A soft synth is one that is hosted inside of your computer, as opposed to the module that is housed in a hardware keyboard.

My two favorite hardware boards for modern synth sounds would be the Korg Wavestation and Clavia Nord lead 3, but there are other very good ones as well. These might be the kinds of boards you would want to try out based on what you have told me.

There is a softwware emulation of the wavestation that is excellent btw, and now there is one of the Clavia as well.

AJ

AJ