Game - Synth Death(light-a-)match - Nominations

[desmond]

Ok then, as promised:-

Synths are brilliant. Really great. We love them. It's why we hang out here.

*Except* when they are c**p. Big steaming piles of c**p. Bland sounding, impossible to use, unreliable, fading backlights, dead voices, tuning problems, limited features, horrendously designed user-interfaces, undefined or poorly implemented MIDI specs - I mean seriously, how come we ever made music with these things?

It’s time to destroy one of the all-time worst offenders, especially now as so many synthesists have recently been culled leaving all their synths unattended. Synths, synth modules, samplers, and anything with a keyboard. String machines, organs, those weird Bontempi “home” organs from the 70s? Go for it.

Yep, we’re gonna smother them with lighter fuel, petrol, fertilizer and anything else flammable and ignite that spark so that sucker gets sent to synthesizer h**l. You know, where they keep all the old Roland manuals.

No drum machines, sequencers, effects units please.

Let’s get your nominations in, here, with a reason why.

The top 12 nominations will get a poll. In each poll, you will be voting for which synths are most deserved for a fiery death. We’ll continue until we're down to one - and this is the final synth we will set on fire.

(We're doing it this way because our profound geeky love for synths means we can't bear to set everything else on fire and save just one - it's too traumatic!)

Which synth do you think deserves to get flamed? As many nominations as you like.

--

Nominations so far (I'll update these as we go):-

- Kawai K1
- Casio VL-Tone, WX-P1
- Elka EK-22
- Roland D-70, SH-01, TB303 (2), SH-201, SH-32, Gaia, Sound Canvas
- Korg M1
- Yamaha SY-55
- Con Brio ADS 200 (Seriously?!)
- Avid Venom
- Oberheim/Viscount OB-12
- Akai Miniak
- Alesis Micron
- Evolution EVS-1
- Cheetah MS6, MS800
- Crumar Trilogy

[Psy_Free]

http://www.vintagesynth.com/forum/viewt ... =1&t=77031

[desmond]

http://www.vintagesynth.com/forum/viewt ... =1&t=77031

http://www.vintagesynth.com/forum/viewt ... 60#p735023

yourself!

[desmond]

And I'll kick off with:

Kawai K1.

The "budget D-50", when everyone was going "ooh look, synths can *chiff* now! Analog schmanalog - if it don't chiff, it ain't worth squiff!"

Ok, plusses - it was multitimbral, had a decent amount of voices for the time, and was a low-cost way of getting some kind of breathy pad that your TX81Z wasn't going to get near. Plus, it was available as a keyboard, a rackmount, or if you're a cheesy organ fan, you could put the dinky little desktop module on the top of your dad's Farfisa! What's not to like?

Well - *no filter*. At all. Which means that basically, you were stuck with the onboard samples for the oscilators and could do little to disguise them. With the bulk of the samples being single cycle waveforms, without filtering these are thin, weak and digital-sounding, making them effectively useless at anything other than thin, weak, digital sounds. And no effects to further help disguise them either.

So ok, there were also a small handful of grungy 8-bit samples, surely we could use those? Yes indeed, but because there are only a handfull of them, any sound which uses them sounds the same as all the other that use them. Your two string sounds will only even sound like the other two string sounds. This brings you sound design potential to a negligable degree. Sure, EG delays mean you could stack four osccillators and delay them for a fake-cheapass wave sequencing effect. Ok. And the AM modulation mean you could take any somewhat useful sound and turn it into... well, thin, weak and digital sounds and... er... that was the thing we were trying to get away from...

For me, this is one definitely high up there on my "torch" list. Burn in h**l, K1, should you get enough noms to participate!

[implant]

I am going to vote also for the Roland Sound Canvas series. Seems I blocked out the fact that these things exist.

[desmond]

I'm sticking with my choice from the other one.
Casio VL-1

Ah, my first keyboard.

C'mon, apart from that DaDaDa nonsense, it was quite amazing by home keyboards of the time standards - I mean, it had that really cool sequencer where you could store the note pitches and then bash out the timing separately, which was great for learning - still surprised modern sequencers haven't pinched that feature more.

And it was a true synthesiser, where you could actually program digital sounds, which was unheard of on cheapey home keyboards for quite some time...

And, the resultant fire wouldn't generate much warmth on a cold winter night...

Still, a nom is a nom!

[Walter Ego]

As I'll be destroying the other thread, I'll add my two cents:

The ELKA EK-22 that I just sold!

So much potential and so little delivery. Son of Synthex?! Bastard nephew, maybe. Matrix 6? There's a mod matrix, but you can't polish a turd. Thinnest PWM ever. Cheap, heavy, plastic and prone to blowing fuses...piss-poor MIDI implementation. Curtis chips that buzz but lack girth...

Light it on fire and watch the plastic ooze into a disgusting puddle of Italian grunge.

Some synths should stay rare...

[gcoudert]

Roland D70. Pretty decent MIDI controller but basically a U220 with a 76-note keyboard, ugly display (mine buzzed as well), impossible to use without referring to the manual constantly. Yuck...

[shaft9000]

ooooh cute, a "lyst de sinths u hayte" thread-a-like

ehh, fuggit. here goes:

the sh-01 that my bandmate uses. perhaps OTHER sh-01s can sound good, but this one makes one pad sound that i can stand and everything else is resoundingly a*s.
m1
sy-55
every softsynth
every ROMpler
blah blah blah......
the end

(disclaimer: i have been drinking. a little)

[desmond]

Roland D70. Pretty decent MIDI controller but basically a U220 with a 76-note keyboard, ugly display (mine buzzed as well), impossible to use without referring to the manual constantly. Yuck...

Heh, I nearly nommed the U20 as I really dislike that too. The D70also had a notoriously sluggish MIDI spec as well - chuck it a few notes and some pitch bend and the whole thing started to slow down as it tried to cope processing it...

[Stab Frenzy]

Please, burn the 303. Crappiest piece of c**p ever and spawned a million c**p songs and c**p synths. Also, the PCB is made of cardboard, it was designed to burned, even Roland agree with me.

[implant]

ooooh cute, a "lyst de sinths u hayte" thread-a-like

ehh, fuggit. here goes:
blah blah blah......
the end

(disclaimer: i have been drinking. a little)

You are drunk with the power of the SunSyn! It's all been downhill ever since

[Black Tomorrow]

Con Brio ADS 200. One word: fwonk.

[CS_TBL]

Sound Canvas - for introducing a format standard (but not a sound quality standard!) that halted the uniqueness of many synths in those days. You just ended up with another GM box, every time, containing ridiculous bird tweets and telephones. And not even being complete (missing low/high auxiliaries of wood/brass instruments).

[ninja6485]

Sound Canvas - for introducing a format standard (but not a sound quality standard!) that halted the uniqueness of many synths in those days. You just ended up with another GM box, every time, containing ridiculous bird tweets and telephones. And not even being complete (missing low/high auxiliaries of wood/brass instruments).

Rudess/Tiny Piano combo?