-=[THE SYNTH ZONE]=-

Probably buying a minilogue xd tomorrow - my first ever hardware synth after eight years fucking around on iOS

New production SP1200 for only, uh, $4000.

I bought my first hw synth - a Monologue - after messin’ around with iOS for years. Now I use all the cool iOS midi toys I’ve learned to sequence it.

Some discussion over here about whether to buy my daughter a MIDI keyboard or a synth for Xmas.

The name Arturia keeps coming up.

That's a tough one. There are a million good free or cheap VSTs she can play with the MIDI keyboard, but you really need an audio interface to get sound out of the computer, a DAW to host those VSTs, etc. - but she could play synths and piano and etc. for the price of one keyboard.

In polyphonic synths, your price of entry is going to be quite a bit higher than the Arturia MIDI controller (or equivalent) - the Deepmind 6 keyboard is still $600ish, I think? OTOH, almost all new ones have USB MIDI so they can also function as MIDI controllers for VSTs.

Are you looking for something with polyphony or a mono?

Poly.

Do you know the story about Rick Wakeman and Jack Wild?

I wanted to spend about 700 and wanted at least a bit of polyphony and I’m definitely not regretting the Minilogue XD

You can same more money and get the more limited, but still very charming, regular Minilogue.

Though both are limited in their poly, so if she is gonna be playing like Rick Wakemen, you might want to go for something with at least 6 voices.

I would spring for the XD if you have the bread. I have the normal Minilogue and it sounds kinda wimpy. I think they fixed the filter on the XD.

minilogue definitely benefits from fx pedals

4 voices of poly is nice for me because it about matches my skill level (1-finger bassline in the left hand, three voice chord in my right hand)

I would take 1 more voice tbh but more than that would be overkill

The problem with only 4 voices is that if there is any release to the notes, you can hear them getting stolen when you change chords. But whatever, 8-voice synths get expensive. One other option could be to get her a Circuit Tracks. If she's not a pianist, it might be more fun. You get a couple of synths and some drum tracks to play with....

I would get the Deepmind over the Minilogue - better keys (and more of them), 6 voices vs. 4, pretty much sounds like a Juno and everyone loves Junos.

If traditional keys are optional, a Microfreak would also be a solid option. Not polyphonic at all but endless sound possibilities.

Or this: https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/BehrMonoPoly--behringer-monopoly-4-voice-analog-synthesizer

MonoPoly has no screen, just knobs, which is nice.

Just wanna rep the Yamaha Reface CS -- 8 voices, easy to program, and cheap ($300-ish). Only downside is that you can't save presets. Also, it's minikeys, but they're real nice ones. I had one for a while and it was great!

I think you can save presets via usb to computer or app no?

Reface series is a sleeper hit, everybody who has one loves it. I have the Reface DX, I even bought a controller for it that cost as much as the synth. It's fantastic.

Went with the software solution on Tuesday, before the Black Friday sale ran out. Kid is currently using with her existing tiny midi controller and headphones until bigger keyboard and speaker arrive.

I was kinda cracking jokes about modular earlier in this thread, lovingly. Since then I’ve bought and somehow already filled a 6U 176HP Arturia RackBrute Eurorack case. It’s a ton of fun, but yeah, predictably addictive and dangerous.

Nothing too exotic in there, standard Mutable, Make Noise, ALM starter kit stuff, with some weirder noisier odds and ends thrown in. I’ve played with it a lot and have learned a good deal, can kinda see where I wanna go next with it. The biggest challenge is just to chill out and explore all the things I can wring out of what I have instead of peaking at more modules.

I think this will be the year I add one or two hardware instruments to my Ableton + Pigments set up.

My top priority is to add a drum machine, and the roland tr-8s is currently the one I'm leaning towards. I also have some curiosity about the arturia minibrute 2s for additional synth/sequencing.

My goal is to find boxes that are fun to jam on, with lots of hands on control and a good amount of flexibility without being overly complicated.

Are these good options or should I look elsewhere?

I can vouch for The Behringer Neutron - you can get to some pretty weird places with the patchbay and imo the oscillators and filter are way less waspy than my old Minibrute.

I was a bit concerned about it only having a single LFO, but you can feed another 2 CV signals to it from an iPhone using the CVMod app - all that is required is a headphone splitter.

I imagine ableton cv lfo could also do the trick, although I'd prefer for everything to be self-contained.

I will vouch for the bass station 2 as loads of fun and with enough knobs and faders to make it fun. Plus, the afx mode (where every key can have a different preset, basically) is pretty nuts. But even without that, it sounds fat and analog.

Minilogue or minilogue Xd are great if you want to play chords.

I think they're about the same price now, I'd push the Digitakt over the TR-8S - not directly modeled drum machine sounds but throw a 909 sample pack in there and you have more control over the sounds really. Plus 8 MIDI channels for sequencing other gear if you got a hardware synth. The Digitakt is very hands on and pretty simple to use.

A lot of people seem to like the digitakt. I've steered away from it because it seems to be more about digging through menus rather than turning lots of knobs. But then, no one on here has had anything good to say about the roland box so far.

I will note that the sampling aspect of the tr-8s is the least interesting element for me. I'm mostly drawn to the primary beatbox controls.

Seems like the tr8s actually requires a fair amount of menu diving for some of its features. While I haven’t used a digitakt I own an a4 and machine drum and the interfaces are quite brilliant. I wouldn’t worry about the digitakts it’s prob fun.

I had an Octatrack / Monomachine / Machinedrum setup at one point and barely ‘finished’ any music the whole time I had it - mainly because jamming was way more fun than the boring bit of bouncing and ‘finishing’ stuff.

I do kind of miss them but you can do everything they do in the box for approx £3k less and without having to constantly deal with arbitrary restrictions and the dreaded 2 finger ‘delete a nights work with no undo’ button combinations. Ymmv of course.

Everyone I know who had a TR-8 has gotten rid of it for whatever that's worth. On the other hand, I use a clap that's sampled from it in basically every track I make.

Any idea what they didn't like about it?

Good question, not sure but probably they just weren't using it enough to justify the cost/space? Here's a video of Ali Berger making good use of the TR-8S (which apparently adds the ability to load your own samples?):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGy9X2BF5u8

If you find the workflow & sound palette inspiring, go for it.

yes, the S in TR-8S is for samples. It's pretty much in the upper range for me both in terms of price and complexity. I could see going for something more basic like the drumbrute imapact, but that may be just a tad too limited. I really want something immediate that I can crank out chunky beats on quickly and that can integrate nicely with what I'm already using. The added functionality on the TR-8S seems nice. It's there if I want to take it a step further, but not critical to using it. That said, I would like to know more about its drawbacks.

The different Elektron boxes look really nice, but generally too expensive and just too much overall. It seems like you get massive amounts of control over every little element and can get some truly wild sound design and sequencing out of it, but that feels like overkill for me. Any really complex sound design I need, I'm probably going to do via Pigments. If I add in external boxes, I really want them to just be dedicated to doing one very specific part of a track really well(drums, lead sequence, etc).

I love stuff like this, although I doubt I could ever be this adept. Make sure to turn on closed captions. Apologies if I posted this before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8gFmlGqfuU

I got the drumbrute impact and I love it. It does thump hard but you can dial things down to get subtler beats. Really easy to just crank stuff out on, and I love the arturia sequencer. Separate outs available for different drum voices so you can e.g. run the snares through a delay pedal or whatever.

there's a very high likelihood I'm going to want to process individual drum sounds in ableton, so separating them out is pretty important for me

am I correct in thinking the drumbrute impact has improved sound quality over the original drumbrute?

It sounds way more aggresive as I understand it. Just checked and there are output jacks for the kick, snares, hats and the FM drum as well as the master output. When you separate out the kick for instance, it will remove it from the main out.

I'm seeing regular drumbrutes on ebay for roughly the same price as the impact. Drumbrute seems to have more functionality, but that more aggressive sound on the impact is important too. Don't know which is better for ~$300.

As far as synths/sequencers go, I've been drawn to the minibrute 2s because I could imagine using just the sequencer as as a controller for ableton synths or pigments, plus I could see the synth being a good tool to add an extra melody to the mix. I like that there's some hands on analog synthesis, and then I could dabble a bit with patching on top of that, but without it being immediately essential to using the box.

The one downside on the DBI for me is not being able afaict to feed pitch information into the FM drum voice via midi to create melodic patterns. That would be sick. Not sure what other boxes in that price range can do that though

that seems like a clear plus with the TR-8S, but it's twice as expensive

All synths should look like props from a sci-fi movie IMO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xe8pV9FnWeU

For the TR8S money, you could get an MPC One! But sounds like you don't really need a whole new DAW. I have the Drumbrute, and it sounds a little wimpy, but some compression/saturation can help with that. I ordered an SP404 Mk2 to give me more drum options (and of course so I can sample stuff), but it won't get here until March, at least.

right, I don't need a full music production box, and I don't want MPC style samplers.

I went ahead and purchased the two boxes I mentioned off ebay for somewhat reduced prices, guess we'll see if it works for me! I took a hard look at both drumbrute options, I like the way the impact sounds, but was worried it would lead me to use the same drums on everything.

oh cool, have fun moodles!

btw just noticed that bad gear just did a video on the DBI, so you can see whether to rue your decision or not! it's a pretty fair review imo, though i can't say i noticed any knob-wobble on mine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzujay4tUtE

TR-8S would be my top contender for a HW drum machine, too. I tried the TR-8 and loved the intuitive design, but its sound pallet was obviously limited. The 8S seems like it should solve that. I hope you have a blast with it!

it looks like it has just the right amount of complexity to get creative with it without being completely mind boggling

https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/g02027/

The Casio Employee Behind the “Sleng Teng” Riddim