The Hardware Synth Thread.

Random chat: movies, books, games, technology, etcetera.

Moderators: Mexicola, 2020k, Fredd-E, Aesthetics

User avatar
Dayvan Cowboy
Status: Offline
Posts: 2279
Joined: 10 Nov 2006
Location: Ontario, Canada
Huge Behringer fan here, though the Kirn thing was stupid. They really need to think about their online presence at times. Regardless, bought an RD-8 back in May as a birthday gift to myself and am loving it. While I'll agree that not all their synths are perfect clones, it's nice to see a company making analog hardware affordable to the masses. Will be ordering an RD-6 as soon as I'm able, as I love the sound of the 606 and don't want to pay the price of an original. Once they move into polysynths, I'm bound to pick up one or two. May also end up getting a TD-3 :P

Also, Korg Microsampler finally acquired!! It's exactly what I was hoping for, as I'm a sucker for keyboard samplers. Still boggles my mind there's a huge gap in the market for hardware samplers right now, software really killed them off but it makes sense for ease-of-use and all that. Give me a clunky interface any day!! 8) Other new goodies in the studio include a TR-707, Alpha Juno 2, DOD Meatbox (not really a synth, but yeah), and a Roland VT-3 for cheesy vocal mangling/poor man's vocoder. Eventually I'd like to get a Warp Factory but the Electrix stuff seems to be really drying up on the used market/commanding high prices lately. Got my Filter Queen functional again (purchased it sans power supply, and they're oddly specific to replace) so my drum machines and FM synths are happy.

bungler666 wrote:I'm thinking about buying a Deepmind, seems like the best synth at its price. Any of you had any experience with it?


As for the Deepmind: it's a thick, versatile poly with an OTA filter for instant Juno-6 style goodness (if that's your thing). Onboard FX are decent, and gives you a lot to play with if you don't have other hardware FX/processing gear. Really hard to beat the polyphony and features for the price, and as someone said in an earlier post look for it used/on sale and you'll save $$$. Desktop module FTW, you can rack it if you're like me and have ever-decreasing desk space. :mrgreen:

Glad to see there are many knob twiddlers about still on the boards here. Cheers y'all!
The preparation for a dive is always a tense time.

User avatar
Sherbet Head
Status: Offline
Posts: 636
Joined: 23 May 2013
Oooh, my kinda thread. I don't think I have really ventured into these areas in all the years I have been on twoism.
You could feel the bullshit

User avatar
Sherbet Head
Status: Offline
Posts: 656
Joined: 15 Feb 2015
Location: ØØ Confusion ØØ
harpoon dodger wrote:Huge Behringer fan here, though the Kirn thing was stupid. They really need to think about their online presence at times. Regardless, bought an RD-8 back in May as a birthday gift to myself and am loving it. While I'll agree that not all their synths are perfect clones, it's nice to see a company making analog hardware affordable to the masses. Will be ordering an RD-6 as soon as I'm able, as I love the sound of the 606 and don't want to pay the price of an original. Once they move into polysynths, I'm bound to pick up one or two. May also end up getting a TD-3 :P



Did you see all the colors they released for the RD-6? It's so cool. I was dying for a green TD-3 and they just went and released a green RD-6. Definitely going to get it. It even got that weird clear see through plastic like those colored N64 Controllers :mrgreen:
Suck my BUTT

User avatar
Eagle Minded
Status: Offline
Posts: 389
Joined: 9 Dec 2019
I just bought an E-MU E6400. Holy shit, where do I begin with this. The manual is 450 pages for fucks sake! :lol:

User avatar
Sherbet Head
Status: Offline
Posts: 636
Joined: 23 May 2013
It's a pretty decent sounding unit man. Bit fiddly and has it's limitations but you can do lots with it. Good luck.
You could feel the bullshit

User avatar
Eagle Minded
Status: Offline
Posts: 389
Joined: 9 Dec 2019
Geogandhi wrote:It's a pretty decent sounding unit man. Bit fiddly and has it's limitations but you can do lots with it. Good luck.

Yeah it seems to be very good from what I've heard. I got really tired of using the MPC2000 as my main sampler. Feels like it works better for sequencing.

User avatar
Sherbet Head
Status: Offline
Posts: 636
Joined: 23 May 2013
I never really got on with MPCs, Love the pads and the playability but the filing system was just tiring and boring. I pretty much gave up on samplers for a while until I found the Machinedrum. That's still my favourite sampler to this day and it's really limited compared to most. I didn't get to grips fully with your Emu as it was given to me but was pretty badly broken, loads of issues I couldn't deal with myself so passed it on, Pretty sure I got a bit of use out of it but can't remember what of the top of my head.
You could feel the bullshit

User avatar
Friendly Stranger
Status: Offline
Posts: 16
Joined: 3 Sep 2020
Hello there!

Sorry in advance if there is a better thread to post this, but this one seemed the most fitting to post my question. If there is another thread I can post this to, please tell me.

I've been making some electronic synthpop music for a while, but now I'm thinking of making some BoC and Seefeel (mostly "Quique"-like) influenced instrumentals, and I'm looking forward to start making something new for me, coming from a clean slate. The gear I have as of now is a Korg Volca Sample, an Akai APC Key 25, a Focusrite Scarlett Solo for audio interface and a Marantz MPM-1000 for microphone. I've worked mainly with FL Studio as of now, but I'm starting to shift to Ableton.

I've got the chance to buy a Korg Volca FM or a Korg Volca Keys, at the same price each (118€). Which one would be better for what I want to do?

Also, is there any piece of equipment that you'd suggest keeping my eye on to add to my gear?

Thanks in advance for all the help.

User avatar
Sherbet Head
Status: Offline
Posts: 636
Joined: 23 May 2013
Ideally you'd want analogue subtractive synthesis and FX to taste but honestly, you can do anything with stock DAW plugs, at least to start. The whole digi vs analogue is kinda silly at the moment, there are plusses and minuses for both sides, it's all just subjective. However, I personally feel pretty strongly about how people implement their chosen sound sources. Keeping all sound sources in one place, i.e. the DAW, sounds stale, to sound interesting and vibrant, things need to have noise, artifacts, things that you get with recoring things from external sources. This is what builds up ambience and glue that ultimately gets you to a place where BoC resides. It's harder to mix recorded equipment but the sound is so much more satisfying. Anyone can mix perfect clear sounds and samples within the software realm, it's all ready to go, you place, pan it and level it and you're a self proclaimed producer.
For me, hardware is the only way I have fun and to get the timbres I want, I have no fun on the computer side of things so the computer is just a modern pseudo tape machine to capture my jams but I can edit and arrange afterwards which is a big benefit for quality control.
Anyway, to answer your question. If you're really wanting to go the hardware route, you're lucky, it couldn't be better out there than right now. Out of the volcas, the keys will get you closer to what you want but will be far more limited than the FM. They are two totally different approaches and sounds.
You could feel the bullshit

User avatar
Friendly Stranger
Status: Offline
Posts: 16
Joined: 3 Sep 2020
Geogandhi wrote:Ideally you'd want analogue subtractive synthesis and FX to taste but honestly, you can do anything with stock DAW plugs, at least to start. The whole digi vs analogue is kinda silly at the moment, there are plusses and minuses for both sides, it's all just subjective. However, I personally feel pretty strongly about how people implement their chosen sound sources. Keeping all sound sources in one place, i.e. the DAW, sounds stale, to sound interesting and vibrant, things need to have noise, artifacts, things that you get with recoring things from external sources. This is what builds up ambience and glue that ultimately gets you to a place where BoC resides. It's harder to mix recorded equipment but the sound is so much more satisfying. Anyone can mix perfect clear sounds and samples within the software realm, it's all ready to go, you place, pan it and level it and you're a self proclaimed producer.
For me, hardware is the only way I have fun and to get the timbres I want, I have no fun on the computer side of things so the computer is just a modern pseudo tape machine to capture my jams but I can edit and arrange afterwards which is a big benefit for quality control.
Anyway, to answer your question. If you're really wanting to go the hardware route, you're lucky, it couldn't be better out there than right now. Out of the volcas, the keys will get you closer to what you want but will be far more limited than the FM. They are two totally different approaches and sounds.


I've been trying to do some field recordings to have some ambience in my tracks and to capture some interesting sounds for ambience, but as you said, i really want to have something I can get my hands on, something organic to work with, instead of just having my computer and plugins to produce what I want to.

The possibility of toying around with all the different algorithms in the FM is really attractive to me, but I'm also really drawn to experimenting with the Keys and getting something good out of it.

User avatar
Dayvan Cowboy
Status: Offline
Posts: 2279
Joined: 10 Nov 2006
Location: Ontario, Canada
TheStatPow wrote:Did you see all the colors they released for the RD-6? It's so cool. I was dying for a green TD-3 and they just went and released a green RD-6. Definitely going to get it. It even got that weird clear see through plastic like those colored N64 Controllers :mrgreen:


Yeah dude! I debated getting a coloured one, as I actually owned one of those very translucent green N64's back in the day :P but gonna go silver for the classix look prob

bungler666 wrote:I just bought an E-MU E6400. Holy shit, where do I begin with this. The manual is 450 pages for fucks sake! :lol:


:lol: :lol: :lol:

I died laughing reading this...450 pages yeesh! That's one helluva RTFM, but also a super duper oldschool sampler. Have never used one, but just helped a buddy track down a Emulator III rack and goddamn...they don't make 'em like that anymore. If I had the time and money and space I'd go for any of the keyboard Emulators, or an Ensoniq but tis not in the cards right now.

Somehow, I got a Korg DDM-110 in the last week tho...my god, what a wonderful/terrible little beatbox. 8-bit PCM samples but no MIDI wheeee :P

Geoghandi--tres cool for rocking the Machinedrum!! I have wanted one since before I was even deep into synthesis/drum machines, probably from seeing folks on this very board name-dropping it in various threads over the yearz. Still can't find one of the goddamn things to save my life, or when I do I don't have the coin for it. They just seem such in line with how I want a drum machine/sampler to work (despite me not being the biggest Elektron fan), but they are from the cool older era of Elektron so..seems solid. As you said, limitations are there I'm sure, but they just force creativity I find.

Til next time y'all :mrgreen:
The preparation for a dive is always a tense time.

Friendly Stranger
Status: Offline
Posts: 39
Joined: 8 Mar 2015
Location: UK
I hope this is okay to post this here....

I'm selling my (hardly used) Elektron Digitone, dunno if that interests anyone here?

up on all the usual selling sites (ebay, reverb, gumtree, fbook) feel free to message here too
All NNYz? music....Streams CDs & digital....https://linktr.ee/NNYz

User avatar
Sherbet Head
Status: Offline
Posts: 665
Joined: 10 Mar 2011
Location: Northern California
I just wanted to share this with those of you who are into gear and samplers in particular. I do not work for Isla Instruments but have been following the production of this unit for about 8 months. Anyway it's a modern sampler with 12 bit and 24 bit capabilities that emulates the sound and groove of the SP1200 but it is also far more than that. I have an old Akai and I've played with other samplers over the years but could never get past the old school vibe with the problems of modern connectivity or the newer samplers that just didn't have the vibe and were convoluted imo like the Elektron Octatrack.

Anyway here is Rozzer doing the first non hip hop beta test with his. I thought you all might appreciate it. I cannot wait to get mine. The first shipment to those who preordered should be here in the next few weeks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AL45H2P ... nel=rozz3r

Previous

Return to The Playground

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 15 guests

cron