Hi Guys, I'm still undecided regarding buying a small analog synth, ie the Roland ES02 or the Behringer Model D, but that's a different thread. I have several software synths, ie Diva, The legend etc, which sound excellent to my ears, what advantage would I gain from buying a hardware synth, if any?

 

No latency to speak of when connected to midi

Resale value

You'll love it like a friend and twiddle it's knobs, finger it's sliders like a lover

You'll probably play it more for the beauty of the hands on experience

 

Since you didn't ask for the disadvantages I skip these.

When it comes to editing you're faster, more intuitive and more creative.

In other words, i t ' s m o r e f u n !

 

Go with Roland products. I have always had good luck with their stuff. Some Behringer stuff is a good deal and some is crap. (love my cable tester. Hate their stomp boxes-noisy.) A hard synth with MIDI to soft synths combined can build some monster complex sounds. I paid a lot of money for my Nord, and have never regretted it. Nord and Arturia in my laptop gets pretty interesting.

 

Hmmm interesting is it a case of "The emperor's new clothes"

 

Truth be told and the obvious, if you can assign your most used midi parameters, as many as you have capabilities for on your keyboard controller or even a dedicated controller, you could twiddle and slide your way to glory. Like I've said before, I have the Legend to cover my Moog Jones and am not freaking for the hardware.

 

Lois, I guess your right I was hankering after an old analog sounding module with lots of knobs and sliders to fiddle about with, but at the end of the day its the sound that's a priority, so having some analog sounding VST's, in fact all of them on the video, and an Akai MPK61 which has lots of knobs and sliders on it, you guys have just saved me a lot of dosh. THANKS for all your replies and advice.

 

Your bill will come out to 8% of total savings. Will that be Visa, Mastercard or bank transfer?

 

Similar and good opinions.
Even in my case, not being musician neither producer and with very small projects to date, with zero musical hardware (I have a very decent Axiom keyboard but it's growing dust) this is my "secret hardware" weapon:

Not a joke. I use it as a MIDI controller to automate "real-time". For a metal-head like me, say the MIDI automation for a Cry Baby Wah guitar pedal plugin.
And of course the classics pitch bend, modulation, velocity, volume, .... The buttons are especially useful for VSTi/Kontakt keyswitches/articulations.

 

Last edited: Oct 4, 2019

I didn't know that this is possible.

 

I have heard talk of the possibility but it took Master Xupido to caress the possible reality into true consciousness.

 

Anyone who has only ever played with virtual instruments probably doesn't see an obvious concept: the outboard gear is expensive and budget issues are dramatic with every new purchase. Let's face it: if I were the owner of all my VSTs in their physical version I would have a fleet that not even jean michel jarre has. I’ll tell you more, a synth like Diva in his physical version does not exist, it would be ridiculously expensive. As musicians are famous for being poor (except for exceptions), the market of outboard gear is now aimed towards low price (and reduced performances) products as Roland Boutique, Korg Volca, Behringer family etc.

This is the point of playing outboard gear: limitations
One of the problems with which I clash every time I play is the limit of my machines: few timbral variations on the keyboards, undersized sequencer features, limited mixer channels, noisy effects and compressors ... I could go on and on
Technical procedures are different from computer based compositing, so even the artistic performance will be different: like it or not, when I play dawless my music takes unexpected and interesting directions

Here is the good news: embracing the limitation can actually drive creativity

So, the OP question was “Soft or hard”. Answer: depending on what you are looking for
- if you only have an hour of your time and you need to produce a song with a clean and fast job, VST is the solution
- If what you want is to have fun jamming and start a cosmic journey into creativity, then outboard gear is the way to go

 

You can convert any input device data to MIDI, but gamepads are the only ones that make sense to use. Because they have analog controllers with limited range just like real MIDI hardware faders, pitch bend, etc. As opposed to the mouse, for instance.
So there are a few small apps that convert joystick data to MIDI.
I forgot: and they are f*ing cheap

It took me like 5 min to understand that lol. Brilliant with your metaphysical half-jokes as always ;)

 

Last edited: Oct 4, 2019

Reaper (had to be it course ;) ) has support for joysticks, but a very sloppy one.
This trick was relatively known when joysticks were popular with PCs. But since a long time now PC games use keyboard plus mouse and only consoles use gamepads.

 

It took me 6 minutes to write it.