madtheory wrote:Ya that's a drool worthy collection.
Thanks. And of course there's some stuff I've had and regret selling like my Linndrum and a Roland TB-303 (which at the time I practically gave away!)
My Minimoog on the other hand was good riddance -not because of its sound of course, but I never got it to interface properly via MIDI (keyboard tracking was impossible to do, so when played via MIDI I could just as well have sampled it). The SE-1 is a much better solution (for me) as it has the same sound (more or less), memory, full MIDI specs and being a rack its more practical. Less housekeeping and more making music! Time permitting I'm going to perform the hardware modification which allows for faster attacks (the Minimoog is much better in that respect).
OK so you don't like weighted keyboards. Well the Akai non weighted boards are easily as good feeling as the DX-7, which IMO is among the best (Casio VZ-1 and Korg M1 were also nice). The big problem with the DX-7 though is that it doesn't transmit the full range of velocity. It works great with the onboard sounds, but I always found myself playing harder over MIDI. I would go for the Akai- I don't remember if it's mechanically noisy though. Check it out.
I'll definitely have to check them out first hand and not just order one online. Apart from the VZ-1 and M1 synths, what would you suggest I look into for older master keyboards if I decide to go that route?
Yes, I remember the velocity issue with the DX-7. It only goes up to 100 as far as I remember, not 128.
A keyboard with USB is still transmitting MIDI, and will work with any DAW.
So as sequentialsoftshock seemed to imply earlier, you're also confirming that master keyboards use MIDI to control a DAW and not something proprietory via USB?
I can second the Scarlett range, the best boxes this side of $1000. I have a 6i6. You get Focusrite Red2 EQ and Red3 compressor plugins for free as well. They're easily among the best eq and comp plugins available
Thanks for confirming. I've done quite a bit of research and the above seems to "have it all". Do people here (with all their vintage gear) usually prefer multiple line inputs for a DAW, or is it more common just to mix externally, sequence everything and feed a stereo output to the DAW?
I've been getting back in to the TX16W actually! Did you ever use the Typhoon OS? Yamaha OS was awful, whereas Typhoon was one of the best sampler OS's ever I think. There's a virtual version now, which will load images of your floppy discs. Load in a bunch of floppies (which takes the same time as a real TX) and save them all in one preset so they load instantly from then on. As long as you know your way around Typhoon OS it's cool.
http://soniccharge.com/forum/index.php? ... clone-faq/
Yeah, I do have Typhoon and it's a nice sampler but there was a lot of "housekeeping" to do all the time. That's why I'll be looking into a soft-sampler when I get into DAW software (soft-synths on the other hand don't appeal much to me though). I don't get the nostalgia around samplers (as opposed to vintage synths) unless they have some special filters or something. Magnus Lidström (the guy who wrote Typhoon) says
he released it to commemorate its 20 year anniversary, so obviously not because it sounds so special compared to other samplers.
But being free I'm definitely going to try it out. There's also
TX16Wx which is also free.
Would you consider the TX-16W as having a "vintage sound" or something that can easily be replaced by any modern soft-sampler? And even though I do like physical hardware, sampling/sample playback is one area where I can see the computer excel in comparison to buying a second-hand "top of the line" (many years ago) Akai -S1100 or whatever rack sampler.