What, if any, analogs would you keep?

[at0m]

Coincidentally, we're playing with Analog Four and BSii, too.

The Bass Station has every control is right in front of you to tweak. No controller unless dedicated or modded will give you that. I so missed that when working on 'puters and virtual instruments.

[zerocrossing]

Has this one gone ? http://forums.planetz.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=33516

Did SC give you for approx. date for next factory run ?

Yeah, if you scroll down to the bottom you'll see his last post says, "Sold. Thanks." That would have been a perfect deal for me. SC did not give me a date. Just a vague "quite a while."

WARNING: THINKING OUT LOUD MODE

Now I'm really torn. On one hand, I got the KingKORG and Prophet 12 sold, so my space issue has been totally alleviated. In terms of replacements for those, I have some good hardware analogs and a s load of native software plug ins. There's no "I won't be able to work until I get X." In fact, I kind of ignored Omnisphere 2 when I got it because it came on the heals of the Prophet 12. Now would be a nice time to dig into it deeper. So, I could really do nothing and have all of what I need to make music until I die/get brain transferred into robot.

On the other hand, I did get bitten by the Sonic Core bug. G.A.S. is a terrible drug! Going with an XITE-1 would be totally doable, but it would mean gutting the hardware core of my studio. That idea makes me a bit nervous. Maybe I could also sell some plug ins... but I tend to either love them or buy them second hand or on sales where they become NFR. I played the f out of those hardware analogs all day yesterday in hopes that it would reveal which ones I'd not miss... and it didn't happen. The decision to get rid of the KingKORG was pretty easy. SC instruments will best it and the interface was meh. Letting the Prophet 12 go was a bit harder, but not too bad. I quickly realized the types of sounds it was great for (distressed feedback/distorted NINish kinds of things) I like doing better in my hardware analogs anyway, and lush/digital/sweet kinds of sounds were harder to coax out of it and IMO, done better in any number of software synths.

But the analogs... oooo those little analogs. The ones I've thought weren't that great have long gone. My mental studio tour yesterday revealed this:

Neptune 2: All sweet-spot. It's really hard to not make a great tone out of this thing. It's my "Model D." It's only flaws are that the LFO MIDI sync is buggy and I wish the aftertouch filter modulation amount was adjustable. It's sound is more or less covered by my ATC-X but... KNOBS! $400

ATC-X QFS: I love that Studio Electronics sound. This synth has Model D, ARP, SEM and 303 style filters on board. ATC stands for Active Tone Chameleon and that it is. It's flaws are it's single knob interface, but it's my only VCO based synth that has patch memory, which is really useful. $1000

Pulse 2: I love this one for crazy BPF tones that use osc feedback. Hands down the best modulation options of any hardware I own. Flaws: Not a great interface, but I bought a software editor for it that works like a charm. My gut tells me that this is probably the synth I'd miss the least, but man it's a lot of synth in a little box for not too much cash. $500

Bass Station 2: If anyone out there is looking to get into a hardware analog without breaking the bank, this is your synth. Sounds great, has lots of filter options, does good osc filter mod and when you feed it's headphone out into it's audio input and crank it up it sounds glorious. The interface is decent and it's keyboard feels good. Getting rid of it wouldn't generate that much cash. Flaws... for the money it costs, there are none. $300

Analog Four: My only analog poly. I got it and used it as a preset machine with the idea that when they released their software editor/USB audio software I'd dig into it, and now I love the hell out of it. I don't even use it's sequencer, but it has such a quirky and weird sound with modulate-able effects. My gut tells me that this one is probably easily replaced with a Scope instrument, but it does not take any analog audio inputs on my mixer and would provide me with an additional pair of inputs. $900

Then there's the Presonus 16.0.2 audio interface/mixer. Can't use it with the XITE so that goes no matter what, but it will only generate $600.

So... my initial thoughts are sell the Neptune and Pulse 2. That won't get me the funds needed for the XITE-1, but with the Presonus funds I'll have it... but with very little cash for any additional plug ins for the XITE-1. Of course as the Stark family likes to say, "Christmas is coming." Er, I mean "winter." Since we have a man in a red suit coming instead an army of undead frozen guys, it means a bit of funds for some software. Maybe getting the XITE-1 will reveal that I don't need some or all of my remaining synths and that will free up plug in money.

That's plan A.

Plan B: Keep everything I have and use the Prophet 12/KingKORG funds to buy a Modal Electronics Modulus .002r. I've G.A.S.ed for that synth ever since the first demos. It has some odd flaws though. The voices are hard panned via the stereo outputs. So, unless you run it into a mixer with both inputs panned center, you will hear the notes randomly panned left and right. WTF? They said it has something to do with noise floor optimization, but that just sounds stupid to me. I can run it into two mono channels of my audio interface and process it in stereo, so it's not a giant deal. Also, modulation amounts are set at the source! So if you say want aftertouch to modulate filter cut off by 50% and LFO speed by 20%, you're S.O.O.L. That's so weird to me... especially considering it's not some pure analog. The modulation options are actually pretty limited as well. That said, I've yet to hear a bad demo track and that pole-morphable filter is a thing of pure beauty.

What to do... what to do?

[zerocrossing]

Coincidentally, we're playing with Analog Four and BSii, too.

The Bass Station has every control is right in front of you to tweak. No controller unless dedicated or modded will give you that. I so missed that when working on 'puters and virtual instruments.

Yeah, the combination of the BSII's interface plus it's inexpensive nature and high quality sound means it will stay no matter what.

More of a question to me is how you feel the Analog Four fits into your world when you have the XITE-1. Do you feel it's redundant? I sure hate its hardware interface, but Overbridge is great. Feels like an amazing VSTi to me.

[petal]

There's always prostitution

[tlaskows]

Male jigolo

-Tom

[frokka]

I don't think any of the Supernovas has a digital output, but the Ultranova has an SP-DIF (and USB).

In fact, you can expand the Supernova II with digital output AND input (!!)..

The digital I/O expansion board never made it into production unfortunately.
Many people were upset because they waited and waited without proper notice.

[JoPo]

Oh ! I didn't know about that ! Makes me feel better with my Supernova I !

[tlaskows]

Why do you need digital output? If you use short and good quality cables, you will probably not heard the difference...

-Tom

[JoPo]

For the same reason people work on 96khz ! Can you hear any difference with a blind test ? I bet pros would be surprised !
Supernova is digital synth. Digital -> analog -> digital, you have necessarily distorsion.

[tlaskows]

I just looked at my Korg M3. It has digital out, but only 1 stereo? Wth? Why doesn't it spit out all the individual outputs as well? This is dumb. Does anyone want to see if they can tell the difference?

-Tom

[tlaskows]

Got it to work. Start guessing guys. This is done using almost 15 year old cards!

http://www.thomaslaskowski.com/wp-conte ... igital.wav

-Tom

[dante]

Has this one gone ? http://forums.planetz.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=33516
Did SC give you for approx. date for next factory run ?

Yeah, if you scroll down to the bottom you'll see his last post says, "Sold. Thanks." That would have been a perfect deal for me. SC did not give me a date. Just a vague "quite a while."
What to do... what to do?

What about this one ? http://forums.planetz.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=33978 Full XITE (as new < 20 hours use), for price between XITE and XITE-1D. Now, thats one or two less synths you'd have to sell to have the full XITE - isn't it ?

[frokka]

Why do you need digital output? If you use short and good quality cables, you will probably not heard the difference...
-Tom

In the case of having an ADAT expansion it makes integrating with a digital setup a lot more practical, and you free up analog channels for other things.

[tlaskows]

Why do you need digital output? If you use short and good quality cables, you will probably not heard the difference...
-Tom

In the case of having an ADAT expansion it makes integrating with a digital setup a lot more practical, and you free up analog channels for other things.

Yes, that makes sense. I have more ADAT inputs on my boards than I can swallow I am only using Z-link at this time.

-Tom

[zerocrossing]

Has this one gone ? http://forums.planetz.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=33516
Did SC give you for approx. date for next factory run ?

Yeah, if you scroll down to the bottom you'll see his last post says, "Sold. Thanks." That would have been a perfect deal for me. SC did not give me a date. Just a vague "quite a while."
What to do... what to do?

What about this one ? http://forums.planetz.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=33978 Full XITE (as new < 20 hours use), for price between XITE and XITE-1D. Now, thats one or two less synths you'd have to sell to have the full XITE - isn't it ?

He's offering a few things that I would not need and his mentioned price translates to about a $1000 usd more than a new XITE-1.

[tlaskows]

I am saddened. I will never be able to afford an Xite-1. That price translates to around 7000 CAD

I only blew around 2000$ on my PCI cards I hope they don't die, cause they're hard to find (no one wants to sell them? Why not??)

-Tom

[zerocrossing]

There's always prostitution

Heh, well... er... probably not something I'd excell at.

What I could do that would totally make the increase in cost go away and leave me the cash I wanted for some new plug ins down the line, is revise my plan and sell the Analog Four. It was your job to talk me into that, but you all failed.

[tlaskows]

Get rid of that Analog Four man! There

I used to have a Jupiter-6, the real shit. It was great, but only MIDI on/off! And it only held a few patches. Sold it for 1000$ about 10 years ago. Now I see they go for around $5000. I'd rather get a brand new Prophet-6 for half the price

-Tom

[tlaskows]

Oh yeah, it needed about 5-10 minutes to warm up before you could press the tune button. Then it would stay in tune for a long time.

I took it apart to fix the mod button.



Look at all those pretty female parts

-Tom

[oxygenial]

I don't think any of the Supernovas has a digital output, but the Ultranova has an SP-DIF (and USB).

In fact, you can expand the Supernova II with digital output AND input (!!) and it has a 42-band vocoder !
You can find info here :
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec00/a ... vation.asp

A big beast ! The Supernova I is already awesome ! I'll never sell it... Or maybe exchange it with a Supernova II !

I'd love to have a SuperNova II fully exapnded, but my luck with Novation gear just doesn't exist.
My BassStation I broke several times.
My DrumStation I (yellow version) broke even more times, and finally got replaced with a DrumStation II (red version).
Had a Nova desktop a short while... LED broke...

Novation quality according to my experience is not the greatest or even very bad!

But as I said, I would love to have a SuperNova II, maybe just for the looks!