Synthesizer V Studio Pro Version 2 is a mixed bag. The voices sound better in terms of fidelity, and some of the tools are very improved. Unfortunately some of the tools are totally gone, such as the ability to control vibrato speed. Instead of typing the whole title “Synthesizer V Studio Pro Version 2”, I’m going to use SV 2. Or SV 1 for the first version.
As I type this, SV 2 is up to version 2.0.6. Dreamtonics keeps issuing updates as they fix bugs and add features, so it’s getting a little bit better with each version.
I just wrote a new song and compared Solaria 1 (SV 1) with Solaria 2 (SV 2). They both sounded good, but Solaria 2 had more notes I had to fix, and in general I preferred Solaria 1. But this is down to taste.
On a different song I used the singer “Liam”, which is SV 2 only. Liam was billed as an English language singer who can sing Country as well as Rock and Pop and other genres. It’s interesting that Dreamtonics bills Liam that way, because he definitely has a Slavic accent. There’s no other way to say it. Sometimes “the” becomes “da.”
Getting back to the lack of vibrato speed parameter…
This is a non-issue if you like the default vibrato of a singer. Saros V2, for example, has a very fast vibrato at times. An enterprising community member made a script to allow users to hack individual notes to change vibrato speed, and another community member made a variation on the first script. These noble attempts at fixing the flawed product are greatly appreciated, but I find it annoying that Dreamtonics didn’t anticipate this issue.
The company is in the process of updating their existing manual to be accurate with version 2, but it’s slow going and there’s much work to be done. There’s a lot of confusion on some of the new features. I find this is a current trend in tech – more and more companies are skimping on tutorials, more companies are getting rid of internal staff development, and more people expect everyone to be very tech savvy. Many people are not.
If you love SV 1, should you upgrade? Personally, I’d say no… not yet. I’d wait for the company to finish upgrading the documentation, and for them to fix additional bugs. I’d ask the company if they plan on bringing back some of the manual tools that many users miss.
Dreamtonics is a small company and in my opinion they’re trying to move too fast. Their online forum is not full of joy and happiness with the new version. More the opposite. And I think they’re surprised at the reaction, but they shouldn’t be. A wider range of beta testers would have predicted almost all of the current issues.