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Hello synth thread. It seems I have become interested in synthesis lately. It went from making synthy noises on guitar to trying out some software tools with a midi keyboard to buying a Korg Monologue and loving around with that. I also just got one of those little Bastl toys that makes weird noises when you plug wires into it and it is indescribably satisfying to make atonal bleep bloop sccrrch brrrs with it. I get some of the general ideas behind the basic stuff like oscillators, wave shapes and filters but I'm wondering if there are some good resources for learning a bit more about how to turn it into music? Like, from a technical perspective, here's how you build good patches kind of way. Also, if I'm interested in modular (lol "if", of course I'm interested in modular) what's a decent way to get my feet wet, something semi modular like a Mother-32 or Lifeforms SV-1? Or does it make more sense to get something cheap like a Volca Modular and goof around with that? The software stuff that's out there is pretty amazing honestly but it just doesn't inspire the same joy as that stupid little noise box or the Korg I got so I'm thinking I'd like some hardware with actual knobs to learn on. Apparently Behringer makes good things now? Anyway, any advice or suggestions would be appreciated!
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# ¿ Oct 23, 2020 00:13 |
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# ¿ May 10, 2024 04:31 |
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Google Butt posted:a used neutron and a use keystep is the best entry into semi modular This seems like a good start. I'll take a look at the Neutron. I already picked up a keystep a while ago so that's sorted! I also have a bunch of guitar pedals and rack effects that I've been playing the Korg through to get reverb/delay/pitch shifting etc and that's been pretty cool. A MIRACLE posted:I would prob get the erica pico system if it was me but thats just cause I want one anyway I saw some vids of this and the original Pico system and they definitely got some great sounds out of it but I kind of feel like if I was going to spend the money on that, I'd rather have the Moog, you know? Speaking of gear videos, man it seems hard to find people actually making music with some of this stuff. Lots of "if you turn this knob and plug this in here it goes *bbzzzrrtttbblkaaat*" for like 18 minutes. I really appreciate the few people who seem more interested in seeing how to put this gear into a musical context.
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# ¿ Oct 23, 2020 22:15 |
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A MIRACLE posted:which moog are we talking about..? is it eurorack compatible? The Mother-32. I've seen a number of them come up used on craigslist and reverb for about what that Pico III is going for so that's why I was saying that.
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# ¿ Oct 24, 2020 00:53 |
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I like Benn, I think his heart is in the right place but that video was not great. He implied that the reason Moog went out of business was Berhinger clones without actually demonstrating the connection. He avoided talking about Moog's union busting, accusations of antitrans bigotry, and the fact that the US employees in the manufacturing side were making starvation wages. Like, gently caress Uli, but Moog had its own problems that he ignored to make his points. Also, along with the tesla stuff he also was a full throated supporter of NFTs and I stopped watching his channel when he started pushing them as a way for artists to make money.
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# ¿ Oct 10, 2023 17:43 |
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Babysitter Super Sleuth posted:Yeah nah, call me when gibson pulls a kirn corksniffer if you want to play that angle, uli’s not alone in being an rear end in a top hat but he’s too loud to hide it in a crowd. Benn Jordan drives a tesla lmao
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# ¿ Oct 11, 2023 16:21 |
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Ok Comboomer posted:churches are a huge market for pro audio/video When I got back into guitar/music several years ago, it was kind of a big surprise how much musical equipment was getting used for churches. Like half the used gear I was getting off of craigslist seemed to be coming from church players. Based on the presets left on a few multi effect units I got, they really love shimmer reverbs, like, alot. Do you think any church gospel groups got into modular? God is like a complex oscillator, and Jesus is the modulation....
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# ¿ Oct 12, 2023 05:04 |
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Cabbages and Kings posted:Overall I am not nuts about Eurorack stuff which is fundamentally midi centric. That was my read on Poly Cinematic, and I assume at a glance the same holds here. If I am using MIDI for polyphony I have a million options that aren't tiny rear end 3u modules. True polyphony in euro is pretty hard to do without midi. Usually the best you can manage is a paraphonic voice or set of voices and that will typically require a lot of system resources to achieve it. If someone wants polyphony in-rack, midi is really the only way that makes sense. Are there any oscillators/voices that have cv polyphony? I have a AR Chainsaw which has 3 v/Oct inputs but has a single stereo pair for output so it's paraphonic.
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# ¿ Oct 16, 2023 16:28 |
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I had looked up the Supercritical Demon Core before posting but I wasn't aware of the expander. Looks like you still need midi for per voice gate control, unless I'm misunderstanding. Very cool module and its great they are trying to keep it as cv controllable as possible. I also just now realized what that module was named after and, uh, wow The doepfer system is kind of what I was talking about needing a lot of system resources to accomplish polyphony in eurorack. It's four separate modules plus a midi to cv converter. It's a lot of HP and a lot of patching for four voices. It's understandable why companies making polyphonic modules like Knobula and Oxi just said gently caress it and made their modules midi controlled. Who doesn't have a keystep hanging around anyway?
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# ¿ Oct 16, 2023 17:33 |
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Cabbages and Kings posted:"A single stereo pair" for output doesn't mean it's paraphonic My polyphonic desktop synths likewise just have L/R outs. The chainsaw is just an oscillator, it doesn't have internal vcas so, despite have inputs for 3 pitch cvs, you can only send it out to one filter/vca. Or, I suppose you could split the stereo pair to two filters/vcas but it's the same notes on each. You can play chords though, and that's cool. On the other stuff, we're saying the same thing, pretty much. You can do polyphony but it requires a multi lane sequencer (or chord mode output on modules like the triad or harmonaig) going into multiple oscillators, vcas, envelopes and filters. Point is, its a fair number of modules that then can't be used for other purposes. I also understand the appeal of wanting to patch all of those modules into a big pile of colorful spaghetti. I've set up polyphonic patches on my system and it's pretty fun. It's just not super efficient so it's understandable that the purpose built polyphonic modules tend to use midi
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# ¿ Oct 16, 2023 18:42 |
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Reminds me that I've been meaning to try to figure out how to use Hermod to take cv out from my rack into my Hydrasynth. Man, that is not a user friendly module, I tell u wut Speaking of, what in rack sequencers are good? I feel like I've tried a few and none of them do what I want them to do. Varigate 4+ is cool and fun to play on the fly but its really limited and the slider positions being multipurpose and not representing the actual state got confusing. Metropolix is pretty rad but it's only two lanes which isn't much considering its size and all of the cool features are hidden in clunky menus. Also it feels like it's really only good for techno? Hermod's a mess and is super cumbersome to program. It can do a lot for building tracks, I guess, but getting there is a PITA. I usually just end up using Marbles or random s&h from Pam's or plugging in a sequence from my keystep or whatever, just because it's easy, but I'd like to do something more deliberate at times. I keep going back and forth on selling the Metropolix and the Hermod but then I'm like, but what if I spend more time with them? Really learn the ins and outs? And then I patch up Pam's again
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# ¿ Oct 16, 2023 20:33 |
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Cabbages and Kings posted:I just racked a Behr 1027 as I slowly assemble a 2500 system from Amazon rebate cash; as a starting point -- that's extremely basic, to the point of not being very useful in a modern context. It's a good question, and I keep looking at Keystep Pros and Oxi Ones and thinking maybe I just need outboard sequencing. Generative I can handle with Pam's and Marbles, plus general modular tricks with clocked lfos, s&h, etc. Ideally, I'd like a multilane sequencer that can handle pitch, gate, and modulation that is relatively intuitive to program and would allow for modulating the sequence, but in a controllable fashion. Basically, I think it would be cool to have a base sequence that can be altered on the fly with cv, triggers, probability, etc so that it can evolve without going fully into random town. I'd like it to be multilane so I can choose to program complementary pitches to create chord/arpeggio-like sounds for different oscillators, leads that follow pads, that sort of thing. I guess I'm trying to get away from using random generation for everything and be a bit more intentional with what I'm doing. Cabbages and Kings posted:edit: nerdseq exists too ofc It definitely does and it terrifies me. Trackers are weird and confuse my simple caveman brain. Bloom might be worth another look as a semi generative but it's not quite what I have in my head for this particular need/want. Clank Chaos fits in there too but that's another lol good luck getting one. I've been eyeballing the Winter Modular Eloquencer the most lately, since it seems like a straight ahead outboard sequencer stuffed into eurorack module. On paper it looks good but so did the Hermod. Eh. I think I actually should just gently caress around more with the Metropolix and see if i can get it to do what i want. Ill probably keep the Hermod as a midi interface if nothing else.
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# ¿ Oct 16, 2023 22:01 |
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Wrageowrapper posted:The Vector Wave with expander from Ryk Modular allows for 4 v/oct inputs but I have yet to bite the bullet because the UI looks like everything I hate. Sounds nice though. I saw that RMR video a while ago and the module is really cool and makes sick noises but yeah, I'll never want to use it because that interface seems very confusing and bad. The RYK Night Rider though, that looks and sounds super rad. I've been eyeballing stereo filters and at some point I'm going to grab that or a QPAS or a SSF Stereo Dipole. For now, I'll just use the quad stereo filter (with reverb ofc) patch I built in ZOIA. RocketMermaid posted:For my more deliberate sequencing, I got an Eloquencer and I couldn't be happier with it. I found it really intuitive to use, it has 8 lanes of gate/CV outputs, it's really easy to sequence patterns into phrases into songs, it has things like probability and ratcheting, it's great. I did my first ever live performance with it and experienced zero issues with it. I know some people have experienced bugs and I don't think Winter Modular has put out a firmware update in some time, but it does exactly what I need and want it to do. Hell, it was more reliable during that performance than my KSP. Some people might find CV sequencing with it cumbersome but once I got the hang of it I could sequence pretty quickly. Good to know! It looks like a dope sequencer but I've hesitated on diving in because I'm apparently very picky. That said, after I posted about sequencers above, I got home from work yesterday and built out a little mini system to focus on the Metropolix to see if I can get along with it. I put it in a 62HP palette case with a Steppy, Osiris, an EG and attenuator and made some patches to see what I could get out of it without trying to patch in every module I own like a jackass. After a couple of hours of goofing around, I was making some patches that sounded pretty cool and did kind of what I was looking for. The menus are still a bit obtuse in my opinion but I was at least able to figure out how to get CV in and out, set the internal clock and divisions, and run two tracks (sort of, that part still annoys me a bit). I wish there was an option to send a pulse on RUN through the A or B outputs so I can send a reset to Steppy on start, but I made do with a pulse on RESET. I also realized that Metropolix has a LOOPY function like Steppy does, which I'll have to gently caress around with. The ACCUMULATE function is very cool and I can see why they highlight it in marketing. Anyway, I think I'll give it a couple of weeks. The more I'm using it as a main focus, the less annoyed I am by some of the menu diving and button layouts. My main gripe is still that its only two lanes. If I'm still not vibing with it after a few weeks, I'll probably pick up an Eloquencer.
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# ¿ Oct 18, 2023 04:43 |
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Cabbages would probably like his Oxi Coral review where he's like "this thing does 8 voice polyphony through midi but gently caress that *bbrrrzzrraaappppwubwubwub*"
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# ¿ Oct 20, 2023 21:18 |
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I have one of the cheap keysteps and a keylab 61. The keystep works great as a simple sequencer/arpeggiator. Works well with midi or CV, but you have to select one or the other with some dip switches which is a little clunky. I assume the keystep pro works just as well and they seem to be highly regarded. My only complaint about the arturia keyboards in general is that the aftertouch has almost no travel and it's more of an ON or OFF binary thing, so it doesn't really do smooth filter sweeps or gradual vibrato or whatever. Im not much of a keys player but it would be nice to have a bit more control over expression. Otherwise, I think they're great.
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# ¿ Oct 20, 2023 21:54 |
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echinopsis posted:I think I must have had a smaller keystep briefly because I know it was arturia but I hated the knobs, they seemed to track so poorly into their own software, it was like they went to sleep immediately and always required turning to wake them up. maybe I just had a dud I'm a little surprised at people having issues with the Arturia stuff. My basic keystep has been great with no connectivity issues, either with midi or CV. I've used it with my Mother-32, Hydrasynth and modular with no problems. Its great, in fact. My keylab is really nice and integrates seamlessly with Pigments and the Arturia synth collection. I can't really speak to DAW integration or anything because I'm too dumb to figure out Ableton. My only issues with that board is that it doesn't have a sequencer or arpeggiator and the previously mentioned lackluster aftertouch. Unrelated: I stopped into Control Voltage yesterday to pick up a couple of things and they had an Expressive E Osmose on the floor. Holy poo poo that thing rules. I'm no keyboardist by any stretch of the imagination but the aftertouch and side to side pitch bend expression sounded super badass even with my lovely noodling. Instant Hans Zimmer machine
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# ¿ Oct 21, 2023 15:38 |
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Spiggy posted:I'm bad with money and bought an Oxi One instead. Curious about this as I am also bad with money and have been eyeballing the Oxi One for a while now. How you liking it?
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# ¿ Oct 22, 2023 00:26 |
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Trying very hard not to spend this expense reimbursement I got from work on the Basimilus Iteritas Alia. Not sure I'm going to be successful, its way too rad. I did just order a "mint condition" SQ64 for $105 off of reverb. Couldn't pass that up.
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# ¿ Oct 28, 2023 22:59 |
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Achmed Jones posted:i have this idea that i'd like to build a synth. it'd be fun. i guess the way to do that is to do the euro rack thing. but individual vco kits are at least $100, filters are more, id need to build a midi to cv thing, etc. i messed around in vcv rack and id need at least a couple vcos, a coupler filters, a vca or four, and at some point its just insanely expensive to get a mediocre-at-best synth that takes up half the gat-dang desk. so i'm probably not gonna do that. I haven't built or used one of these, but it looks pretty cool: https://www.tubeohm.com/jeannie-main.html Looks like you can get Shruthi kits there too. Its monophonic but was a Mutable Instruments design and sounds good e: yeah, you don't want to get into eurorack to recreate a regular rear end synth. You get into eurorack because you hate money and human contact 800peepee51doodoo fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Oct 29, 2023 |
# ¿ Oct 29, 2023 00:07 |
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Slore Tactician posted:yeah just unsubscribed to his patron about this. I just subscribed to his patreon like a week ago, not realizing he's Israeli. Shortest subscription ever I guess. fake edit: unsubscribing for the genocidal fascism, not for being Israeli, just to be clear
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# ¿ Nov 7, 2023 02:07 |
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Cabbages and Kings posted:I hear some people make music with this poo poo. No way, its all just blinking lights, logic puzzles, and credit card debt, right?
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# ¿ Nov 7, 2023 17:13 |
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Looks like some decent black friday plugin sales this year. Arturia is doing their V Collection for $300 and Pigments for $100. I have both already from a previous black friday and they are super cool standalones/plugins. NI is doing half off on the Komplete collections. Komplete Standard for $300 seems like a pretty decent deal, I might grab that.
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# ¿ Nov 17, 2023 19:11 |
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I've never used Serum but my understanding is it's not as user friendly as Pigments and I find Pigments to be very user friendly. If you know how synths work, it's pretty straightforward to use, in my experience, and it sounds really good to me. I havent had much experience with NI stuff and only recently downloaded the stripped down version of Komplete they are giving away. I do like some of the sounds I've got from some of the instruments but I'm not completely sold. I'm going to play around with it a bit more this weekend and see if it's something worth throwing money at. The Arturia synth models are pretty amazing but it seems like NI's collections are musically broader with more acoustic models, drums, etc. I was looking around for some hardware deals and it doesn't seem like there's much going on there, as of now. Some weak discounts on Moog stuff (get your Moog One for just $10k! Minimoog for $4500! Lmao) and half decent price drops on Roland and Korg stuff at Sweetwater. Modbap is running 20% off their modules on their site. Might take some of the sting out of buying one of the best wavetable oscillators available for modular. Osiris owns.
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# ¿ Nov 17, 2023 20:41 |
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Spiggy posted:The Osiris looks cool but the software is Mac only and I'm a poor PC user. You don't really need it unless you want to edit your own wavetables. The included tables sound great and there are three other tablesets you can get from Modbap for free. There's probably others floating around reddit and modwiggler but I haven't really checked. It does suck rear end that they seemingly deliberately locked PC users out of the wavetable editor but its also not a huge deal.
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# ¿ Nov 18, 2023 01:39 |
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https://voca.ro/19rFku5boGGa Finally got a chance to goof around with my SQ64 and made a dumb little loop/patch to learn how it works. I've started building dedicated minimodular set ups to try to focus on learning specific pieces of gear. The setup for this loop is Bitbox Micro for drums, Osiris for lead, and Chainsaw for bass/pads with Pons Asinorum for envelopes, OCHD for LFOs and Desmodus for reverb. I still need to learn how to do things like switch and chain patterns and generally make things more song-like than loop-like but that's a bigger issue than just learning a piece of gear and also lol modular songwriting lmao.
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# ¿ Nov 19, 2023 22:29 |
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Cabbages and Kings posted:edit: the only thing about this flow -- Ableton doesn't seem to read clock from EXT? So I need to make sure Ableton's BPM matches whatever is set on PNW I know very, very little about Ableton and syncing from software to hardware but I do know that Pam's can act weird if the midi clock resolution isn't high enough. Might be the same for Ableton. Probably worth checking that they are on the same PPQN. Just got a very good deal on this guy: Yes, I know I need to vacuum. Its shameful. Anyway, I plan on trying to make this into a main controller for modular and some of my other desktop synths like the hydra and mother-32 as well as a stand alone synth. Everything I have is just kind of scattered around and its a pain to set it up whenever I want to play something. Hopefully I can set this up to daisy chain some stuff together and make it play nice together.
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# ¿ Nov 20, 2023 01:22 |
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Beaucoup Cuckoo posted:I'm not sure if this fits your use case, but I got an rk-006 and it's pretty handy - I'm throwing midi from my m8 to a nord drum and megafm. I have been looking around for midi hubs actually. The one I was looking at was the MRCC 880 from Conductive Labs. They're locally designed and have some cool routing and switching features. The one you posted looks good, although it would be nicer with DIN connections i think. Looks nice and compact, though.
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# ¿ Nov 20, 2023 18:59 |
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Reposting this from the PYF 90's thread:Trabant posted:The thumbnail is dumb but the content is short and good:
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# ¿ Nov 21, 2023 04:14 |
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Lol I saw that clickbaity video Benn put up last night and am glad I noped out of watching it. What a loving turd. I just somehow knew it was going to be him qq'ing about loopop getting called out. Oh no, the fascist genocide apologist synthfluencer is facing very mild criticism! Once again I must point out that Benn is an out and proud libertarian that drives a tesla. I'd be surprised if he isnt becoming the synthesizer version of Glenn Greenwald.
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# ¿ Nov 21, 2023 18:36 |
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net work error posted:The upgrade option that Polyend is doing with the new hardware is pretty neat though imo and it would be cool if more people do it. You seein this poo poo, Gaben? I wanna update my steamdeck to oled you fat, knife collecting gently caress
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# ¿ Nov 22, 2023 04:25 |
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withak posted:Is it just that it is a lot cheaper than any of the other popular sampler/sequencers? It looks like its a pretty cheap, bare bones sampler with cool aesthetics and some nice touches. I've never been super interested in 404 type samplers but this one is cheap and interesting enough, I'd consider getting one. Seems like a good pairing with that minifreak I just picked up. I think they are probably going to sell a ton of these. Now, what I really want is that weird turntable dude has in the video. 500 eurodollars tho, goddamn
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# ¿ Nov 23, 2023 06:47 |
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Ok Comboomer posted:You can get a reissued AT sound burger for $200 Huh, I had no idea that existed. That's pretty dope.
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# ¿ Nov 23, 2023 07:18 |
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Achmed Jones posted:the new TE sampler doesn't seem that special to me. i already have a circuit rhythm so i don't see what it would add. it looks cool, but that only goes so far. It isn't in the grand scheme of things. Its pretty basic, functionally speaking. It does look cool and it does do the main things a sampler/sequencer does and so that's going to be appealing. TE is a lifestyle brand first, synth company second. The aesthetics are the important part. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. A big part of the enjoyment of making music is the aesthetics. Not defending TE specifically, here, I think some of their choices are utterly baffling, but the fact that it's an affordable entry point to that TE lifestyle brand is probably the primary driver for the excitement over the KOII.
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# ¿ Nov 25, 2023 21:01 |
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIOa0B69eVw Just saw this Ricky Tinez video where he talks about a cool trick for using a delay as a looper. Not exactly a new idea since I know guitar players have been doing this kind of thing for a while at least, but I think he does some interesting stuff with it in the second part of the video when he switches to the Novation Peak. Fun stuff to play around with.
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# ¿ Nov 26, 2023 23:15 |
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RocketMermaid posted:First on my list is the NE Desmodus Versio, but I'm open to other suggestions as well. I recently got a DV and it's awesome. I've been using it mostly in a small rack setup and running it end of chain. I especially like the built in filter. It is a very digital sounding filter, which I like, but just fyi. And if you get sick of using it as your 4th reverb, you can swap firmwares and make it a delay, distortion, compressor, whatever. I still haven't actually done that because the reverb is so dang good. The other options might be a Clouds/Monsoon/Typhoon granular reverb. I have a Calsynth Typhoon and there's a reason it's a modular classic. Sounds super good.
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# ¿ Nov 28, 2023 20:36 |
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Corb3t posted:My Teenage Engineering KO-II came and it's dope. More of a sampler than a synth, but I seriously love this thing and suddenly want a Yamaha Reface CP to pair with it for the ultimate computer-free portable setup. How's yer fader tho Synthcube just sent me an email that my order shipped! I placed it on the 18th
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# ¿ Nov 30, 2023 21:01 |
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Cabbages and Kings posted:e: I've always assumed Bad Gear's shtick is a joke on that kind of content. Generally I find content like that very anxiety producing, but the rate he flashes stuff at I literally can't process it and I don't try. I mean, you're not supposed to. You pretty much have to mash the spacebar every few seconds to catch the memes. Also the joke is that it isn't the gear that's bad, its the loudmouth synth posters on reddit. Its pretty rare that Florian can't knock out a banger or three with whatever synth he's roasting.
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# ¿ Dec 7, 2023 02:07 |
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xzzy posted:After the money and space that's the third reason I haven't gotten into modular. I get real anxious about making an awesome sound and never being able to get it back. I've been trying to record everything I patch up these days just because of that. My main case is next to my desktop so I can run the output directly from my mixer into my interface. None of the recordings are any good, mind you, but at least I don't have anxiety about losing the thing I thought sounded cool in the moment. That said, I currently have a patch on a smaller case that I haven't broken down yet because I was working on it away from my computer. Been afraid to touch it for like a week now because it might actually be half decent and I'd like to get it properly recorded. It's funny because part of the reason I got into modular originally is the ephemeral quality of it, like sonic sand mandalas.
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# ¿ Dec 7, 2023 20:41 |
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bloody ghost titty posted:In my old hood, no less: A very cool idea for the kids Paywalled, what's it say? e: I link string says "synth library brooklyn" so I'm guessing its about a synth library in Brooklyn Also, new firmware for Arturia Minifreak dropped today. New wavetable engine, supersaw, some new lfo and sequencer stuff, a bunch of presets. Seems p cool.
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# ¿ Dec 12, 2023 01:57 |
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Cabbages and Kings posted:Who has 1u rows, and what do you do with them? I thought about a plum o_c and some other utility stuff but in the end I settled on (and ordered from Pusherman) a Lange Anna, which is a 3x 1-4 buffered mult @ 84hp. I will probably snag the 3u version of the Arm expander which just provides one more set of outputs. I have a bunch of 1U stuff, a lot of it intellijel - mults, oscilloscope, filter, steppy, quadratt, output and headphone out, plus a 1U o_c, probably some others I'm forgetting. I have a couple of the small Intellijel palette cases and a 10U84HP case I built so I get a lot of use out of 1Us. The modules that get the most use are the mults and the quadratt, followed by steppy if I've built out the case for it. I almost never use the o_c for some reason, probably option paralysis.
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# ¿ Dec 12, 2023 16:18 |
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# ¿ May 10, 2024 04:31 |
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RocketMermaid posted:I finally succumbed to the siren call of the Versio platform, and Desmodus Versio is a drat fine piece of kit so far. Heck yeah, the DV is my favorite eurorack effect that I've tried. It sounds insanely good and really unique. Ive been putting it on drums a bunch and making use of the ducked/gated reverb thing it does. The fact you can switch out the firmware to their other DSP effects is a bonus but it actually makes me want to add a Ruina to my setup. That's how they get ya.
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# ¿ Dec 12, 2023 23:17 |