Ethan Och

Serum is my goto synth for every new project. With three oscillators (two are wavetable with phase, unison, and detune, and one is just a standard saw, square, rounded square, sine, or triangle for sub), you have a huge variety of sonic possibilities at your fingertips. The LFOs, envelopes, macros, and mod wheel can be used in conjunction with the modulation matrix to modulate practically every parameter in the VST. The synth also offers a variety of built in effects such as distortion, filters, a compressor, EQ, reverb, chorus, and delay.

Synth1 was my first VST. It's free, sounds pretty decent, and has a lot of the core functionality of other software synths. It allowed me to easily play around and understand the roles of oscillators, envelopes, and LFOs before I made the leap to more advanced and professional synths.

Sounds decent, but overpriced and too much bass for accurate mixing.