XferRecords and Steve Duda have just released the follow up to their 2014 flagship virtual synthesizer Serum with the aptly named Serum 2. This Donation Based update comes 11 years after the initial release of Serum, and since then we have seen a slew of VST synthesizers that have drawn inspiration from the original Serum. It’s only fitting then that Serum 2 draws inspiration from those synthesizers, and packages it up in a familiar enough GUI that it will take no time for any sound designer to start making twisted reese basses, granular drones, and acid techno leads. We are going to highlight a few of the key features that have been improved upon or are brand new for Serum 2.
Wavetables + Dual Warp Modes = Wobble Heaven
Serum 2 comes equipped with three main oscillators, a noise oscillator, as well as the standard sub oscillator restricted to the basic waveshapes. In the previous Serum, you could only enable one warp mode per oscillator. These warp modes included Ring Modulation, Frequency Modulation, Sync, Asymmetrical, and a few other modes. Serum 2 expands upon these classic warp modes with new warp modes including Distortion units, so that you can apply distortion to the individual wavetable itself rather than the entire chain. There is additionally a lowpass and high pass filter for warp modes so that you can tame or modulate out some harmonics from the specific wavetable before it reaches the synthesizer’s filter stage. Speaking of individual wavetables, with over 145 completely brand new wavetables for Serum 2, there is no shortage of inspiration to be found within. From thick analog sub basses to new digital screeches perfect for a thick Reese bass, Serum 2’s wavetables have it all.
Taking Serum 2 beyond just a Wavetable synthesizer is the new Multisample, Sample, Granular, and Spectral synthesis engines. The Multisample engine contains real instrument samples, which would allow for layering of real instruments alongisde the other synthesis methods without having to leave Serum to open up a sampler like Kontakt. These multi-samples are stored in the SFZ Format. Put simply, the SFZ File format is a way to organize samples for performance purposes. You can import your own SFZ files easily by using the Import SFZ option in the menu.
Dual Filters
Serum 2 has added an additional filter before the effects stage. Each oscillator will initially be set to only route audio to Filter 1. By clicking the “F” next to the Oscillator Engine type you can change how much signal from the oscillator is sent between each filter. You an additionally send the audio to the two Bus channels to process the audio separate from the filters.
In addition to the multitude of filter types from the original Serum, Serum 2 packs a handful of new filter types taking inspiration from the Wasp Synthesizer, DJ Mixers, several different Ladder filter types including two new Moog inspired algorithms (MG Ladder and MG Dirty), and a new Comb filter among others.
Modulation Heaven
Continuing on the main interface page at the bottom we have an additional 4 Macro knobs, 4 Envelopes with the 1st one still mapped to the synthesizer’s overall amplitude, and 6 LFO’s. When you map the 6th LFO you’re presented with an additional 4 LFO tabs for a grand total of 10 LFO’s. That is enough modulation to power an entire evolving ambient tune from one patch on Serum 2.
In addition to the classic LFO’s Serum 2 has different LFO engines such as the “Path” engine which allows you to draw shapes within the window and assign the X and Y coordinates to different knobs. So for example, you can have the X coordinate opening up the Cutoff Frequency on a filter, while the Y coordinate automates the Resonance of the filter.
The Chaos LFO types present another unique form of modulation again using the X/Y parameter system like the path. The Chaos: Lorenz mode uses the “Lorenz System” which was a series of differential equations first studied by Edward Lorenz. Essentially the modulation starts at a point and circles outward before wrapping around another point. It reminded me of gravitational transfers amongst celestial bodies. The Chaos: Rossler mode is similar to the Lorenz mode, however a big difference is that the orbit travels around a singular point rather than two points, making big sweeping circular patterns instead of a figure 8 type pattern. Both of these modes can have the X and Y values individually assigned to modulate different parameters.
The last new LFO type is the Sample & Hold LFO, this essentially will pick a random value between 0 and 100 and hold it for the specified rate of time. Previously this would be done in the original Serum by drawing in a lot of different points on an LFO and setting a long rate of time to modulate. If you have Retrig enabled, then a new value will be chosen every time a note is hit. This would be useful for dub techno style chords with the filter cutoff being automated so that every chord stab has a bit of variation to it.
A Piano Roll and Clip Editor? But why?
This one puzzled me a little bit as to why this would be a feature within Serum 2 but as I thought about it, it would be very useful for use inside of a DAW that may not have an accessible piano roll or pattern sequencer. A prime example of this would be to use Serum 2 inside of the modular synthesizer engine VCV Rack, which does not have a piano roll accessible. The pattern editor and piano roll within Serum would allow a user to create synth parts that they could recall easily by being saved inside of the Patch and allow them to perform more easily. There is MIDI output and you can even record MIDI into the clips. It’ll be interesting to see how patch designers and artists use this in their performances and setups. It looks like you can have up to 12 MIDI clips per patch, and you are able to save these custom MIDI clips.
There are 3 default MIDI files, so presumably you can load your own MIDI files into each clip, and then save all of the clips as a XferClip file. This would allow you to have a bank of your own riffs and melodies that you can load up to test how different patches sound without leaving Serum itself.
Arpeggiator Madness in Serum 2
The original Serum did not have an arpeggiator however you were able to simulate one by utilizing an LFO. Xfer Records released Cthulhu which was “the Chord and Arp Monster” in 2017. I always found Cthulhu hard to work with and it is very nice to see that Steve Duda and Xfer Records has ported over some of the major functionality into Serum 2 with the Arpeggiator.
Featuring up to 12 different Arp presets per patch, you can easily trigger between different arpeggios to add interesting variation and character to your next song. The “Edit All” button under the Global tab on the left of the Arp editor window allows you change all 12 arp pattern and rates. The launch quantize button quantizes the “Play” button preses to the specified length, so if you want a pattern to play for 8 bars you can trigger the 2nd pattern immediately after the 1st and it will play once the 8 bars are up.
Supercharged FX
Serum was one of the first synthesizers to feature a Multiband Compressor. Serum 2 takes things further by allowing more than just 1 FX type to be used on each patch. This means if you want to use 5 Multiband Compressos to really beef up your sounds you can without resorting to other OTT type solutions. In addition to multiple instances of the same effect unit, Serum 2 comes with Band Splitter units that separate the signals into Low and High frequencies or Low, Mids, and Highs, so that you can use different effects on different frequency bands. This is reminiscent of the Multipass effect within the Kiloheartz Snap-In plugin ecosystem. There are also two bus groups that can have individual effects on them as well so that you can truly shape and sculpt your sounds even further. Let your Sub Bass breathe while you distort the high frequencies to hell and back.
New Mixer View
The new mixer view in Serum 2 is a really nice treat, however the volume knobs on the mixer change the associated parameters on the Main page however it is nice being able to adjust the Filter and Bus routing amounts without having to click into the Filter window. It is nice to have an accurate overview of what is going on with the levels of each oscillator especially when trying to fine tune the overall sound of your patch. The filter’s having their own volume controls opens up another avenue of modulation possibilities.
Final Thoughts
Overall, Serum 2 is exactly the modern upgrade that technological gains over the last 11 years has necessitated. Seeing Steve Duda and XferRecords take inspiration from the synthesizers that took inspiration from Serum is such an awesome thing to see play out. I’m sure that there’s more to Serum 2 that I haven’t discovered just yet but just with what I’ve covered I’ll be inspired for quite a while. I should have my first Serum 2 specific preset pack available for free on my Gumraod soon so keep an eye out for that. You can already grab all of my Serum presets for absolutely free there as well.