Polykb is probably the best out there right now.Though having real hardware is great for several reasons one of them is the creative aspect, you dont have to plug in your computer ,start your daw etc....almost a must have if you can afford it, if you are an advanced producer.

 

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YES.

I suggest you buy a hardware synth then don't open the box and leave it in a nice waterproof, dustproof room and wait for years before it becomes in-demand then sell it for a higher price Thats what some of the people I know did. They bought their synth for a thousand and sold it for more thousands!

Though this is not a hardware synth but look at Yamaha NS10's price. Before it is sold for as a cheap hifi now it can be sold double or even triple the price lol.

 

Lol man. Your words have a good dose of reality. I sold a TB-303 for what's equal to 3000 euros back in '95. Funniest thing is an old keyboard player had given it to me in '88 as a present for fixing his broken keyboard amp which he used for playing live at fairs and weddings etc. Up to now i never regretted parting with it.

 

because there's no point reinventing the wheel, if it's not new you can find it already as a pre-made preset.
i'm using synths since the 80s, you can certainly make a lot of nice sounds by yourself for fun and profit but ultimately you will want to focus on playing music rather than playing with knobs all the time.

i understand young people who never owned an analog want to push all those buttons and knobs but the novelty will soon wear off for most of them as they lack the electronic background to fully understand how a synth works and honestly it's nothing to be too much excited about unless you're a tech guy.

most of the musicians i know can barely setup their guitar amps and FX, let alone programming a synth from scratch, i can't even think about people like that buying a synth and investing hours to make a bass line or whatever.

if you suck at math you will definitely suck at subtractive synthesis and dont even try with FM synthesis which is the most complex and cumbersome, do you see anyone ranting and raving about programming a Yama DX synth ? no, for obvious reasons, but they all love to play the lastest Yamaha Montage , of course.

moral of the story : looking back at the 80s isn't leading music into any new world, actually it's a total downgrade, again.
there's not a single hardware synth on par with Serum and never will as far as i can see so again what's the point in buying older obsolete technology just because it comes packaged in a vintage chassis with wood and iron ?

as a Stage keyboard i would look at things like a Yamaha Montage, it's so good i could almost make everything i need with that and using my DAW just for midi like in the good old times.

https://media.sweetwater.com/images/items/750/Montage8-large.jpg?02b23df163

 

The market in general is so riddled with plastic trash of all kinds. It's really easy to waste your hard earned money on stupid toys and one hour adrenaline hits. Not many companies these days produce really good sounding and quality synths. I would also like to praise Dave Smith's company for making great sounding synths that are also quality made. When you buy one you know it's not going to break after a month of playing with it. My advice is to make sure you invest in something that s worth investing in. Don't pile up x99.95 plastic crap and call it analogue studio. It's just a pile of overpriced plastic junk that sounds no better than soft synths, if not worse. Some soft synths today sound so convincingly good that I'm not really considering buying any more hardware synths or samplers. Having complete total recall is a blessing to have anyway.

However, I would [and I do] invest into external hardware processors to be able to add some mojo to these soft synths. I would also always invest into a big modular system if I won a lottery or something...

In short, what I wanted to say is: people today waste too much money on no-worth plastic crap in hope that these toys will give their music some kind of an edge, or whatever. I'm fairly certain this is not going to happen, ever, and your 499.95 bananas that you paid for it is gone forever. Could have spend it on vacation or something...

 

yes they're beautiful but sooner or later you will need space and unless your synth is the backbone of all your productions you will sell it and move on with your life.

i can't even think about being stuck with Junos or Jupiters and using those sounds again and again since the 80s, it's crazy, even the original electronic music masters moved to laptops or to Eurorack, only Jean Michel Jarre is still on analogs but because he wants to make a show not because he needs it, all his tunes could be rewritten with any free VST synth actually.

 

with 1000$ you can buy several analog FX on ebay but .. good luck with that, and you'll need a decent analog mixer of course.
i would never touch that shit again, young people have no idea how bad it was.

anyone thinking that an analog setup will improve their music is totally wrong.
it will be a waste of time and money because today's technology is another world in comparison, using analogs in 2017 should be done only for educational reasons.

 

you must check and recheck your setup very well, you must be a power user if you want to trust a laptop, and ideally you need a second laptop for backup.

 

look this is exactly the same criticism that came in the 80s after the D50 and the DX7, people loved the new digital sounds but hated the interface.

fact is, professional musicians jumped all in into Digital and never looked back as the benefits were totally worth the hassle of programming sounds with a display and a few buttons instead of knobs and sliders.

as i wrote before, it's relatively easy and cheap to build your own Arduino MIDI controller with wood and iron but for whatever reason i havent seen much even in Arduino blogs and forums, probably it's too expensive and hard to sell when you think music shops are selling premade controllers for as low as 29$ .. but they're plastic and will never feel like an analog with wood and metal !

having a background in electronics and several DYI projects i could make my own DIVA/SPIRE/SERUM analog controller but at what price .. i dont know .. probably in the 3-400$ range if you include a color display and all, probably more if you add a Raspberry for real time monitoring with touch screen etc but it would be great, there's nothing like that in the market and probably never will, i guess there's not enough demand for it or maybe they're scared to make a controller for a product that could be retired the next day and replaced by something else ... problem is it's hard to make a truely modular controller that you can move around like pieces of Lego while keeping it cheap and good looking.

moreover, the lack of motorized sliders could be a deal breaker for many.
in any case it's doable, take a look at this :
http://www.daemonbite.com/midi-controller-for-yamaha-cs-80-emulator-vst-memorymoon-me80/

 

Partially agree, though i dont agree that analog is going backwards.Those synths are monsters compared to modern shitty flat as pancake sounding synths.

 

I beg to differ on this (only i never press disagree buttons :D, i try to make an argument). Everybody who is somebody in 2017 uses analog synths and to some extent analog consoles or racks like Neve,Api,SSL with some kind of high end a/d-d/a conversion etc. It all depends on what your level of expertise is. A pro who makes a living from his own studio vs an amateur musician who has another main job are worlds apart. When it comes to sound, nothing sounds better than analog and yes vinyl, and when it comes to multi-track open reel 2" tape. The whole fkn world knows this. Anybody who disagrees simply hasn't been around or doesn't have the ear for this. I do agree that its a bitch to set up and maintenance is a nightmare, hence tape is almost extinct. But afaik there are 1000s of manufactures of high-end audio/hi fi gear. Very few of them display their products with anything else than vinyl. But as we all know good analog costs an arm and a leg and then some.
So,when it comes to gear, it is all about choices and compromises for the pro engineer/musician, and even more for the home musician. With the main difference that home/amateur producers/musicians do what they like as it is not their job, but pros have to make a living so they will accept to compromise by recording/producing most shitty artists or else starve lol.
Personally when i have a good client for mix or master, depending the case, i will rent one or more top a/d converters and hook 'em between my trusted analog eqs and compressors/limiters and my Tascam DM-4800 so i can work solely in the digital domain utilizing my plugs as well, while maintaining as little compromise to my sound as possible.

 

Last edited: Mar 5, 2017

It will not improve your music, of course, nothing can substitute the raw creativity that is the foundation of true art, however one does not need an analogue mixer to utilize outboard compressors, preamps, equalizers or fx. A well wired patch bay in synchronicity with the inputs and outputs of your interface will suffice quite well. And you must have had some sort of awful traumatic event to speak so negatively about using an analogue mixer. There are legions of engineers utilzing hybrid studios and putting out amazing work, educationally speaking!

 

No amount of gear, analog or digital

This x10000000

Worrying about what gear will make you a better musician is like roller skating up a hill. Like @flyingsleeves said in the very beginning of this thread "What do you want to do?". If the answer is "make music", pick something that compliments the way you like to work and make something.

 

Jus sold all mine. feel like, unless you really just want to tweak knobs etc, which is great! Softsynths will do for production. You can always add a bit of tube sat from other plugs to beef it up, etc. Jus a thought

 

I'd rather be making my music than sifting through thousands of presets, and the knob turning becomes part of the creative process. I just don't get the same feeling clicking a mouse. I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel, but I'd rather ride than be a passenger, if it's all the same to you.

Sorry, but why does anolog, need to enter this. My reference to having all the dails and not having to menu dive applies to all synths, and you don't need to have the electronic background, if everything is in front of you, as it doesn't tack long to learn when it is.

A bit like computers then.

Maybe you should change the crowd you hang with.

No you don't need to be good at math, provided that all the parameters are on the front of the synth, which is why I suggested to the OP that he test by going from Init to the end.

There is no story, so how can there be morals. There is music, and music like fashion will get reinvented and reused, as young people here old music, fall in love with the sound, and recreate it in their image.

But it's not obsolete, because people are using it, aren't they? But at the end of the day, that wood and iron as you call it, is part of my creative process. Staring at a picture on a computer screen, holding a little piece of plastic isn't.

 

So OP, to sum up:

For some people (like avenel) , a software only setup works best.
For some people (like Teknomage), a hardware only setup works best.
For some people (like me), a combination of hardware and software works best.

Should you buy that hardware synth? It depends which of the above groups you fit into, but you will never know if hardware works for you unless you buy/borrow a hardware synth and see for yourself.

 

As this has already been answered by people I believe are more qualified than I (and you), I'll leave it at that, but I will add that analog gear is as relevant today as it's alway's been, as are all the instruments ever made, and they always will be. If you don't like analog gear, that's fine, but stop slagging it, and the people who like to use it off.

 

My opinion - hardware sounds better to me whether digital, VA, or analog - hardware quality and model depending. It sounds even better mixed through outboard gear. There's a 3D quality to it, and the DA/AD really adds a lot. imo

.....I like plugins too! Yes, try a piece of hardware synth, my friend! It's good candy.

 

. . . and let's get down to what's really important here . . . even a Kawai K4 looks cooler on stage than a laptop.

 

Hello.
Get the hardware synth, they always sound better than any virtual stuff. The computer based zeitgeist is naughty, contagious, and very inefficient for artistic creativity. We're musicians, not programmers.