i'm glad for you if you've been so successful with music, it wasn't my intention to provocate or to troll, here we were talking about analogs vs digital, i don't know why you always come up with musical CV trying to score a point, if your make a valuable analysis people will be grateful, forums are a very democratic place.

Fairlight and the early computers were too expensive for the average Joe, that waas my point, an "oddity" for the many ones who never got their hands on a home computer, let alone a dedicated music-computer, unless you were loaded with cash you could never even dream of affording a Fairlight, even a C64 was not cheap when it came out.

if you bought ALL your software, good for you, but that's a personal choice, and yes this is the "sister site" of AZ which is a warez site, it's run and owned by a bunch of guys active in the audiowarez scene so it's indeed a warez forum, what's discussed here wouldnt last long on KVR or Gearsluts.

i dont know why you're so angry with my rants and raves, relax and chill.

 

of course.
in the past ot be published you needed to convince a label and the gear was quite expensive, what we can access today was totally out of reach and many brands were only available in some countries, you could not even order them if you wanted to.

now anyone can produce at almost zero cost of gear, and any one can instantly upload online and publish on every digital store in 48/72 hrs for a pittance.
there was a lot of shit in past too, now it's imploded and it's 100 worse.

but still, what's the real problem ? that the market is saturated ?
if you're good enough you will still find a label, if your music is worth it you will still play gigs, and ultimately you will make some money one way or another.

today's crap is no crappier than yesterday's crap in my opinion, actually i've heard tons of crap in the 90s in particular, but as much as i call it crap there must have been someone who bought it and even played in a disco or radio, i dont know why but that's the way it is, i accept it, that's the world we're living in.

as long as the commeners love Crap you can bet there's gotta be a lot of crap being published and advertised, the more the better.

i dont think it's limited to music, i've seen a total downfall in almost any creative department, we're deep into a global dumbing-down of the population.

 

Oh Averell.
You try to patronize situations and people to what seems fit at any given time , manipulating the dialog , like " oh so you are a dj , this explains it all" , then asking why the CV. Being a dj explains nothing when you 're not aware of a person's background, and this is where the CV fits. Get it ? As for the average joe, the average joes are not professional musicians,why all this, is explained with the Fairlight /Synclavier having been heavily used in many major studios for more than a decade. Again you try to capitalize falsely on this. You could only say that some poorer musicians could not afford paying to produce on a Fairlight which is fair. But think for a second when talking about average joes means they are average people with average material possessions. If your life depended on your music you would definitely sell your car or even your flat and make a record the way you wanted it to be. It is not that the risk would set you apart intellectually. You 'd still be average mentally. And perhaps many times you 'd be a fool, it is a crazy risk, with no certain refund. But it would make your presence distinct (in a good way if you are good, or in a bad way if you are bad and all in between) and at the same time satisfy your heart's desire and dream. You have a life on this planet, make the best you can do with it. And this is where the apples set themselves apart from the oranges, meaning this is where artists set themselves apart from the norm.
PS: Today's crap IS crappier than ever. You may think otherwise. Any synth/keyboard made in pre-plug era is better built. Take everyone today.Novation, Arturia, M-Audio ( i own products from all these three) and many many more: plastic sht ,most cards up to about 250$ are slightly better than a 30$ Soundblaster, sometimes worse in terms of stability. You get the idea which is the old motto overthrown, "You do not get what you paid for" anymore lol. Because now there is a whole market that pays for ipads so they will willingly pay for a plastic sht keyboard if it is ipad compatible. They are everywhere. And to get back to the first topic. A cheap synth is still a machine you can re-sell. Anyone who tried to re-sell plugins/libraries/daw software etc has found himself in a dark place and badly cornered. I can sell my jv1080 for 200-250$ alright and someone would buy it. And its a digital -PCM samples based- synth released in 94. I want to see you trying to sell 94's Cubase or Logic or even 2004's Spectrasonics' Atmosphere if you like and see how much revenue is there for yourself.

 

Last edited: Mar 13, 2017

Here is a great example of insanity. $50,000 and they still wan't the buyer to pony up the shipping!
https://reverb.com/item/4516093-fairchild-670-compressor-limiter
Someone said that there is a UAD Fairchild plugin that will get you 90% there and it doesn't cost $45,000, so by a cost benefit analysis the plugin would be worth it if one were trying to get that thing only a 670 can do. The next item up for auction (which was already bought by some lucky sucker) is this 44 pound bit of loveliness which gets you much closer to the elusive 100%tile.
https://reverb.com/item/3216121-tube-equipment-corporation-sr71-tube-compressor-limiter
I have planted my moneytree, and as soon as it bears fruit I will be able to fly my Learjet up to Nova Scotia to see the total eclipse of the sun. Yes, this song is about me.

 

money well spent as in a couple decades they'll be worth their weight in gold and sold to museums.

 

DJing : ok i get it, no problem for me.

Fairlight : "heavily used", yeah in top-end studios at least, but not much in medium/normal ones.
i can certainly agree in any industry you need the tools of the trade, i'm still a bit skeptic all those hits couldn't have been made without a Fairlight, i mean 90% of their success was due to hype and marketing after all, you can bet they would have sold well anyway.

today's crap : ohh noo, i'm 100% with you on this but i dont want to start sounding like the last luddite bashing plastic cases and 99$ synths.
as a former electronic freak it's saddening to realize the carboard box and the plastic chassis of a cheap synth or audio card is actually more expensive than the electronics inside ! first of all, we're being sold a piece of shit, secondly there's no way at this point for homebrewers to produce or even sell their own creations as you cant possible compete on price alone, i could make my own digital FX box with Raspberry or a midi controller with Arduino and yet it's 4-5x times the cost of a finished chinese product, good look finding buyers willing to spend as much unless your product is so unique and never seen before which is out of question at this point, at best you could make a poorman's UAD clone investing a lot of time and money, there's a good reason the Dave Smith synths are priced in the 3-4000$ range while a Minibrute is 199$.

yes, hardware can be resold while plugins have a bad market in the second hand arena.
true ! but then again plugins tend to be cheaper than hardware, up to you to squeeze them well and make your investment worth the money, vintage versions of cubase or logic have still some market if you have the original box and manual, check on ebay they range from 20 to 200$ with dongle and all, for anyting else no i dont think you will ever sell an old version of FabFilter or Ozone or whatever, on the other side upgrades will be cheaper so the total cost of ownership has to be calculated in many ways, if you rarely use a plugin it's basically wasted money and you should better stick to Warez !

 

i was quite impressed with this fine synth here, seems to bridge between old and fresh at least somewhat
and is quite fat now. this is an older vid / ersion without fx

 

There's no doubt that stealing software is cheaper than buying hardware.

Everyone's a winner, baby. :D

 

It seems that way until you get the hardware. And then you realize all the pitfalls that come with it. Spinning a trackball around a few degrees and clicking your finger a couple times is barely more effort than twisting a knob.

Just my opinion, but I don't get why people think mousing is so much work.

 

So ignorance is inflating hardware prices? I'm sure ignorance plays a large part in marketing, so I can't say I disagree. But I see hardware prices more as a function of trends and supply-and-demand rather than software's competition forcing a price hike to make up for lack of volume.

Hardware seems to be doing quite well for itself. Modulars are so trendy these days, and so is anything vintage deemed worthy over at G-Slutz. Take something unspectacular like an Ensoniq DP/2 and do a write up about how awesome it is and how Daft Punk and French House couldn't have stood a chance at becoming popular without it and watch the prices shoot up.

"This has a sound you just can't recreate with plug-ins, and believe me, I've tried!"

 

Last edited: Mar 23, 2017

Very easy:

If you are rich or view instruments as art pieces and collectibles, go for it, hardware keyboard!

If you are poor, working musician/producer who has to be smart in order to navigate around the toll booths of the industry, then only buy a hardware unit if its going to be a good business investment = you break even and have potential for making a profit via being paid to play the instrument at live gigs.

I run a lot of live events and have worked at music venues for years, and most keyboardists these days (even starting to see guitarists and bassists too) either use one keyboard that has multiple sound banks that are all around average, but functional soundwise or use MIDI controllers with their software synths via a rack mount computer, mac mini, or laptop. The audiences as the shows that you will be playing cannot tell the difference between an electric piano and an organ, especially when they are drunk in a lively club, so its not worth spending $1000's to give them a "cool" sound that they won't remember, recognize, or even hear if there are other instruments playing.

 

FWIW I agree that hardware sounds like a miserable inconvenience to set up and maintain and whatever else. I really hate futzing with cables. I just want things to be usable at the press of a button

I'm not saying it's easier. I'm saying it's more immediate and tactile. More suited to brainstorming.

 

It's not about work, but the fact that it's more tactile and better for creativity. You can't adjust 2 perameters at the same tine with a mouse.

That's a matter of prospective really. When I got my hardware, I found that the pitfalls were outweighed in every way by my increase in creativity, to such a degree, I've pretty much ditched using a computer altogether.

 

I've gotta admit, nothing sounds quite as nice as hardware eqs, compressors, tape and preamps.

Just use whatever you can. Enjoy writing tunes and using software.

Remember when you first discovered DAW and music software and samples, and the pure joy of it? Try to recreate that feeling every day!

 

exactly, it's becoming the Cult of Analog, they're no less fanatic than linux or OSX users.

and good luck pointing them to Reaktor or any other soft synth, they hate software with a passion, they've all fallen pray of the marketing crooks convincing them the reason their music suck is because they dont use Analogs.

i see them in music stores, they're foaming from their mouth while playing a Juno-60, like they were driving a Rolls Royce or a vintage car .. it's disgusting.

 

these guys are not into sound design, they will probably never create a single sound from scratch, what they plan to do is tweaking the bundled presers over and over because they think it's funny and creative, then you listen to their songs and they all sound like a "wah wah" but hey if they like this way of composing or performing who am i to judge ?

all i can say is that it won't impress anyone apart some teenagers, all this has been done to death since the 60s, it's probably older than many guitar tricks !