Which Product Should I Buy? Please help!

Hi everyone,i'm new to all this.My name's Dave and i would really appreciate some advice.I wish to buy some Native Instruments software but don't know which to buy.Basically,i'm in a band and have a pretty lame keyboard set-up(limited and basic sounds).I'd like to switch to something good.Mainly for live purposes.I was recommended Reaktor 5 and it seems like it would be pretty amazing.But i think it seems very complicated and is a step too far too soon.I'm not very technical either.
So can anyone recommend something a little more basic and easy to use.I'd be looking to use depeche mode,Air,daft punk,garbage type synth sounds.Something that i can import sounds into if i need to.If it was a choice between Reaktor,Massive,Absynth4 and FM8, which would you recommend? Or would you recommend something else? I would really appreciate some help.Thanks.

Dave.

 

I wouldn´t recommend Absynth for live purpose or for use in music at all. It´s great for sound design and maybe very experimental music. Massive drafs a lot of CPU power. FM8 can be a bit complicated too. But it comes with a lot of preset sounds you just need to load. So does Reaktor. You could stay with the presets while you explore the potentials of both programs. Maybe you should check out the demos of both programs.

 

Pro-53

If you're brand new to synthesis, I'd highly suggest pro53. The reason is that almost all synthesis is based on analog subtractive. Pro53 gives you all the basics you need to learn the tools of the trade.


This is a good place to start, so you can familiarize yourself with the basics.


http://www.synthesizers.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.Tutorial

As you learn the tools of subtractive analog, you can move on to to more difficult methods such as FM, granular, etc.

 

If you have the money, I have occasionally used Kore and Komplete live. Kore lets you specify what kind of sound you are looking for and finds you respective candidates from the 10000+ presets Komplete ships with. That way you dont have to know how to create a analogue tempo synced distorted bass from oscillators and wav form selectors... Kore actually allows me to think about the sound I want first and then gives me reasonable candidates that I can later tweak.

If you already have a laptop with reasonable Ram and CPU speed, getting Kore+ Komplete would give you much more sonic variety and power than buying a hardware synth which will limit you to a specific sound pallete.
If you are looking to replicate synth pop sounds used by DM and similar bands and dont want to shell out 1500 bucks for Kore and Komplete, FM8 is pretty good and has a lot of decent presets (agree with Audiophil85 here). It has an easy edit interface that lets you morph the main parameters of the sound : http://www.native-instruments.com/index.php?id=fm8

Vince Clarke (founding member of DM, Erasure, Yaz(zo)) used FM synth patches extensively and arguably FM synthesis defined the DM sound of their earliest releases (Speak and Spell, A Broken Frame, Construction Time Again)

Reaktor is a beast, its one of the most powerful, amazing sound generators I have come across, but it is also quite complicated (and more expensive)


Hope this helps