Virus, Nord, Waldorf polysynths will be the big ones people remember in 10+ yrs time. THey are by far the most heavily used since 1997-2004+
Its funny but I dont think any synth sounds 'dated'. Overused maybe.....but not really dated. Its just a tone characteristic that the synth has...and always had.
I totally agree with unio. Its all about the music ur making....its not about owning desinger label synths. There are alot of obscure synths from the 80's which many peopel dont even butt an eyelid at....but can give you such an edge to ur music. Take the Casio CZ synths for example. They are relatively underused, dirt cheap, and are capable of making fuking unreal/cool sounds. I swear to god that alot of the sounds used in computer games circa 1985+ used some Casio in it. The Casio CZ3000 made me smile.....nearly as much as the Jupiter 8 I owned.
Its all about having a variety of synthesis technologies > Phase Distortion, Subtractive (VA and True analog), Wavetable etc etc. I once made a metallic bass sound on the Casio cz3000 and ran it through my Pro-Ones filter.....fuking unreal!
http://artists.iuma.com/site-bin/mp3...sio_CZ3000.mp3
*The link may not work that well first time round.....the site is having probs. But keep trying.
DS