Peace, I love my Juno 106 and the Matrix, always wanted an ms20, but got a Korg Wavestation - anybody knows of any use for it? -pads, pads and quirky as hell, everything sounds like a "wavestation-demo"...

Waldorf pulse was a great voice on "Music" and this guy's soloalbum.

And the good old Minimoog.

Yeah, there are all kinds of sweeet synth lines on music. were ther other synths used as well?

Howdy

If I had to go out tmorrow and buy something, it would be either a Nord Modular or an Access Virus Indigo. I've been working on a project with a friend of mine and he has both these instruments. I would actually lean a bit more towards the Nord than the Virus. The Nord is just...so cool. Its real modular synthesis.

If I thought it would pay for itself/I find a sugar momma/win the lottery, I'd get a [[url=http://[/URL]="http://www.bigcitym…"]French Connection.[/]="http://www.bigcitym…"]French Connection.[/] Unfortunately, there's not much call for it on the "Oye Como Va" or "Ladies Night" circuit.

I agree with LBN, the MS2000 is a pretty cool little box. I've messed around with it in the store and its a zippy little synth.

I know lots of cats that have the K2500 and swear by it as their main "workstation". I've never used it.

I like the older Roland synths more than the new ones. The MKS80 was an excellent synthesizer. The Juno-106 was great for "fat plastic" sounds. The Oberheim Matrix-12 and Xpander were great instruments too.

The Wavestation and other wavetable synths are interesting. I've been doing an '80s project so I picked up the PPG plugin for the keyboard stuff. Its pretty darn good and I like that they've given you the option of keeping the instrument's inconsistancies or correcting them.

I'm pretty happy with the very minimalist setup I have. I have a Minimoog with the Big Briar MIDI kit. I mean, what can you say about it? Its a Mini, it makes those "GRRRRRRR" sounds, it requires tuning about as often as a guitar does...there it is.

Then, I have a Yamaha VL1 and VL1m which they'll have to pry from my dead, clutching hands. They're just the most expressive instruments I've played...ever. They never really caught on like wildfire as they were prohibitively expensive when they came out. All I can say is, if you can get one on the cheap, make it so.

For drums I picked up the MAM ADX-1 Analog drum synth. Its perfect for my minimalist mentality. Five sounds each with ten knobs. That's it! No patterns, patches, no nothing. My same friend who has the Virus and Nord picked up a similar module made by Vermona. Its also quite nice with a few more sounds and audio input processing.

There are my "gigging keyboards" that are basically the only "ROMplers" I own (Yamaha S80 and EX5). The S80 has acceptable action and the EX is a pretty decent synth with sampling, Virtual Analog and Virtual Lead (VL) capabilities. But, they're ROMplers...they are uninspiring to play. There are many reasons "why" they are so uninspiring but maybe that's an editorial for me to write. I don't think making an instrument that "I" would like is a wise business plan for a manufacturer.

The only other instruments that I use here are the "real" ones: Hammond B3, DynaMyRhodes or an old Rhodes Stage Piano. If I could get a real grand piano, I might actually learn how to play again.

Well, I've blathered on long enough....

Hi

I love synths, but am low on money :-(

I use the Nova by Novation (I've posted on this a few months ago) and I love it.
I think it's better (specs) then the ms2000 and I prefer the sound above a virus.

The best thing about the Nova is it's great way to modulate everything with everything.
Sure, the presets are very clean sounding, but for this kind of money I couldn't find anything better (and you can create very wobbly sounds with it, after some getting used to)

And maybe a bit weird in this topic, but I also realy love the substractor, a softsynth in Reason. I takes a while to learn how to program something not digital sounding, but then it's almost comparable to a ms2000 (check out my song 'where' on my site for an idea on the substractor, everything but drums and vocals are substractor)

Cheers

The indigo 2, subtractor and now the maelstrom, and of course anything nord are some of my favorites too. I'd love to have a novation as well. Oh hell, while we're wishing lemme get one of those q+ as well!

I posted this in DAW cafe a while back but for those who haven't seen it. What do you think about this?

[[url=http://[/URL]="http://www.hartmann…"]Hartmann Neuron[/]="http://www.hartmann…"]Hartmann Neuron[/]

Howdy

I saw the Hartmann at Winter NAMM. Listened to it for a good half hour or so. It was a great sounding instrument. The way a sound could change from one thing to another cannot be described in text. I was really intrigued by its synthesis engine.

Absynth is similar sounding and about 1/20th the cost of the Hartmann. I'm still waiting for some "quality time" with Absynth to see what's under the hood.

I've got absynth, but there is a bug that exists with some part of my configuration. The parameter dialogue box associated with "generate ar pulse" in the envelope section, does not appear. That makes it impossible to move forward in the envelope shaping process. So I'm screwed til ver 1.3.3. :mad:

hi

got myself a yamaha dx200 today
very cheap looking, not so great drumsounds, but...

a dx7 with knobs and filters :-)

so again, whatever people / the media say about this little ugly green thing, it's...

a dx7 with knobs and filters :-)

cheers

Howdy

Its probably cheaper than my zany idea of running my TX816 through 8 Sherman Filterbank 2s.

Is that the little tabletop box thingy?

Hi

yep
http://www.yamahasynth.com/pro/dx200/index.html

cheers

Hi people.

I'm new to this forum and have a passion for vintage synths.
My rig consists of:
Yamaha SY77 and DX7 mkI,
Roland Juno 6, Juno 106, JX-3P with PG200, SH09, System 100 and System 700 sequencer.
Frostwave Quad midi-cv converter.
I have modded some of these synths to add extra i/o. My SY77 has analog clock outputs for the System 700 sequencer and the DX7 has cv inputs. I've also added extra i/o to the SH09 and Juno 6.

I also use Reason 2, Rebirth, ARP-X8 arpeggiator, Soundiver.
My DAW is a Mac G4 with Digi001 running ProTools 5.2.1 (32 track).

If you want to hear this setup in action, there is some of my music on my website (click the link in my signature).

Hey, I like your music danii. That's a pretty cool setup. It's nice to see a woman involved with synths.

Howdy

I'm impressed that someone would add clock out and CV to an SY and DX!

Thanks guys :cool:

Actually, my SY77 has just developed an annoying fault. Basically, it works for a while then freezes (no response to anything). Lights are on but nobody's home. If I remove the backup battery and short the PCB terminals (not the battery) for a couple of minutes (to discharge any caps) then solder the battery back in place, it comes back to life but only for a few days.
The battery voltage is at 3.2 volts under load.

Has anyone else had this problem with an SY77?? Mine's worked fine for ten years until now.

Dannii, what type of battery is it? Do you know what the nominal voltage is supposed to be? 10 years seems long enough for any battery to go bye-bye. What may be happening, is that when you take out the battery you allow it to slightly "recharge", just enough to get above the threshold where the kbd will work again for a while - other than that, dunno... Steve

Thanks for the suggestion, Steve :cool: . It's a 3 volt lithium battery (CR2032, I think). I measured the 3.2 volts after the synth had been left off with the battery connected for a couple of days so I'm pretty confident it is OK. My SE50 EFX unit also uses one of these and last time its battery died, it measured 1.8 volts open circuit.
My boyfriend (also a techie) suggested unplugging and reinserting the EEPROMS which are mounted in sockets. I'll give that a try and see what happens. IC sockets can be a little unreliable, particularly after so many years.
Hopefully this fixes the fault. My SY is my workhorse and main clock source for the analog gear. It's quite annoying to have it freeze in the middle of a project.

I would get a new battery anyway. Just to take that out of the equation.

Re-seat the eproms is good but be careful. This is relatively old gear so think about the issues we now all take for granted.

Brain damaged synths while switched on can also come from strange power-supply things. Do a visual check through the power supply for obvious things like dry joins or cracked PCB tracks and hot components.

Faulty Synths are a pain to work on!
good luck

I spent some time with a Virus Hardware two days ago. WOW ... it's the first time in Ten years that a Keyboard has really grabbed me!!
Is it that good?

Howdy

I've been using a Virus Indigo on and off for the past year. It is "fucking killer". The guys at Access really have it together.

Its not as fun for me to program as the Nord Modular but they're two different beasts.

Thanks Kev.
I'm in the process of moving house (and my studio) at present so I haven't had time to reseat the eproms yet. Also, due to my move, I won't get to post here much during the next few weeks.
This synth is really well built (typical of Yamaha) but is also a real pain to work on. The top PCB's are easy to get at but anything under them is quite a task so I checked for dry joints last time I had it completely apart. There were heaps around the switches and press buttons (which I knew about) and I resoldered all the PCB connectors as well but I haven't touched the power supply yet. Great suggestion and one I have completely overlooked. Fortunately, it is relatively easy to get at.
As I've mentioned, this is my main workhorse synth and forms the basis of much of my music. I'm in the middle of finishing my 'Dreams' album at present which uses this synth extensively so it'll be a huge relief to fix it.

Thanks again guys for the suggestions :) .

I love my Waldorf microQ, I can get the fattest synth brasses, morphing pads, screaming leads. I also love the Hammond XK2. I really like my Yamaha P80's keyboard, feels like the real thing. I also like my Roland XV-5050 as a midi workhorse, presets are professionally done and I can find everything I need fast for everyday grunt work. I won't use it for real synthesis work since it's a Rompler. If I had the money I would go out and buy a Moog Voyager, Alesis Andromeda, a real Hammond B3, and for a real modular I would get me a Doepfer A-100 fully loaded with all the goodies including step sequencer and all possible filters.... Ah dreaming can be fun....

the FS1R by yamaha is one of my favorites, it's the ultimate FM synth for me and then you have the formant shaping synthesis which is very difficult to program but you can get some incredibly wild sounds if you use it right, I wish I had four of them :)

Hi all!

Wow, its great someone finally started this synth topic because I always checked this forum and it seemed dead.
It is great to see so many people here loving their synths.

Hey Kev I vas happy to discover recently at PROSOUNDWEB that you like synths and samplers and not only DIY. We had some similar experiences. I owned two SAMPLECELL II cards [expanded to max RAM] in the past and in very short time I discovered it was a very bad choice. It was almost unusable because of the noise at the outs.It was a disapointment considering that I had KURZWEILS and AKAIs. I sold them very fast and fortunately didn't lost any money. I have too ROLAND JV1080 and although I have the XV5080 I would not sell it. It is a great synth. Even in 1995 when it was expensive it was a very good price/performance/sound quality ratio. Now, the second hand price is so low that I would sugest to anyone to buy it.

I have all my synths and I do music and recording because of one thing that had a great impact in my life. Somewhere in 198o-1981 when I was a twelve years kid I heard the Tangerine Dream EXIT album. It was something amazing and exciting and from that moment I knew that that is the thing I want to do in my life.
Also because of Tangerine Dream I was and I'm still interested in PPG synthesizers. In the late eighties PPG died and a new company was born, Waldorf. Waldorf is my favorite synth manufacturer and now I have seven synth from them. Absolutely great and unique sound.

In all these years I owned more then 100 synth and now I have a great collection of synth, [almost 40]. I try to keep the minimum and it is hard to decide what to keep because I like them but at the same time I know that since I have so many synth I'm 10% as creative as I was when I had only three. So now I'm in a reverse process of selling some synth and and keeping only what is absolutely necessary.
I am at the point where there is no synth in the world that I would like to have. I'm not dreaming anymore about Symbolic Sound KYMA or Synclavier or Hartman Neuron.
I think If you have not more then 10 synth and samplers and you don't use the factory patches, but you edit, process and record samples yourself, you can have any sound you need and be original. I don't think the answer to our problems is to buy a Hartman Neuron or the latest Korg, Roland or Emu. It is just an ilusion that you can't do this or that because you don't have a specific synth. You can do so much with a limited number of synths and samplers.
Ok, I know it is easy for me to talk because I had all these synth and tried almost everything in the synth world. I told my story because I think others can learn from my experience. Don't do what I done because it is very time consuming and expensive. Be patient and don't buy every synth even if you have the money. Try every instrument you can put your hands on, and decide if it is usable for your music. If it can do only two or three great sounds maybe it is not a good idea to buy it. Don't buy the latest instruments just because it has more polyphony and more waves in the wavetable. Be drastic when you chose a synth. Ask yourself all the time if you really need what it offers.
For example I owned, used and listened to all the new virtual analog type synth and now I have only the ones that I really need [yes Kev the VIRUS is great but you have to edit the sounds or you will recognize it in music]. I saw some positive coments about the Korg MS2000. For me this is one of the synth I don't like because I always compare the new virtual analog synths with the real ones, side by side. The MS2000 compared to the old analog MS20, a JUNO106 or OBERHEIM is a joke. And you can find out this only if you compare them side by side. If you don't do it you have the impression that it is ok but if you compare you discover there is something wrong in the way the bass sounds .

Samplers. I think there are two ways to use samplers. If you need to play acoustic sounds [large orchestra sounds, acoustic drums] with no processing/filtering the best choice is GIGASTUDIO because it is very stable it loads everything almost instantly and has enough polyphony for every aplication. The other way is to use the processing/filtering capabilities of the sampler in a creative way. For this thing I always use hardware samplers. My favorites are the Kurzweils, and I think the old K2000 is still unsurpased by other synth in complexity and architecture [ok maybe the KYMA but that is a modular workstation]. And it is more then ten years old !!!!!!! Another great sampler for creative use is the old Roland W30, 12bit sampling and a great filter.

Softsynth. There are some softsynth that sound good but at this moment I have no intention to invest in this domain. Although for me the big chalenge is to find freeware softsynth that sound very good and create an almost freeware setup that can produce somethig viable from a musical point of view. On my list there are now two great freeware plugins that in my opinion sound almost or as good as hardware : RGC Triangle II and OHMBOYS Frohmage. If you have info about freeware plugins that sound as good as these please post the links.

Hi PAN. I have the wavestation too and if you want to make it sound diferent and good you have to do two things:
1-edit the wavesequences and don't use those overused waves
2-the filter of the wavestation is a catastrophe so use an external filtering/processing box [something like Mutronics Mutator, Sherman Filterbank or the filtering/processing capabilityes of a synth like the Virus].

chrissugar

Hi!
Even we use more than 5 PC's in the studio I never rely on soft synths.May be sounds old fashion ,but I like to touch the knobs!We never use computers at gigs too...Our style is house,deep -house and chill-out.Sequencer,sequencers all around me even Alesis mmt8.I use Korg Triton,Yamaha Cs2x,Juno 106,Proteus FX,Kawai K1r and some very rare soviet analog synth from 1981-Rhythm 2/sounds very close to Oxfords,Warps...
Yes I use big amount of ..cables!
Still the hard sampler is better than soft-there is no reason to believe in your luck if the computer decides to FREEZE!

Peace!

Donny

http://www.popcorn.dir.bg