Ultimate Vintage String Synth Comparison

video upload by WilliamSalmela

"The Ultimate String Synth Comparison.
I’ve got my hands on some of the best stringers ever and decided to give you a little side by side comparison. I played three different excerpts with seven different string synths - ”Basic strings”, ”Full strings” and ”Dark strings”. You can easily compare the sound character of each synth.
The first two excerpts are pretty straightfoward, but the ”dark strings” involved a little bit more sound design to see if the synths can be pushed to produce more mellow kind of pad sounds straight out of the instrument.

The samples are not complete dry but they all have the same amount of delay and reverb.
The instruments are (in the order of the audio track) as follows:
-Korg Delta
-Korg Trident (mk1)
-Korg Lambda
-Roland RS-505 Paraphonic
-Arp Solina SE-II by Eminent
-Roland RS-09 Organ/Strings
-Waldorf Streichfett

Unfortunately I couldn’t include the Yamaha SK-20 here because I sold it before recording these. It has quite a unique sound character among these vintage stringers. Of course there are other string synths too, but I never owned them.

The Streichfett is the only modern and digital instrument here and it shows, in a bad way - it sounds flat, lifeless and characterless in comparison. The notes don’t blend well within a chord and the root notes dominate the balance in a nasty way. I’d pick any analog stringer over it in a heartbeat.

My personal ranking list for these instruments would be as follows:
1. Korg Trident
2. Roland RS-505
3. Korg Lambda
4. Korg Delta, Roland RS-09, Arp Solina
x- Waldorf Streichfett

My opinion is based on knowing the instruments and not only based on these sound clips."