Free Music Software Review #1: Vital

Forward/Announcement

I wanted to make a blog series reviewing free music production plugins, since a lot of them interest me, but I don't have that much to say about them to warrant making Youtube videos about them.

I don't really have any specific standard for what music software I will review, other than I'd prefer to keep it to stuff that I like personally, or think is useful to someone for some specific reason. Also that you can download it for free ($0) or it has a free ($0) version.

Vital

From Matt Tytel. Get it at: https://vital.audio/

This isn't sponsored or anything.

Vital is a synth in the genre of synths that revolve primarily around wavetable oscillators and a very complex and thorough modulation system. Some other examples of synths like this include Serum by xfer Records, Massive by Native Instruments, and Pigments by Arturia. Vital is the first one of these to offer a free version.

Pricing

All of Vital's core features are available in the free version. The only limitation of the free version is that you can only generate a Text-to-Wavetable wavetable 5 times per day. Text-to-Wavetable is a feature that allows you to generate a wavetable from a variety of text-to-speech voices. You can still save these wavetables for unlimited future use.

There are two single-payment tiers you can upgrade to and one subscription based tier. Upgrading tiers gives you access to more accessory features, including more presets and wavetables, unlimited Text-to-Wavetable requests, and priority support.

Interesting Features

The three wavetable oscillators can be warped in various ways, and you can FM and RM them with eachother. You can create your own wavetables extremely easily, using audio samples, Text-to-Wavetable, or through a built in wavetable editor. The 25 built in wavetables are all quite good in my opinion.

Almost every knob, slider, or device that represents the value of any control can be controlled from the modulators, including the modulators themselves. You can have up to 6 envelopes, 8 LFOs, and 4 Random Modulators, all of which can be individually customized and can modulate each others or even their own controls.

Knobs and co. can also be connected to 4 macros on the opposite side which you can use to manually control them all at once.

Vital comes with 9 built-in effects. Only one of each exists and you can't create more or delete them, only enable or disable them. You can control the order in which they are set in the chain by dragging them up or down.

Presets

The init preset is set to one active oscillator at default settings with no modulation or effects. It is a very good starting point for working on your own presets.

The free version comes with 75 built-in presets. Many of them are rather complex and meant to show off the functionality of the synth. They are impressive but many of them are somewhat niche and probably not appealing as musical instruments outside of very creative use cases and experimental music.

I have spotted several community made presets floating about. Being a very popular new synth I expect community presets to be extremely prolific and diverse in the future (I'll probably get around to releasing a few myself).

Learning and Support

Vital is rather complex and requires a good understanding of what modulators do to make the most use of it. The user interface is intuitive, but perhaps overwhelming for those unfamiliar with this style of virtual instrument. I would not consider Vital a beginner friendly plugin.

If you have used a similar synth then this plugin should be mostly familiar, as it closely resembles other synths in it's category, particularly Serum.

The community response to this synth was equally as overwhelming, so naturally there are plenty of YouTube tutorials on this synth. You can also get support from an official discord server and a forum on the website. Users who pay for the "Pro" or "Subscribe" tiers get prioritized support.

Opinions and Conclusions

Vital is an immense offering for a free plugin. Even as a paid plugin it is extremely competitively priced compared to other synths in it's category.

I personally find this synth easier to design sounds in than other synths in it's category.

I speculate Vital will be widely adopted in the future amongst the EDM bedroom producer community, and I recommend everyone who makes electronic music or expects to collaborate with people who do should have it installed, even if only so you can load projects from other users in the future.

I strongly recommend Vital to people who like to do their own complex sound design. It is very easy to explore and find new mechanisms to create unique sounds.

Vital will likely not interest those that do not make electronic music, as it is somewhat overcomplicated for making basic synth sounds, and it does not come with many presets to use as simple instruments. You may still find it useful for inspiration or creating new and unique styles in your music, but I would weigh this on a per-case basis and don't think it's important to have in this case.

For More

Check my profile out to find out where you can find me if you want to chat more about music production software or other topics. Thanks for reading. Stay tuned for the next one.

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