plugins are good. but i think its more entertaining working with real hardware. i spent300 euro on my korg triton rack.. even had chanse to buy the korg classic one.. i dont know.. i just want the real thang

 

Try selling a file you did not even pay for, for $300. Any hardware synth, unless it has digital i/o; is an analog sound source until the audio hits your analog to digital convertors. You connect it via 1/4" TS or TRS cables. Digital synth engine to outputs putting out an analog audio signal. Then maybe it hits your mixer, and maybe a rack full of nice hardware eq's, compressors, whatever you have in the rack. Then it hits your interface, which may even do some pleasing things with the audio as well. Then it's at the DAW. None of that happens when someone is too lazy for the supposed "inconvenience" of hardware. How often does someone who works in such a fashion actually send a print loop from the DAW out and back over some synth patches? How about almost never. Let's not even bother to mention the extra conversion.

One is a cracked plugin, a computer file. A virtual synth you have ownership of in your imagination only, which makes it sound like you have whatever hardware it is emulating. A computer file that is so valuable you didn't even pay for it. lol. Try before buy right? on a synth from 1990s....

 

Ok, if it's for entertainment or fun purposes, that's perfectly fine. Like nostalgic cars or vintage stereo stuff for example. So as you have sorted out the MIDI problems, have fun with your synth! But the VSTi is still a good way to listen to the sounds before you spend hundreds of dollars for expansion boards.

I'm still interested in hearing the difference it makes using the hardware instead of the software in a finished track. Using vintage 90s digital stuff like Korg or Roland romplers nowadays is mostly done to get some "iconic" retro sounds of that era, not to get anything realistic or spectacular new.

Layering drums and basses via MIDI is a different thing, just due to the bad MIDI timing which is never sample accurate like plugins are. And this is far more important than all this DA-mixer-AD "magic" coloring stuff. It's a digital synth, not a guitar with tube amp. Anyone who actually had to work with MIDI back then for whole productions will know this. I'm not talking about live setups or just playing a single synth on a keyboard.