I didn't care for Serum, the wavetable load time feels cumbersome even loading from a fast SSD. The visualizations are neat but probably a waste of computing resources, IMO. Spire sounded ok but not as good as Dune2. I haven't tried Codex.
I think Dune2/Serum emerged about the same time last year, but Massive has been around quite a long time (I'll guess 7-8 years?).
Of those we've talked about, Dune2 still sounds the best to my ears. Zebra remains one of my all-time favorites, but being semi-modular it is crazy versatile but not a rapid-workflow synth like Dune2.
The filters on Dune2 don't sounds as crunchy as the Virus though to my ears. Matters on some sounds, but not on others.
The Ultranova remains a very underrated hardware synth especially from a value standpoint. I don't know why it has been largely ignored by third party sound designers.
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