pflosi wrote:shaft9000 wrote:no synths that I've had are particularly great instruments
Really? You got an A6, JP8 and CS60 among other nice things... Yeah if 12TET is not your thing then that's very limiting, but polys cannot get much more expressive than those, can they? Ok it's no violin, but still... I appreciate your input a lot so I'm genuinely interested - my A6 is one of the most expressive instruments I ever could play. Maybe that's the culprit as I'm unable to either sing or play wind and string instruments properly
of course this is all entirely personal and subject to some flux
that said,
i suppose it's time to fess up that my primary instrument is guitar, and i am usually (default) singer in most of the bands i play in. i am an 'imposter synthesist' with no more cred than any other wanker. i WAS trained on piano when young, and it provided a good foundation to learn other instruments.
Anyway, being that analog polys are so complex to build and design, there's a degree of 'take what one can get and put up' to get that superb sound, i feel. A6 was alesis' only analog poly. JP-8 was roland's second after the 4. CS-60 is also among the first of it's kind. While they are indeed incredible efforts well beyond my meager understanding, that doesn't automagically make them perfect, or even all that refined(case in point, the A6's parameter ranges...).
Wheras I pick up my yamaha sa2200 "a mere 335 variant", and everything is sorted; even better than the classic gibsons are, and those are the standard already of how to do a guitar right, imho.
I guess I'm spoiled by being used to an instrument i can wear and feel make the sound acoustically through my whole body...wheras in comparison synths are almost always some disconnect between going plink-plink on a plastic key and hearing the result "over there" (=wherever the speaker is).
So a tiny dark corner of me still understands the traditionalists' aversion to synthesizers vs playing piano (or whatever acoustic instrument one prefers). Synths are still pretty new-sauce as instruments generally go, and even though many examples exist so far, it is slow improving each iteration due to all the materials and complexity vs other types of instruments. And I can live with that; they still make f'ing awesome sounds, and that's all that matters in the end... and not my personal "gripes".
as always, ymmv and i reserve the right to change my mind