As for me it is Novation Xio. The ugly beauty with terrible UI. Equipped with a good sound engine and an audio interface (Voice over USB).

 

Last edited: Aug 16, 2025 at 4:35 PM

A manufacturer had spotted a niche in the market for the Yamaha MX 49, selling pre-cut stickers to stylishly embellish the MX 49.
I still have an old Korg R3, which sounds great, but the case is made of plastic and the lettering is too dim. As is always the case with all cheap synthesizers, the display is too small, and without a software editor, you won't get very far in creating presets.

 

DX7 : paint a room from letter box

 

Well, there are plenty of candidates, and I'm entirely the wrong person to analyse this having had a Wavestation for years... but I always realise how fucking odd the thing is with menu diving when trying to explain it. Sure there's a friendly screen (note: on an EX or A/D, *not* SR) and everything but it takes a fair bit of learning to figure it out.

Ok, you want to edit a wave sequence? Sure, just select a performance, go to performance settings, then patch selection, select the patch, then choose a wave sequence then choose to edit the wave sequence, scroll to the offending wave, select wave then scroll from the 400 odd waves to find the right one. Edit another? sure, back, back, back, back, select another, then...

*edit:* ah, the comment by @ItsFine reminded me that a Wavestation SR (the latter 1U rack unit version) is in the same ballpark as a DX7, give all the depth of a Wavestation and condense it to a couple of buttons and a two line display. Truly fun.

 

Last edited: Aug 16, 2025 at 4:52 PM

Psssffff.... yeah. A DX7 is just pain. I never could operate the thing. A smaller of the Yamaha DXs or some of Casio's CZ range I can sort of imagine operating (having tried it, of course), but a DX7... just say no kids, it'll set a brain rot that never clears.

I guess it was a learning experience for Yamaha... I mean their analogues or organs where never that obtuse, and post the DX-era their synths were actually OK to use, like SY35 and so on.

 

I had a Waldorf Blofeld desktop synthesizer because I simply didn't have any more space, and I spent weeks hunched over scrolling through the menu, struggling to create three sound banks. Then I sold it and have been playing the Waldorf Blofeld plugin with my own presets ever since.

At some point, I noticed how common desktop synths are – the bottom line is, they save a lot of knobs and jacks on production costs to keep up with the competition. Waldorf sounds great, but their design is usually poor.

I then bought a Roland FA06 with a sharp, large display. Finally, Roland had heard the users' calls...!

 

Never used a R3, but this reminds me of so many of Korg's devices... 05/W and X5DR where famously "fun" to tweak multisets on... because in that day, why'd you get a multitimbral module if you would only use one sound at a time?

I briefly had a Micro-X which was actually fairly fun to program in comparison.

But it being Korg I'm willing to forgive so many abuses because I love the sound.

 

Funnily enough, the iOS wavestation is the easiest to edit by far, big visual display of your wave sequence but it can still eat up your time with delving into all sorts of sequences and wave morphing

 

(Ok, I realize I'm posting too much into this thread, sorry, I'll bow out after this). Yeah, the iOS and the plugin version are very much easier, but the problem with the WS is not really the availability of the screen real estate, is the extremely deep hierarchy of things.

You have Performance > Patch > Wave sequence (and then the settings pages and modulations of each), and of course you need to be able to specify controllers and the vector position for each (if not enveloped). And then there's the effects routing.

*edit:* I'll add one more explanation here for those unaware, in a Wavestation Performance (a typical sound) there are 8 patches (all with individual settings), each patch has 4 sources (nominally mapped to the vector joystick, but can be overridden), a source is either a single wave or a wave sequence. Now with all of them having individual settings (like envelopes or modulation), you can imagine how easily this can get out of hand. A single wave sequence can up to 255 waves, each with individual pitch and crossfade settings.

 

Last edited: Aug 16, 2025 at 6:22 PM

I have an FA06 too. The UI is great. Really easy navigation.

 

YAMAHA TX81Z
I still have this rackmount. I have not turned it on for years. I probably should...Extremely powerful programming functions and very un-user-friendly until familiarity. I got some great sounds when I spent the time, but it is definitely not a quick exercise.
The Kurzweil K2000R is also comprehensive and convoluted, but far more user friendly.