acidbasement

Those look neat, but I don't think they check all the boxes for me in terms of being able to play with the rest of my setup the way I want. Plus I don't want to try any modular gateway drug because it's apparently as addictive and expensive as cocaine. I ended up ordering the Mono Station. It has a pretty good synth, but also being able to step-sequence the filter, distortion, and other modulation stuff with external audio - that makes it a killer external effects unit IMO, similar to the Octatrack. I want to sing through it.

It's super cool. I just don't know how practical the sequencer is (but you can set all parameters differently in every step in the sequence - super cool!), but if nothing else it's a good-sounding paraphonic analog synth that I can sequence with the Deluge. It's been discontinued for a couple of years, and they must have made way too many of them, because you can still get them for well below MSRP.

I'm going to get a new analog synth, thinking of the Circuit Mono Station. It's got the OG Circuit's sequencer and then some, with the Bass Station II's (approximate) synth engine, and it sounds filthy AF. Anyone want to tell me to spend my money on something else? Waldorf Blofeld has me curious and there's a second-hand one in Winnipeg. Or I could just get a few Volcas. But damn, the Mono Station has a wild mod matrix.

Happy birthday!

I spent the evening tidying and organizing my desk. Cable management, schmable management. My studio is in the corner of an unfinished basement, and I think this fall and winter I'm going to try framing in a room and finishing it.

You can make clips longer or shorter by single steps using SHIFT + turning the horizontal arrow knob at top left, or you can double their length including contents by holding SHIFT and pressing that knob down. That way you can make clips of infinite length if you want.

You're gonna need a bigger desk.

The Deluge pads are tiny, and fine for what they are - you can play them with fingertips easily enough, though I would really like it if they were velocity-sensitive (hence my search for a separate midi controller). The Arturia pads are more performance-focused, and you'd be able to drum on them better. Maschine and MPC pads are considered some of the best for finger-drumming expression, but that means learning a new ecosystem.

Hey @ironbut what are the pads like on the Keylab? I'm interested in finger drumming, and wondering if I should just get a Roland Handsonic.

There are a lot of options, and I don't think any of them are best - completely depends on how you like to work. Download trials and try them out. Ableton Live is very popular with the electronic synth/loop-based music crowd. Reaper is very popular with the poor. I'm dawless, so I can't give you any advice on this.

Subtractive synthesis is fairly straightforward, not that I'm an expert or anything. Just learning about different oscillators, amp and filter envelope settings, etc. will get you far enough to have lots of fun.

I bought shares in Moog right after we had that conversation, so you'd better not be done shopping.

I told you to get the Moog One 🤣

I'm trading my Minibrute and Circuit for an Elektron Digitone. Should be taking possession tonight.

I ended up getting the Mackie ProFX10 v3. It does everything I need, plus a bit more, and they had it in stock in the brick and mortar independent store where I got my first drumkit at 14 years old.

And I didn't say how compact so you assumed like a car.

Budget compact mixer recommendations anyone? I want a few stereo and four mono channels, bells and whistles not required. Prefer to avoid Behringer because Uli seems to be a jerk.

Thanks, that's good to know. I had heard from someone in a synth group on FB that the Keylab will be available once again in September. Coincides well with me being (hopefully) slightly less poor.

I kind of want to get the Arturia Keylab 61mkii, for controlling my Deluge. A secondary benefit of getting one is that it comes with a pretty great suite of softsynths too (Analog Lab collection). But I don't have a computer that will do it justice. Are standalone softsynths as demanding of computers as DAWs? Or can I improve an old PC by adding RAM and an SSD, and a low-latency interface, and be happy? I'll already have to save up for the Keylab, and a decently-spec'd computer like I'd need to run a DAW just isn't in the cards during pandemic.

@Dusty Chalk

Hell yeah you should. The JP8080 looks like a lot of fun.

I admit to having lust for the Model D, Poly D, and TD-3.

Yeah, that's always been their reputation, though it's improved in recent years. I bought one of their mixers around 17 years ago and it still works great. I have powered studio monitors of theirs from the same era and they're also decent, though I had to replace a cap that blew up at one point.

I'm torn on this one. I hate what a douche-canoe Uli is being and I probably won't buy anything of his though.