Xfer Serum
Serum is a wavetable synthesizer plugin created by Xfer Records that has completely taken over the music production world as the most used synth plugin. It features a visual and creative workflow-oriented interface that makes creating and altering sounds fun instead of tedious.
Xfer Serum Review
Since its release, Serum has quickly become the most popular software synthesizer for music production.
There is no other synth more widely used, reviewed, and supported by professionals on the market.
And there’s a good reason for this. Serum’s complex, high quality, and easy-to-use design makes it stand out as the best wavetable synthesizer available.
Serum is the synth that many producers have been waiting for. This is because with it’s intuitive design, it’s easy and fun to create the exact sound you need!
Not only that, but for those of you who are not looking to do too much of your own sound design, this software synth has a huge variety of high quality presets available.
It’s pretty clear that Serum is a powerful tool to add to your arsenal.
And to give you a better idea on what Xfer Serum is, we’ve put together an in-depth overview containing the following topics:
- Pros And Cons
- Why Serum Is The Right Synth For You
- What Makes Serum Unique
- Features
- Sounds Made With Serum
With all of this information, you’ll surely know whether the Serum VST plugin is the right choice for you!
Download hundreds of free Serum presets & wavetables: Click Here!
Pros
- Morphable Oscillators: you can manipulate the waveforms in your oscillators with ease
- Easy to use visual workflow makes you want to jump right into tweaking sounds
- 10 unique sounding effects
- Limitless modulation options
- The included Serum VST FX version is a great versatile tool for audio manipulation
- “Drag and drop” routing and parameter assignment makes sound design incredibly easy
- One of the easiest synths to learn for beginner sound designers
- Features several interesting functions, such as converting text into sound, and photos into waveforms
- Huge online community dedicated to Serum tutorials, presets, and more!
- Huge variety of complex filters compared to synths with only basic filter options
- Affordable pricing (as little as $10 a month on some websites)
Cons
- No onboard arpeggiator
- Heavy CPU usage, causing a lot of strain on your computer
- Depending on your taste, many of the sounds are extremely “Digital” sounding – If you’re into analog-type tones, this can be a huge issue
- Serum VST FX Version can be a little bit hard to set up in certain situations
- More oscillators would really take this synth to the next level
As you can see, the benefits of owning Serum far outweigh the drawbacks of the synth.
Because of that, it should be pretty clear that the Serum VST plugin should be the next synth to add to your collection!
Why Serum Is The Right Synth For You?
Serum was designed with every producer in mind.
Whether you’re a seasoned veteran of sound design or somebody just looking to use presets, you will absolutely love this synth.
The workflow was designed to make the life of every producer easier. With the visual workflow of this synth, it’s easy to see exactly what you are doing. While many other synths have a variety of obscure functions, Serum lets you know exactly what is going on with the sound you are generating at all times.
Even more, with such a huge community out there covering so much content about Serum, it’s probably harder to find a professional electronic music producer that doesn’t use Serum than to find one that does!
The reason why Serum is so popular is because it stands out when compared to its competitors.
What Makes This Plugin Special?
Serum has a crazy amount of features that sets it as a leader in the vast crowd of software synths.
We’ve compiled a list of some of the most intuitive features of the Serum VST plugin below:
- Editing, creating, and importing wavetables couldn’t be easier or intuitive with this synth
- Ultra-clean oscillators provide a high quality audio experience. This ensures your mix isn’t crowded by unwanted frequencies
- The modulation system on this synth allows drag and drop connections. This makes it extremely easy to adjust your connections in the synth. However, a list view is also part of the synth if that is what you prefer! The best of both worlds.
- Realtime wavetable manipulation allows you to visualize what is happening with the waveform within the synth
- The variety of complex filter types allows you to create sounds that are just not possible in other software synths
- The 10 built in effects give a variety of options to add texture and movement to your sound. You can order or add as many of these effects as you want
- Advanced unison allows you to stack up to 16 voices on a single oscillator. There are also a variety of adjustable parameters for unison
With so many functions that many other synths don’t feature, you can see why owning Serum can only benefit your music production.
To give you a better idea of what this synth is capable of, we’re going to go over what you can expect when you get the Serum VST plugin.
Want Access to a Secret Collection of Crazy Sounds & Tutorials For Free? Click Here!
Features
Dual Wavetable Oscillators
Dual Wavetable Oscillators allow you to create a huge variety of sounds. You can choose any of the 100 factory presets, import your own, or download presets from a third party!
Included with the oscillator section is a sub-oscillator and a noise oscillator (with over 200 unique options) as well.
With the Dual Wavetable Oscillators, the possibilities are endless!
Filter Module
Serum includes an impressive 75 filter options. This leaves many other synths with only 4 basic options behind.
It features many intuitive controls of the filter such as Cutoff, Resonance, Drive, and Fat. These options allow you to tweak the filters to your exact liking.
Effects
Serum features 10 unique effects that add character and texture to your sound. These effects include Delay, Reverb, Hyper / Dimension, Flanger, Phaser, Chorus, Compressor, EQ, Distortion, and Filter.
These effects are routed in the order they are placed on the list of effects! This makes it extremely simple to rearrange them with a simple drag and drop.
The Serum VST FX version will help you use this valuable aspect of this synth on sounds generated outside of the plugin.
Modulation
Serum provides an insanely detailed modulation panel. This panel features 4 Macro Controls, 3 Envelopes, and 4 LFO Modules.
This interface is designed to make it extremely easy to see what is going on with each of your parameters, as they are all listed out for you to adjust to your liking.
These key features really allow you to squeeze some extremely unique sounds out of this software synth.
Sounds Made With Serum VST
Serum is a versatile software synth you can use for any genre of music. To show you this, here are a few examples of what Serum can sound like!
Dubstep
These demo sounds are from soundbanks available on Academy.fm – Click Here To Start a Free Trial
Soundbank Names: Nuclear for Xfer Serum, Supernova for Xfer Serum, & Atomic for Xfer Serum
Future Bass
These demo sounds are from soundbanks available on Academy.fm – Click Here To Start a Free Trial
Soundbank Names: Future Bass for Xfer Serum, Helix for Xfer Serum, & Starlight for Xfer Serum
House
These demo sounds are from soundbanks available on Academy.fm – Click Here To Start a Free Trial
Soundbank Names: Future House for Xfer Serum, Gecko for Xfer Serum, & Eclipse for Xfer Serum
Conclusion
Now you know why Serum is the most popular software synth out there!
Many producers trust this synth to deliver groundbreaking sounds for their tracks, but not only that…
The Serum VST plugin is definitely one of the easiest synths to use!
With the growing community revolving around this synth, there are more reasons to own this synth than there are not to.
And guess what? You can actually try Serum before buying it! To download the demo version of the Serum VST plugin click here!