Fek...Last time i checked it was 6k on Reverb, and i thought "too expensive". Obviously things got super ridiculous lol. Thnx for the hands up. Cheapest i can see now is 20k and doesn't look great either. As good as this synth maybe it's not worth this much. At the end of the day, perhaps Uli will be doing a service for the synth community reviving this legendary piece of gear.
Cheers
PS: I do remember your were hit by the disastrous fires in the LA area. I hope you sorted it out man and things are back to normal.

 

Thank you for saving me the effort to post. I agree with the caveats in the Oberheims, and might toss in another or two but we were asked for 3....

(and any competent sampler like a Kurzweil k2 series (cheating, as that also tosses in the fm and whatnot but... ;)) or whatnot would cover the rest for me...)

 

You also see multiple 10K price drops on them. People can ask whatever price they want, but that does not mean that is what they are selling for. You cannot even use Reverb's previous sales data they will show you. Anyone can cancel a listing on Reverb, for any item they list. Then they sell it off the site, so they do not have to give Reverb their 15% (or whatever %) like they are the Mafia. When one does sell for some more realistic price, you will not even see it in their previous sales data. On big-ticket items, you may be talking about hundreds, if not thousands; of dollars they get normally from that sale. They cancel it and do the transaction some other way.

Reverb is almost always too expensive. I have sold a few items on there in the past, where I almost felt bad about the prices I was asking; only to see the item snapped up the same day without even having to haggle about it.

Many of these items you see listed for stupid money, is because that is the " I do not want to sell it " price. There is a lot of that, which started when they began encouraging people to list every single item in their studio.

 

Hardware:

Hydrasynth
Multi/Poly
SY 77

Software:

Serum 2
Multi/Poly native
Avenger 2

 

Personally I am of the mindset that hardware synths are somewhat passé unless you have the space and the infrastructure to deal with them all. But if you must own a hardware device, seems a single Korg Kronos would be enough to replace any of the above mentioned devices especially when dealing with limited studio space. IMO, it packs the biggest punch for the space taken.

 

But is the Kronos hardware? It's still just a gigantic glorified softsynth in a proprietary box. To me, to win a hardware versus software argument it has to be analog.

 

Well, yeah its hardware.

Ok, i'll give you that one...

It would be interesting as hell to get truly comparative side by side results of all the original hardware analog devices vs the soft-emulations. To finally be able to definitively nail down which soft-emu is the actual closest sounding to each of the original analog devices mentioned. Having to rely on forums or dev's to give truthfully accurate results of real tests between the actual analog devices themselves vs the soft-emu's is somewhat of a fools errand. It would be quite an amazing undertaking considering the availability and the price point of the original analog hardware.

 

Last edited: Apr 23, 2025 at 12:27 AM

i agree with you for the most part, but i find the joy of analog synths, is limitations, and physically touching knobs and being forced to commit, and of course the sound.

You can get very far with soft synths, and depending on what you work on, may never need an analog synth. But for certain genres and styles, an analog synth can offer that extra 3-5%, which can add up over time. Of course, this is subjective, but i still find my juno to out-perform any emulation, no contest.

Theres also just nothing like programming a patch with all the knobs just right there, laid out and ready to be tweaked in all their analog glory. Sure, you can set up a midi controller, but its not the same.

But yah, for the most part, there are plenty of great software options nowadays.

 

Hardware synths? Yuk.
They take up space, they need cables and YOU HAVE TO DUST THEM!!!!

Just get Pigments. Sorted.

(full disclosure: I do have a few hardware synths... )

 

I do agree to an extent with this, a digital hardware synth seems kind of pointless but, I had the Access Virus C and I had no idea it was Analogue emulation hardware until I just read that, I thought it had to be analogue because it sounded so good at that time and everyone rated it so highly.

These days I'm not sure I could tell the difference between an analogue synth, an analogue emulation synth and a VST in a hearing test...
I don't think it's really that important what you use, kind of like having a tiny shlong, it's what you do with it

 

- IK Multimedia - UNO Synth Pro X 333 €
- UDO - Super Gemini 4.190 €
- Korg - Minilogue XD 569 €

 

Give me any whole systems by Make Noise, Buchla, Erica, Pittsburgh, Moog...

 

Definitely tempted by one of these. Just that fact that they called it the xD and that's always been my favourite mirth indicating emoji of all time also

 

ASM Hydrasynth - Progressive Vol.1