Virtual instruments are handy tools that make music production much easier.
We’ve relied on software instruments in the past and as technology becomes even more sophisticated,
The virtual instruments are becoming even better and better.
Virtual instrument comparisons are always inevitable in music production because there always comes a time when a music producer has to choose between two or more instruments.
In this case we are looking at Serum and Massive, so then which is better?
Serum is better than massive because it has better sounds crafted from a high quality engine. Serum is also a better sound design tool compared to massive.
I’ve used serum since it was first introduced on the market and i’ve had the pleasure of working with massive aswell.
both are great VSTs but Serum is much more sophisticated and much more diverse virtual instruments.
SERUM
Xfer records have done a great deed for the music production community with Serum.
Serum is a wavetable synthesizer plugin that is famous for its LFO tool that is used to create the famous wobble effect.
The LFO tool gives the user so much creative freedom that is why Serum is considered a top tier sound design synth.
Serum is able to work with FL Studio, Logic Pro, Ableton live and a bunch of other digital audio Workstations.
It is available for both PC and Mac so you don’t have to worry about whether its suited for your system or not.
Nature of serum
By design, Serum is a sampler which means it allows you to import and modify your own sounds to your liking.
It has a variety of improbable waveforms.
For the ordinary producer not looking to design sounds there are a variety of high quality presets ready to be utilized.
There are 455 total presets with 144 compartmentalised wavetables based on genre.
Presets
Serum is great for electronic music and the presets that it has are high quality.
My main use for serum is in hiphop music production and it works just as good,
I can simply load up a preset and apply various tweaks to it until it fits what I’m looking for.
This is the kind of power that you need in a synth, especially now that sound design has become so popularised.
I mainly like making my 808 bass sounds from scratch in Serum to save time and tweak the 808 to my preferred tonality, texture and bounce.
Modulation
Serum has an easy to use detailed modulation panel. the panel features 4 macro controls, 3 envelopes and 4 LFO modules.
One cool thing is the easy to use drag and drop routing for parameter assignments which makes sound design easy to carry out.
Effects
Serum has 10 built in effects patches.
These patches are reverb, delay, distortion, phaser, flanger, chorus, compressor, eq, filter and hyper/ dimension.
Serum allows you to organize the signal chain in which ever way you find most useful.
The hyper/dimensional effect is a dual effect that combines two delay effects giving the user various ways to manipulate their sounds.
Oscillators
Serum has dual wavetable oscillators that allow you to create a variety of sounds,
these oscillators are pretty clean and of high quality plus you’ll find over a hundred factory presets included in these presets are a sub oscillator and a noise oscillator with over 200 unique sound options to pick from.
Plus, don’t forget that you can easily import your own sounds and other sounds created by third parties into Serum and modify them as needed.
Filters
Serum offers you a variety of over 70 filter options, which makes a better option when compared to most synths with only one filter option.
with these filter options it is easy to basically deal with the cut off, resonance and drive.
Output Quality
One thing that makes serum my go to synth is the sound quality that has been branded with it.
There is so much attention to detail that makes the presets and all other tools sonically amazing.
with all the features listed above it’s easy to deduce why Serum is much more power than Massive.
MASSIVE X
Massive is a wavetable synth developed by Native instruments.
it has a user friendly interface that won’t have a newbie scared.
massive is a hybrid synth that is quite rich offering the best tools needed to create great sounds.
Oscillators
Massive features over 82 oscillator shapes ranging from the simplest shapes to more sophisticated ones.
Plus each oscillator has an intensity control similar to a low pass filter.
Filter
The filter is set to the right and can be set to either serial or parallel modes or mixture of both.
Massive has 11 filter modes that can be used to fit any preference.
Modulation
This is serums most interesting feature in my opinion,
massive’s modulation system is one that is not complex or space consuming but it is rather a simple system that offers the user some visual feedback.
Each of massives knobs has one or more modulation slots,
and each modulation source has a modulation handle that can be dragged and dropped into any of these slots.
In this instance, the slot then becomes the control with which you can basically dictate how much the modulation source affects the destination.
Plus each of the four LFO generators can be put in LFO, stepper or performance mode.
Conclusion
Serum may be a better option compared to massive but that doesnt mean that massive is a bad plugin.
I hope you found this helpful.
Related Articles You Should Read
Is Omnisphere Better Than Serum?
Sources
Serum vs Massive: Shootout & Comparison (Who Wins?) – Producer Hive
Serum vs Massive X: Which Is The Best Synth Plugin? – EDM Prod
Massive X vs Serum | Which is right for YOU? – Producer Sphere
VST Wars: NI Massive vs Xfer Serum – Audio Ordeal