05 Oct 2024

Serum vs. Phase Plant comparison UPD. Oct '24

TL;DR: Phase Plant is miles ahead of Serum and Vital especially after recent additions of Granular module and wave-shaper effect. I would even recommend it as a first synth for learning synthesis because when you load an init preset, there's literally empty window. The UI doesn't overwhelm you with a huge amount of knobs and buttons like Serum or Vital. You can add what you need and gradually explore its possibilities. It's a genuinely modular and user-friendly approach.

With unlimited oscillators, a large LFO editor, multiband and per-OSC effect racks, macros, utilities (pitch tracker, audio follower, signal remapping) and all the creative plugins known in the music industry, I see no reason to use another synth, apart from their preset legacy (I mean Serum, Zebra2 or Sylenth1, they have a huge preset legacy because of how long they exist). In Phase Plant, the only limit is your CPU's power. You do need to make a few extra clicks and adjustments to set things up, but it strikes a perfect balance between possibilities and convenience.

Is there something even more powerful than PhasePlant? Yes (at least other bloggers have convinced me of this; I don't know myself). Power tools like Steinberg's Halion or UVI Falcon might offer even more features, especially with audio samples (like assigning samples to individual MIDI notes), but they come with a steep learning curve, including the ability to build custom graphical interfaces and are more suitable for companies or entrepreneurs that are willing to build a business on selling complex sound libraries. Phase Plant, on the other hand, fits perfectly between synths like Vital and more complex tools like Steinberg Halion, making it the ideal synth for this moment.

Table of contents

1. Selling Points
2. Modulation Strip
3. LFOs / ENV
4. Arpeggiator
5. Macro
6. Multi-band / Parallel Processing
7. Filters
8. EQ
9. Price
10. Features, Specs

Selling Points

Unlimited Generators and Effect Units

Truly, this synthesizer offers every type of synthesis a sound designer could ever need. Honestly, I don't understand why this synth is so underrated and rarely featured in YouTube tutorials. I think people continue using popular synths out of habit, but I'm not waiting for Serum 2 anymore — Phase Plant is like Serum 5 already. Its flexibility does require a few extra clicks here and there, like setting up key tracking for a filter, but in return, you get unlimited oscillators, filters, distortions, and unique effects like Disperser and Slice EQ, along with an unlimited number of OTTs.



Add as many OSCs or Effects as you need. Group them by purpose or for convenience.



You can also package everything into a preset and distribute it, including granular and sampler sections. Using it is as simple as loading a preset, without any annoying warnings about missing components.

Sampler and Granular synthesis

Just check out its options for these generators. Everything is on the main screen, nothing hidden in menues. Have you noticed Unison for the sampler? Now that is truly powerful!

Modulation Strip

Unified user experience across the whole product line, extensibility, semi-modular architecture. You add a tool and assign modulation. Almost all parameters in the Kilohearts Ecosystem can be modulated. The same principle works for both Phase Plant and Effect Rack. Unlimited amount of utilities for any case.


Audio Follower - tracks the amplitude of an incoming audio signal and generates a modulation signal based on that. You can set up ducking of reverb, attenuation of frequencies or expanding a signal. A very powerful thing and pretty rare module in a synth. Remap lets you adjust incoming values to any output values you want using custom remap shapes, giving you more precise control over modulation. By placing this module between a step-LFO you can quantize its output to a certain scale, for example. Pitch Tracker tracks the pitch of an incoming audio signal and generates a modulation signal based on that. You can apply an EQ based on pitch of incoming audio from singer's part. So you basically get $200 'SurferEQ' for $30, pretty cool, huh? And again, don't forget, you can group that stuff too.

LFOs / ENV

Shape Preview - before Phase Plant I didn't even realize I needed that.



Editing an LFO shape in Serum, especially for drum-sounds like kicks or toms, can be challenging at the default 100% scale. The LFO window is simply too small, turning the process into an overwhelming pixel hunt. While you can scale it to 200%, this feels like a tedious workaround. A full-screen LFO editor is a must in modern synthesizers, and Phase Plant nailed it. The full-scree wave editor is a very cool feature!



🥴 What I really don't like about Phase Plant's basic LFO is the lack of a 'smooth' option and the fact that the triggering options are hidden in dropdown menus, which take time to open and require precise mouse movements. It would be much more convenient if these options were available as a simple radio button at the top.

I also cannot copy a shape from one LFO to another. The only way to do this is by saving and recalling a preset or duplicating the LFO. If you've already set up modulations for an LFO and want to use a specific shape from another LFO, you can't simply copy and paste it. That's unfortunate.



🥴 UPD: Another thing I've started hating recently — you can't use the same envelope for both a filter and an oscillator's amplitude at the same time. C'mon, man... Combine that with the lack of a way to copy and paste envelope shapes or load presets, and some basic sounds, like Saw + LP Filter, are just missing. This is yet another simple thing you can do in Serum but can't do in Phase Plant.



A good solution for me would be how it works in Massive. If you remove the default envelope, the generator should emit sound constantly instead of muting it. This way, I could use a separate filter to manage both amplitude and filtering at the same time.

LFO Mutation and Time

Serum's synced LFO rate only allows even values, multiplied or divided by 2, so you can't create 3, 5, or 7-bar LFO loops. When is this applicable? In ARP sequences. Creating ARPs in Serum can be tedious because you set the pitch with the LFO in step mode (as in PP too, but having a larger LFO editor in PP feels like a breath of fresh air). On top of that, Serum offers a rare feature — the ability to modulate LFO curves.

Max grid resolution is 16 x 16 divisions. For Phase Plant it's 128 by 128.

Speaking of LFO mutation, PP takes it to another level by introducing an LFO table, which carries the same concept as a wavetable oscillator with WT position (referred to as 'Frames' in PP).

Here is an example of modulation as can be made in Phase Plant (and Massive!) but can not be done in Serum:

Arpeggiator

Both Serum and Phase Plant doesn't have a straightforward pitch quantization like Vital. On top of that there is a little trick you need to know about Serum to be able to apply pitch modulation correctly - you need to apply modulation amount manually using semitones in the Matrix tab (e.g. `12st`). Phase Plant takes care of that so if you modulate pitch and type 12 - it will be 12st. Maybe I consider this like a 'feature' after Serum though, and in other synth this is just a self-evident thing. I rarely heard ARPs in Serum preset banks.

Dash Glitch offers a workaround for pitch quantization (snapping pitch modulation to a specific note scale) in Phase Plant. You can check out the tutorial here: Quantizing Pitch Modulation in Phase Plant?. This is made possible thanks to the ability to modulate the phase of an LFO or oscillator, and by setting them to 0 Hz.

Macro

You get 8 rotaries, which is twice as many as Serum and the same as Massive. On top of that, you can use an unlimited number of Multipass and Snap Heap instances in the effect rack, each containing 8 macro rotaries too.

No matrix page

Routing and modulations are clearly and informatively displayed on the main page, so there's no need to switch between tabs. In Serum, a number indicates how many destinations are applied, but you have to open the Matrix tab to edit them.



The absence of a Matrix Page can be both an advantage and a disadvantage. Personally, I don’t like the Matrix Page. Unless you’re the one who created the patch, it’s hard to wrap your head around someone else’s work. However, some people on Reddit have expressed a strong need for it. The one scenario where I see its usefulness is when you want to swap modulation sources—for example, replacing an LFO with an envelope or a macro through a simple menu pop-up. In Phase Plant, you have to manually disconnect the modulation and reconnect it to another source, which takes more time.

Separate Effect Chain per OSC, Multi-band / Parallel Processing

As we all know, in Serum you can use 1-4 oscillators, with all of them routed into the Effects section. You can rearrange the effects and change their order, but you cannot process OSC 1 differently from OSC 2. There's an option to route the Sub Oscillator directly to the master output, which is the conventional way of adding a sub to a sound. However, you're limited to just 4 wave shapes in the Sub Oscillator.

The most common way to create heavy bass sounds is to design texture or articulation in the higher frequency spectrum and then layer a sub-bass. In Serum, this approach is quite limited.

In Phase Plant, there are virtually no limits in many areas, especially in the crucial area of multi-band processing. You can split oscillators and route the output to one of three effect racks. Add Multipass for even more control, applying various effects to different frequency bands. The possibilities are truly limitless.

In Serum, something similar can be achieved by resampling into oscillators with additional processing, but this requires several repetitions in a circle of the same process, without the possibility of going back and undoing something before resynthesis. There's no option for using 3 distortions or 2 OTT effects simultaneously. Using Phase Plant with Snap Heap is like having Serum use SerumFX an unlimited number of times in the FX section.

Filters

It's not the oscillators, but in many cases, the filters that are the crucial part of sound design. For many people trying to translate their workflow from Serum to Phase Plant, the absence of a single filter with various modes is a stumbling block. The filter is what gives a synth its character, and many synthesizers stand out because of the developer's approach to implementing the filtering algorithm. Is it accurate? Is it CPU-intensive? There are always compromises. So, if a musician is used to a certain filter's color in a synth, they may keep returning to it just for that filter sound.

Phase Plant doesn't have the exact same filters as Serum, particularly the morphing filters that can transition from high-pass to low-pass and vice versa. However, you can recreate them if you know how. Phase Plant's developers ensured that artists have all the essential building blocks to implement any concept or idea. Here's a tutorial on how to recreate most of Serum's filters — Serum Style Filters Inside Phase Plant. Download is available. The only downside is that you can't visually see them moving or exactly what they do to the sound.





🥴 Now, here are a few flies in the ointment. Most of the effects have a Mix button, but for some reason, the Ladder Filter, Nonlinear Filter, Formant Filter, and regular Filter don't have that option. I think they should — Serum has it. While I wouldn't use it often, there are times when I'd like to, but it's just not there. I could use Snap Heap, but then I lose all the modulation connections. It's as if you have to know in advance whether you'll need a Mix knob or not, but in most cases, I have no idea. I wouldn't choose Snap Heap just in case, because it slows me down. Maybe I need more templates with Snap-Heap-as-Filter. For now, I start from an empty patch and go OSC > Filter > Effects. Using SH makes me feeling slow.

🥴 Another slightly annoying thing: you can't swap filters without losing your modulation routing. It would be awesome if there were a mechanism to swap effects without losing bindings altogether (some automatic rebinding would be fine for me, like the Mix of a filter going to the Mix of a Ring Modulator — you get the idea). Sure, you could use Snap Heap and macros, but that leads to a lot of window switching. Either you have to create a bunch of template-presets or click around windows for a while to get things working. For quick and simple patches, Serum offers a lot right out of the box: key tracking is a simple toggle, routing oscillators to separate filters is just a toggle, and swapping filters is easy.

That being said, I'm starting to think that using Snap Heap as an effects container was the intended workflow. That's probably why it used to be free. It also has some side benefits — if you use macros, they'll appear on the front panel, so you don't lose connections when switching effects... kind of. Take a closer look at Phase Plant combined with Snap Heap. Its pop-up windows don't block each other, so if you have a big enough screen, you can keep both open and have everything more visible. Instant access to knobs and making tweaks is much easier in that setup.



🥴 Yet this filter doesn't have a Mix option, and I'm not a sound design expert, so I'm not 100% sure how useful it would be. However, this is the case where Phase Plant simply can't do the same trick as Serum. And I am surprised to be honest.

EQ

It's not a secret that Serum is limited in terms of EQ. You can have 3 of them if you sacrifice filters for EQ, and those EQs are pretty basic.




In Phase Plant you have basic 3-band EQ and Linear Filter with Hi and Low shelves that you can mix in any combination.



Although, the great power in sound design comes with advanced EQs. Phase Plant has something to offer, for additional price, tho. Slice EQ ($79) offers you everything you need to create mathematically perfect filter combinations to get your music exactly where you want it to go. It cuts, or enhances frequencies with surgical precision using razor sharp digital filters up to 96 dB/oct. Draw a shape and modulate offset or set-up key-tracking to get a lot of unique filters or timbres.



And the second one - Carve EQ ($79) - a 31-band graphic equalizer, "that runs laps around the competition". It "has a very advanced filtering system hidden under a small set of efficient and deceptively simple tools".

Audio Rate Modulation

Both Serum and Phase Plant have max. LFO rate of 100 Hz. If you want to modulate something on an audio rate, in Serum you have to send a single cycle waveform into Sampler/Noise OSC and use it as generator of modulation. Phase Plant keeps the same idea of drag-n-drop modulations. Audio-rate modulation has green color.



In Phase Plant you can do all of FM, RM and AM at the same time, while in Serum you can do only one per OSC.

Serum attempts to visualize audio-rate modulation of the filter, but Phase Plant doesn't, which is unfortunate for teaching purposes 🥴 Now, students have to take your word for it that the filter is actually moving.

Modulate Macro

While creating a patch, you'd typically want an LFO to modulate parameters because it's easy to create and tweak the curve directly within the synth. But once the patch is finished, you'd probably want to control the modulation with a macro, allowing you to draw an automation line in your DAW. In Serum, you can do this by opening the Matrix tab and switching the LFO to a macro. In PP, you can directly modulate macros, improving workflow and allowing you to create longer expressions within the synth. A Macro can modulate many parameters, and the LFO can modulate the macro. Save LFO curve in the preset or detach it and create automation for the Macro in the DAW, it's up to you.

What can be automated

Since Serum has a standard set of generators and effects, you can automate nearly everything except a few switches and curves. However, with the unlimited tools inside PP, you need to assign parameters to automation slots in order to automate them.

OTT

Phase Plant doesn't have an OTT as a standalone unit or bundled effect, but you can create a replica and use it X times in a row. Because it's just a bunch of upward and downward compressors - you can create your own. But you got to have Multipass for that ($99). There is a factory preset called N.O.T.T and also there are two 3-rd party: 'Mr. OTT' and 'Duko's OTT'.

Subscription == Rent-to-own

Their model feels like the right approach. Once a year (after 12 payments), you receive a $100 "Subscriber Rewards" that you can spend on a synth. So, you pay $120 and wait for a sale to grab it for $100. In return, you get access to all their products and preset banks, including Multipass, which I owned first and through which I became familiar with the Kilohearts ecosystem. Its robustness and versatility made me want to buy Phase Plant. Without the discounts the total price of both is roughly $300, but without Multipass, Phase Plant feels a bit crippled. So paying that amount in installments feels like a good deal for a person from a Third World country.

Conclusion: The math shows you'll pay 20% more if you buy in installments, but for that price, you get the chance to try out their entire product line. In 4 years, you could own their entire bundle for $480 (discounts are not taken into account). For this money you can get Bitwig Studio with The Grid though.

Features & Specifications

Phase Plant pro-tips

You can install banks by drag n drop them onto the instrument or plugin (Multipass / Snap Heap).

There is yet another output called Sideband, it can be used as source in plugins to create sidechain (in compressor or reverb).

Feature requests

Even though it's so powerful, is there still room for improvement? Yes.

• Resample to Wave Table.
• An oscilloscope in the end of the audio chain.
• Copy/paste LFO shapes.
• There is no upward expansion in the compressor.
• Pitch quantization doesn't feel organic and convenient, more like a workaround.
• Seamless loops in Sampler.
• Better factory banks.
• Persistent, sample perfect audio wave output on re-triggering. Here is how you do it: https://imgur.com/a/qQ8nClD
• Spectral filters.
• The possibility of using the same envelope for amplitude and other modulation destinations simultaneously.
• X-Y Pad, because there you can tweak two parameters at the same time with a mouse. More of expresion.

Let me know you ideas in the comment section. Join the discussion on Reddit.

Read detailed comparison of Serum and Vital here