what was your worst hardware purchase of all time?

ewistrand · Post by **ewistrand** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 5:02 pm

Oh- and my worst hardware purchase? A Roland MKS-100; one of their early samplers that used Quick Disks.

ew

Ross Kemp · Post by **Ross Kemp** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 5:26 pm

Bitstream 3x need i say any more !

dphouse84 · Post by **dphouse84** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 5:33 pm

m-audio fast track pro

TroyP · Post by **TroyP** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 6:29 pm

Kodama wrote:It's funny how many coveted pieces of gear (Sp-808, Micron, EMU Samplers, Kyma, Waldorf Q, etc...) get mentioned!

Goes to show that you really have to get some hands on time with stuff, no matter how good the reviews, everyone has their own taste...

Yeah, true. Along these lines, I'd say my TR-909 was the worst purchase for me, based on how much I personally used it. With the music I was into, my skill level, the timing, etc. I had it untouched in my garage for almost 20 years before selling it 2 years ago. All that time, I had no idea how popular the thing had gotten. Doh!

Ross Kemp · Post by **Ross Kemp** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 6:42 pm

dphouse84 wrote:m-audio fast track pro

i had the firewire 1814 that kept cutting off at the slightest electrical surge ( i hate firewire),
now i have the fast track pro (usb), and its interface kept vanishing, but since i cleared my registry and reinstalled , for the last 5 months its been great, what probs you had, so i know what to look out for ?

dphouse84 · Post by **dphouse84** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 7:14 pm

crappy sound quality and low output.

What happened to me, I thought was really strange.
I was upgrading from a transit to the fasttrack pro.
both m-audio and big price difference.

the transit sounds so much better.
I wound up sending it back to get a padkontrol.

my lady just told me it arrived today!!!
time for the covert ops and the monome app that were recently put out.

the day can't go by fast enough!

best wishes with your unit, mine may have been defective.

Ross Kemp · Post by **Ross Kemp** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 10:14 pm

i have had bad vibes about the sound quality, but i blamed it on the early versions of live too 6, as i also use sonar 7 and it did sound some what better, i get live 7 any time now so i will have to do a compare, i wish it is not the fast track, but i think you are going to be right, i have been looking at what soundcard to go to next - more cash

thanks for the confur dphouse84

bigroom · Post by **bigroom** » Tue Jan 08, 2008 12:00 am

Ross Kemp wrote:Bitstream 3x need i say any more !

are you for real? what were you going to use the 3X for?

Ross Kemp · Post by **Ross Kemp** » Tue Jan 08, 2008 9:11 am

got this for djing/ live sessions

i had about a week of hell with product to do with compatabilitie issues at the time it was first released. - the 7th fader did not work and two of the rotaries on different channels controlled the same cc, and midi ox programme showed that evrything was fine and sending as it should,
that was in standard mode, so CME gave me a driver update and still no joy.
So next step they advised i used it in mackie emulation mode, despite i only wanted to dj with this. so once i set up in mackie mode and assigned control, then next time i switched on a dj set, the ccs has jumbled and where not controlling my orig.... assignments, finally they gave me a firmware update, and my computer was never right glitch city with all sorts of programmes and settings and freeze's and crashing, i eventually had to wipe my hard drive on my pro laptop, my production pc and our family
internet pc, that had all been tested on.
again a few months on i did not think i bought a CME 49 keyboard controller and the same problems occcured, same company same problems,
they are both plug and play or driver with friendly names or mackie modes for ableton use, yet apart from their upates the only answers i got was use mackie mode, - (why when the other modes are suppose to work fine i asked) they never answered this one! .

i read an article shortley after that did state about reports of poor drivers/updates/firmware/etc.

ever since i have never had such problems again since CME where put on my stay clear list .

and then their was build quality issues, on first impressions it was built like a tank, but once you use,you then find out why computer music mag only gave it a 6 rating - but sadley this review was too late for me.

pots extremley close together too much so, faders poor and obscured to move, joystick naff, ribbon controller would fail and freeze programme if controlling ableton master tempo, the switching of parameters was not a simple job for on the fly dj use, oh and lack of buttons and cueing functions
it goes on mate.

i have a mate that has/had one, who says he has not had any problems, but then again i never here anything mentioned from him this last couple of years, so i wonder.

supamonsta · Post by **supamonsta** » Wed Aug 27, 2008 3:37 pm

VIRUS TI (OS 1.0.beta)

Yamaha DX27 second hand with no manual...

mantaraffu · Post by **mantaraffu** » Wed Aug 27, 2008 5:13 pm

m-audio fw410

djsynchro · Post by **djsynchro** » Wed Aug 27, 2008 9:36 pm

Mackie 24 channel 8 bus mixer sounds like PLASTIC in a bad way.

Yamaha O2R because we needed total recall in the studio I was working out of close to 10 grand with all the AES EBU cards meterbridge and whatnot.
Even shittier PLASTIC sound in a bad way.

didn't stop me from making records with them but both sound YUCK, didn't add anything to the sound.

pilgrimomega · Post by **pilgrimomega** » Wed Aug 27, 2008 10:45 pm

Peavey SP/SX/SXII sampler system, loaded to the gills with ram. Which would have been 32 megs back then.

Price for that whole shlamozzle?: I think it came out in the 2,500$ range by the time the ram got added on.

Why the hell didn't I just get an Akai S1000 or something? Jeez.

I did, however, have loads of fun editing my own samples on my Atari STe, running Steinberg's Avalon software. Transferring samples over midi .... not so fun though.

wascal · Post by **wascal** » Wed Aug 27, 2008 11:16 pm

monstrejumo wrote:Yamaha DX27 second hand with no manual...

http://www.maths.abdn.ac.uk/~bensondj/d ... 27-man.pdf

oblique strategies · Post by **oblique strategies** » Thu Aug 28, 2008 1:54 am

I had an M-Audio Quattro audio/MIDI USB interface that was dreadful. It would work fine at home, so I'd take it to a gig, & it would utterly fail. I'd exclaim "Never again!"

Then it would work fine at home again for months. So I would figure, "I guess it's actually OK, must have been a fluke". I'd take it to a gig, & it would fail again!

This happened a number of times, it just kept tricking me!

I had to abandon it. Gave it to a friend who actually wanted the thing. I would have preferred smashing it to pieces! Ahhhhhh... That would been a nice feeling. Bad gear should be punished.