Why buy hardware synths?

[ledhed2222]

This question is intended to be a little bit provocative, but it's all in the spirit of good music tech conversation.


I'm a serious classical composer with a strong interest in electronics. For fun, I make some house and trance. I run Logic Pro and use MaxMSP, Massive, Thor, Subtractor, and Logic's modeling synth for most of my synthesis. I went over to a friend's place the other day and he showed me his badass synths: a Micro Q, an Alesis Micron, and a Roland Juno. Since I have some cash to burn and I feel like buying a new toy, I'm considering getting a rackmount hardware synth but....


....why buy hardware synths when we can use such amazing softsynths? I get it if you're looking for analog (I don't have the $$ for that), but otherwise aren't hardware synths more expensive and less powerful than softsynths?


Prove me wrong or don't, I'm curious to see what you all think.

[dimitris108]

I have all these and more softsynths that you can imagine.

Check out Virus TI, Roland V Synth GT, Yamaha VL, Poly Evolver, Prophet 08, Mopho, Moog Voyager or Little Phatty, Oberheim, Alesis Andromeda A6 and compare them with your softsynths and then we will talk.

I have Native instruments Reaktor is a great program,Massive is good Virus TI has better wavetable and Waldorf stuff. Absynth is good for weird stuff not for dance. FM8 is great Fm synth maybe the best for me for FM again. The sound quality of NI is a little thin and weak sometimes if you compare them with Roland V synth GT for example.

For sampler Kontakt is the best ever no question, time and pitch stretching is very good but not as good as Kyma
Kontakt has also the script language that you can do crazy stuff microtonal for example.

I am letting you know that I have all of them and I am a max/msp user I am going to get a Kyma pacarana, I also have GRM tools for electroacoustic weird stuff.

I will give you an example if you want a good bass all the softsynths and the digital synths can not come close to moog voyager or old minimoog, Studio electronics SE-1X even mopho.

I do not think that the term hardware or the box can make the difference I think that is a dongle key for companies like Yamaha, Roland, Korg, Access Virus that the make digital synths in the box and people can not crack them like the softwares. But the real analog synths like Poly Evolver, Prophet 08, Mopho, Moog Voyager or Little Phatty, Oberheim, Alesis Andromeda A6 e.t.c can make a big difference in your music.

My favorite digital synths or software in the box or dongle key synths whatever, are Virus TI, Roland V Synth GT is a monster, and Yamaha VL for physical modeling it is a great unit. Lately I like Arturia Origin it is very good synth.

With kyma you can go very very far with great quality unlike max/msp it is difficult and the sound quality is not professional.

Last I want to tell you that Duende SSL has the best plug ins for EQs, and compressors out there. Waves L3 and L3-16
is my favorite out of all waves plugins. UAD is ok only for delay, Plate 140, Roland stuff the EQs and the compressors can not come close to DUENDE SSL. Powercore the Master X5, VSS reverb and some other plugins are good. All these are PCI cards except waves that use your CPU. Anyway DUENDE is the best mix tool by far for me.

Check all these out.

Good luck!!!

[Stab Frenzy]

Duplicate thread.