Fastest free vsti with best live playability?

[TonE]

Which is the fastest free vsti you know which has most playability?

With playability, I mean you like the sounds it generates and using the common controls like modwheel, pitchbend, breath, aftertouch you can play expressively, where it is most fun to play. (And with the least cpu consumption.)

With fastest, I mean if you send a quick sequence of program change events, the vsti should be able to handle it, without destroying the audio output or the cpu.

I am thinking of Synth1 as a great candidate. What would be your recommendations, going in this direction? Thanks friends.

[Fergler]

Surge synth is blazing fast and efficient. Patch changes are instant.

I'd also nominate Vital synth but it's been slow at certain things and its GUI is much more taxing.

Something in surge is just more efficient. They are both equally powerful with great workflow and ... Completely free.

I've also been a big fan of Gr-8 synth it does some really cool things in a very easy to use interface.

[TonE]

Surge there is no win32 I guess. The linux version I tried a few times, did not work here. Will recheck. In my latest surge test, its gui was loading very slowly, so exactly opposite of what I am looking for. But they improved it maybe. Of course if surge would be one of the new candidates that would be cool. Thanks for your ideas.

UPDATE: Just started surge win32 (via wine in linux) and building its gui take minutes, or it appears as black. Now while I am writing it is still black and I am waiting for surge win32. And it stays black. Freezing even Reaper. So surge win32 is not working on my computer. (Not the latest version, but it could be even the latest, need to recheck. 'pkill reaper' to the rescue.)

[mschnell]

If the VSTi internal handle the program change, that should be fast and without glitches.

E.g. When using Kontakt, switching patches by means of presets creates a huge period of silence due to load time. Sending a program change to Kontakt via Midi to switch preloaded instruments within a group works flawlessly.

-Michael