14 Best VST Synths For Dance Music Production

Are you looking for the best VST synths to create electronic dance music?

You’ve come to the right place.

If you are new to producing, this list will help you figure out the absolute best VST synths to try out and start making some banging tracks.

Alternatively, if you’re an experienced producer, you might already know most of these synths, if not all of them, and you already have a set of favorite synths. In this case, maybe this post will be a good excuse to try out a new one, and hopefully, get inspired with new sounds!

Each one of these VST instruments is mostly useful for specific types of sounds. In addition, each one works best for different genres and we consider different one to be the best vst for trance, house, techno and sub-genres. That being said, they are all capable of great versatility, in addition to sounding great, which is why they made it to our top list!

For each synth, we will highlight their distinctive features. And for some of them, we’ll also show you some of the awesome soundbanks created by our artists for them, to get you inspired.

Finally, all of these synths are available both as VST & AU plugins for Windows & Mac OS X systems.

Are you ready? Let’s dive into our list of the top 14 best VST synths available for dance music production!

If you are interested, you can also check out our Best FREE VST Synths list.

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Spire

Arguably one of the most-used VST synths in recent years. Spire is an excellent additive hybrid synth. It’s particularly useful for genres like EDM & trance. We even consider it to be the best vst for trance!

• Great punchy & modern sound
• A huge amount of soundbanks available due to its popularity
• Lots of useful features, per oscillator unison
• used by many top artists (Dash Berlin, Armin van Buuren, and Ferry Corsten amongst others)

You can find more information about Spire at the Reveal-Sound website.

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Serum

Serum is an outstanding wavetable synth and is extremely popular these days. It’s particularly useful for genres like EDM, dubstep, trap, synthwave, future bass, and many more.

• Custom wavetables by loading audio
• Great FX Section (including multiband compression)
• Great user interface

You can find more information about Serum at the Xfer website. Also check our catalog of awesome Serum Soundbanks!

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Sylenth1

Originally released in 2007, Sylenth1 is undoubtedly one of the most-used synths for trance & electro music. Some people also consider it the best vst for house music. It has more limited capabilities than others on this list, but it makes up for it with a great warm sound, straightforward UI and low CPU usage.

• Virtual analogue substractive synth
• Excellent warm sound
• Very lightweight & low CPU usage
• An incredible large amount of Sylenth1 soundsets available for all genres

You can find more information about Sylenth1 at the LennarDigital website.

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Massive

Massive by Native Instruments has been a very popular synth in the Dubstep genre amongst others. Specifically, it’s really powerful for bass sounds.

• Great sound quality and versatile synth
• Works especially well for dubstep, future bass, and more
• Powerful wavetables & FX section
• Lots of premium soundbanks available online

You can find more information about Spire at the Native Instruments website. Also check out our Massive Soundsets category!

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Nexus 2

Although not technically a synth, Nexus 2 has still been able to find a special place in the heart of many producers. Since it’s a ROMpler, you can import ‘expansions’ (additional libraries) to expand the sound capabilities of this instrument. And that’s where its power comes from.

• Great expansions for various genres of dance music.
• Built-in presets sound great out-of-the-box
• Easy to use UI, especially suited for beginners
• Powerful arpeggiator, trancegate, and FX

You can find more information about Spire at the ReFX website.

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Omnisphere 2

Omnisphere is another outstanding ROMpler with incredible capabilities. It focuses on atmospheres, pianos, other instruments, and weird ambient sounds. It has a huge built-in library of sampled instruments and offers great sound shaping options.

• Combines sampled instruments, wavetables & granular synthesis, FM and more
• Best suited for atmospheres, Instrumental elements, and weird sounds.
• Over 50 GB of (awesome) sounds included

Not technically a synth!

You can find more information about Spire at the Reveal-Sound website.

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HIVE

One of U-He’s newer instruments, Hive has features and capabilities similar to LennarDigital’s Sylenth1. Both are really great synths, so we suggest trying both to decide which is your favorite!

• Virtual analogue substractive synth
• Excellent modern & punchy sound
• 2X oscillators with 16X Unison

You can find more information about Spire at the U-He website. If you’re looking for good sounds for Hive, you can check the Hive Soundsets category at our store.

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Dune 3

Dune 3 really stands out from the crowd, with a very modern sound and great features. Dune 3 offers 3x oscillators going up to 8000+ voices, with 8 global unison voices and 16-voice polyphony.

• All-around very capable synth
• Very punchy sound
• Powerful oscillators, filters, arpeggiator & FX
• Great soundsets available for trance music

You can find more information about Spire at the Synapse Audio website.

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Zebra2

Zebra2 by U-He offers a modular synth with exciting features. This synth will be most useful for sound designers and for creating weird ambiances, textures and movie scores.

• Great capabilities, especially useful for advanced for sound designers
• Warm sound
• Most useful for ambient sounds, cinematic & movie sounds, textures
• CPU friendly
• Powerful oscillators, filters, arpeggiator & FX

You can find more information about Spire on the U-He website.

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Avenger

Avenger is the first synth by well-known sound designer company Vengeance-Sound. Its powerful modern sound and capabilities make it a great tool to have in your arsenal.

• Combines virtual analogue, sample-based features and wavetable synthesis
• Incredible modern & punchy sound
• Powerful oscillators, LFOs & FX

You can find more information about Spire at the Vengeance-Sound website. If you’re looking for great soundbanks for Avenger, you can check those available at our store.

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DIVA

Diva is arguably one of the most analogue sounding virtual synths available on the market. It’s definitely the way to go if you want a warm & rich analogue sound. On the flip side, it’s a little less versatile than other synths out there and also quite CPU-heavy.

• Straightforward interface, easy-to-use
• Warm analogue like sound inspired by classic synths
• Perfect for warm pads, basslines and leads

You can find more information about Diva on the U-He website.

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Kick 2

This is the second (and improved!) version of Sonic Academy‘s popular Kick plugin. This instrument stands out in the market by allowing you to create strong kick drums that are perfectly suitable for various genres.

• Award-winning plugin
• Great kick capabilities for EDM, trance, etc.
• Good factory kicks included

You can find more information about Spire at the Sonic Academy website.

Also if you’re looking for great presets for this plugin, check out what’s available at our store:

PUNCH Presets For KICK2

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Repro-1

Modeled after classic synths from the 1980s, Repro-1 reproduces their great vintage analog-style sound. This is the perfect VST if you’re looking for the original sound of those instruments.

• Basic design, vintage analog style, modeled after the Pro-One
• Perfect for rich & warm classic sounds
• Straightforward interface and easy-to-use
• Great presets included

You can find more information about Repro-1 on the U-He website.

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Harmor

Harmor is a great little additive synth by the creators of FL Studio.

Its modules will look familiar to subtractive synthesizer enthusiasts: oscillators, filters & phasers, these are featured in Harmor but, because performed through additive synthesis, offer more freedom. 

Harmor allows you to create a great variety of sounds for electronic music and turns out to be a very CPU-friendly unit with a very pleasant user interface.

You can find more information about Harmor on the Image-Line website.

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Wrapping up our list of the best VST synths

We hope you enjoyed this list of the best VST synths on the market for dance music production. We believe we listed the best edm vst plugins out there!

Did you know all of these VST synths? Which one is your favorite? Did we forget an awesome synth on this list?

Let us know in the comment section!

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Check our soundbanks for all of these synths!

By the way, you can find high-quality Soundsets / Soundbanks for most of these synthesizers on our store: Spire, Serum, Sylenth1, Massive, Dune, Avenger, and more. Check some of our best-sellers below!

If you are looking for new sounds for your productions, you can check out our libraries of free samples for various genres :

• Trance Samples (FREE)
• Psy Trance Samples (FREE)
• Progressive House Samples (FREE)
• Deep House Samples (FREE)
• Synthwave Samples (FREE)