each machine has a characteristic sound, there are some guys still stuck on AKAI samplers that will praise their 12-bit AD/DA and claim it just sound better and smoother than our modern 192/24 sampelrs, i mean there will be never a final agreement on what sounds better.

connect your analog to any oscilloscope and you will often see distortion and saturation in the signal, no wonder it sounds fatter, but i can get almost the same result with FX on digital, just in a different way and more cleaner, it won't be 100% the same but i'm not composing hardcore techno or trance.

 

same thing they said in the 80s when the Yamaha DX7 and the Roland D50 came out ... both became legendary synths, still used today.

 

because stages were meant for Bands and orchestras, they were never designed for laptops or DJs.

a good master keyboard + laptop on the side will suffice.
or go vintage, buy a Fender Rhodes for 1000$ and put a Juno on top of it.

in any case you'll be judged by your music, never by your gear.

 

Last edited: Mar 6, 2017

i'm not a luddist.
owning a hardware synth is always a good thing, it's a musical instrument !

i'm amused to see so many are salivating at the idea of putting their hands on a vintage analog, like they were an ancient rolls royce or ferrari ?

 

exactly.
talking about actually making real music and a final product on sale, where the analogs fit in ? nowhere as far as i'm concerned, unless i want to waste time and money and ruin my digital workflow.

Diva in particular is such a good synth, i could rewrite any famous 70-80s electronic song with it and nobody would notice.

 

analog mixers are great for acoustic music, not for electronic music.
try and let me know.

 

dont believe the hype.
99% of modern electronic music is done on Digital, if in doubt go in any studio and see by yourself.

yes i see all those photos of producers surrounded by a wall of analog gear but they're usually there just to impress visitors.
the sad reality is they talk more about their gear than about their music, which says it all !

vynil, cassettes, reel to reel tapes, they belong to museums.
i hated them with passion, go and buy a whole analog studio and then let us know how fun is it to work with that shit.

 

guys, your problem is always the same.
you dont know about synthesis and therefore your're stuck with digital presets.
you've seen producers knobbing around and coming out with some nice sounds and now you think that knobbing is their secret sauce.

problem is, knobbing wont lead you anywhere without a background in synthesis.
and synthesis is not something supposed to be done over and over, once you created your own 50-100 presets you will stop knobbing and focus on music, and so what's the point and what's the big difference from a digital synth or digital setup ?

even if you're into sound design it's pointless, i cant remember a single sound designer who's stuck on subtractive synthesis on analogs, eventually they'll use Reaktor, never a JP8 or a Juno !

 

Well that little nugget certainly didn't come across in your previous posts.

Really?? Do you actually read what people write or are you just evangelising? Read back through the thread again... I'm not sure you'll find anyone at all salivating over vintage analogue gear, never mind "so many". Perhaps you could quote some examples? The OP asked if he should buy a modern hardware synth. People gave their opinions on the advantages/disadvantages of hardware in general. It was you that started ranting about vintage analogue - no-one else was talking about it. You are having an imaginary argument.

Edit - sorry - I should have posted this a bit later, I didn't realise that this page belonged to Avenel at the time.

 

Last edited: Mar 6, 2017

actually synths have never been so relevant as today !
but analogs ? no, not at all at this point.

if your music sucks dont look at your geat, look at you.
if your synth sounds are not fat enough then learn how to fatten a sound with digital FX, dont look at analogs or amps.
if your singer cant sing find a better singer, dont blame the lyrics he's singing.

you think the top selling song are made on analogs ? wrong, they're all on digital but the guys who did the final mix know the score.
plenty of top selling songs are made with awful sounds but they sound beautiful once mixed properly.
learn how to mix and your song will sound great even using a DX7 or a 50$ Korg toy synth.

 

Bottom line: You don't need vintage analogue gear nowadays to make good sounding music. Period.
Case closed.....

 

Working with a synth gets you a totally different workflow. You will have immediate feedback on all the things you are changing, it`t more like jamming which can lead to more creativity thanks to it`s directness.

 

What is the profit of sounding good if you produce crap nobody likes but you ? A turd is a turd anyway you look at it. Maybe you can make it shiny but surely you cannot make it smell nice. Artistic creation is about inspiration, talent and dedication, not necessarily good mixing or mastering. And keep in mind, i am a mix/remix/master engineer with a commercial studio. Btw, most good plugs are analog emulations yet you advise against analog. Like the emulation is better than the real thing. Maybe sometimes its handier or you cannot dish out 15k to get an EML vocoder, but generally speaking, don't you think this is an oxymoron by itself? Unless you meant learn how to write good songs/music and not learn how to mix.
Ps: I 've heard tons of crap songs in my life and in many occasions i was forced to work on some of them, i gotta make a living you know. My truth is, when the production is humble and the song is crap, at least you feel sorry for the creator, in a way you sympathize. When it is crap but overproduced and pompous, it brings an immediate sense of hate and disgust lol. At least that's how it has always worked for me.

 

Last edited: Mar 6, 2017

it's funny i never see musicians playing in orchestra needing to continously tweak buttons and knobs when they play or compose, of the hundreds most common musical instruments the Synth seems to be the only one that must be tweak over and over or the synth player become unable to keep their inspiration ? i should tell this to anyone playing piano or electric organ where the only knobs are for the volume etc. ?

emulations are a surrogate but in our case is a good surrogate, if it sounded like shit i would be the first one to use analogs in my setup.
Diva and Omnisphere can certainly sound BETTER than an analog synth, this is 100% true if we talk about clarity, sharpness, and lack of noise.

a good mix engineer can make any sound sit well in the mix, all my songs are done in digital and nobody complain, actually they all love the creamy clean sound of my (digital) synths.

 

yeah, great for DJs who can't compose and can't come up with a proper melody.
so they tweak and knob around in the hope that something comes up one way or another, i've seen this shit so many times and i'm totally against it.

 

I play "simulations" live, through an old Roalnd A90 master keyboard, and it never happened to me that the public had something against it... I played also the real thing when I didn`t had to travel to far from home, but the public reaction was more or less the same.

For this reason and that purpose I switched 100% to virtual stuff and have no intention to go back.
The feeling when playing is for sure not the same as on the real thing, but I am seeing my Chiropractic now once a month instead of once a week like before

To answer the question of the thread, I think that if You are Young and have enough money in Your pocket, go for the real thing... It is a unique and nice experience worth the investment.
But if You are a bit older, play live in a not too demanding environment and have not enough money to spend, than You should be just fine with the virtual stuff.

In my experience, people that listen the music You play, can not here the difference, and they absolutely do not care if You play sims or analog.

 

I guess you didn't read my post to have answered by jumping back to your tirade against using a mixer for electronic music. And after all the breath that you have expended ranting and rallying, you still haven't explained the W H Y behind your prejudice. Everyone has their own work flow and what they feel an affinity for and that helps them get from idea to a finished piece, your's might not go in a similar direction of artists or creative conspirators like Moby, Daft Punk, Vangelis, Depeche Mode or a slew of others that feel comfortable for whatever reason to use analogue instruments, desks, effects in combination with digital gear. That doesn't even touch on most every well known and highly respected mastering engineers who trust their ears and use a highly skewed percentage of hardware while crafting the finalization of amazing art cursing through their monitors. And once again, one need not use analogue gear to create great music, but at the end of the day we all use what works for us, be it presets created by others, our own, if we work in the box, out of it or a combination of all of the above. There are no rules. That is the freedom of art in its wondrous and pure being.

 

the JD-XA is def not worth it, the digital part is good, good sounds great engine but the analog part sucks donkey balls.

 

or even build their own version of the synths they love

you are trolling right? anyway they still love the dx sound, talking about raving

but somehow most of the people who use hardware talk about reaching intended results quicker
with fx, mixing, and creation. does not apply to all but that wasn´t the question here either.

to answer @Maduka op´s question
there are loads of cool new and def. fun toys to be had. depends on your budget and how you like to work or imagin so. for about 50 bucks a small teenage engineering synth is super fun and quite tweakable paired with some simple fx in the box or out.....FUN.

those little KOrgs for about 150 (or less used) especially the fm wich could be fed by regular fm synth like fm8 (sysex i think) for live or home. jup sounds like fun to me too.

or oldskool like the old Waldorf Pulse (pure anolog synth) who is less hands on in a traditional sense
nevertheless still hands on and you could get it for less than 300 or 200 sometimes

because loved very much people still develop cool gear for it!
for instance Lemur like control for touch devices
Line forum post
or i bought the vst controll for a 10er and there is much more out there

for 200 more you get superb stuff like the minibrute, or little more you are already in
moog and elektron land
start small maybe or somone lends you one?
but i would consider the fun aspect first and the money second or third
Music without fun is i dont know............ nothing of worth
but if it doesnt fit your workflow dont fret it either
all gear should expand your creativity or make life easyer
sometimes both happens!

 

Last edited: Mar 6, 2017