It’s official – Hans Zimmer has a favourite software synth: “I like a GUI that is intended for a soft synth as opposed to an emulation”
He’s the The Dune, Dark Knight and Pirates Of The Caribbean composer.
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Hans Zimmer has shared details of his favourite software synth in a new interview. Speaking with KVR, the composer opened up about his go-to virtual instrument, also reflecting on his appreciation for software instruments that don’t simply try to emulate the user interfaces of hardware counterparts.
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U-He’s Zebra is the instrument favoured by the iconic movie composer, who cites the COVID-19 pandemic as one reason he began to lean more into software. “So, my favourite soft synth is Zebra,” Zimmer said, “and I’ll tell you why. The underlying quality of the sound is not going to let me down. The code in each module is really well written. The oscillators are great, and the circuits are great, and there’s one module that’s a bit dodgy, but they’re all of an equal quality.
“I like a GUI that is intended for a soft synth as opposed to an emulation,” Zimmer continued. “I experienced this years and years ago when I first got very excited about Arturia bringing out [its] Modular Moog soft synth. But, I spent as long making a sound on that as I would spend on the real thing, which was standing right next to me, so it took the same amount of time to end up with something that wasn’t quite as satisfying.”
Zimmer, also a proud owner of iconic hardware instruments like the Analogue Solutions Colossus, acknowledged the importance of respecting differing schools of synthesis, pinpointing a particular conversation with U-He’s Urs Heckmann:
“I had this conversation with Urs once where I said, “There are little imperfections you get on analogue, digital is too perfect,” and Urs just shot back at me, “No, you don’t understand, analogue is perfect, not digital. Analogue is perfect because it’s a straight wire with something going through the straight wire. There’s no computation. There’s no errors in computation. It’s genius design of choosing genius components that makes it work.”
Read the full interview at kvraudio.com.
