dune 2 has and what its capable of doing. Dune 2 is such a great software synth as it is as with Halion 6 and Serum. Icarus on the other hand has great sounding potential but programming Icarus is very limited. With that being said when programming Dune 2 you are creating your own patches from scratch and importing your own custom wave tables and at least you have something to work with in a better feel and nothing else is missing. This is just one of many software synths I'm comparing with Dune 2. All I can say so far that this is an outstanding software synth and I went nuts over it. You guys keep up the good work there since I'm looking forward for dune 3 later in the future.

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