Best is very subjective but very good can be described. Very good costs real money. As a keyboard player I probably have 15K (new prices) worth of keyboards right now. The best overall synths I have are the Kurzweil PC3 and the new Roland FA06. The Kurz retails for about $2,800 and the FA for about $1,500. Excellent sounds. For modules I have a Roland Sonic Cell. About $500 new. The new Roland Integra is about $1,700.

Good sounds cost real money. You can save by going software vs hardware. To equal the sounds of my keyboards again, it's real money. Kontakt with all the sound libraries is $6-800 and the other big name softsynts are about the same.

When somebody asks for the "best" on this forum anyway they usually mean the best for cheap. That is problematic because there is nothing that is even close to "best" for less than several hundred bucks.

$300 for ST 3 is a steal imho. But when someone talks about the aggravation in using stuff like this, getting it all set up, having problems, all that stuff all I can say is welcome to the real world of digital audio. Somebody has a problem with IKM's authorization process? Try other companies with their iLock dongle. You have to be a true computer nerd to get all this working if you want anything close to the "best" sounds. Lots of folks simply want something that they can load up, sounds like a million bucks with no hassles and all they have to do is hit play.

Good luck with that.

Bob

Last edited by jazzmammal; 02/14/15 06:27 AM.
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.