Ableton Forum

Thinking which is better? I want to get microkorg or http://m.guitarcenter.com/Dave-Smith-In ... 1425490.gc

Get the Mopho. If you're going to buy hardware it might as well be Analogue. Personally I would go for the keyboard version with all the extra controls (and you can expand upon it at a later date with a Tetra)...

puzzlefactory wrote:Get the Mopho. If you're going to buy hardware it might as well be Analogue. Personally I would go for the keyboard version with all the extra controls (and you can expand upon it at a later date with a Tetra)...

Im on a budget I will get the mopho. This weekend.

nycmex77 wrote:

puzzlefactory wrote:Get the Mopho. If you're going to buy hardware it might as well be Analogue. Personally I would go for the keyboard version with all the extra controls (and you can expand upon it at a later date with a Tetra)...

Im on a budget I will get the mopho. This weekend.

Have a look at the Doepfer Dark Energy and the Vermona Mono Lancet too.
I agree that there is no point really in getting hardware VAs, its either VST or real analog

gromgrom wrote:

nycmex77 wrote:

puzzlefactory wrote:Get the Mopho. If you're going to buy hardware it might as well be Analogue. Personally I would go for the keyboard version with all the extra controls (and you can expand upon it at a later date with a Tetra)...

Im on a budget I will get the mopho. This weekend.

Have a look at the Doepfer Dark Energy and the Vermona Mono Lancet too.
I agree that there is no point really in getting hardware VAs, its either VST or real analog

Thanx. Damn good machines

nycmex77 wrote:Thinking which is better? I want to get microkorg or http://m.guitarcenter.com/Dave-Smith-In ... 1425490.gc

If you want a microkorg get a used Korg Ms2000 instead. Its the same synth, just that its actually usable.

edit: I would rather have a Mopho Keyboard though

gromgrom wrote:its either VST or real analog

most definitely.


I had a Korg MS2000 for years. In my opinion there are a slew of Reaktor synths that sound way better. These days virtual analogue hardware makes less and less since.

Desktop mopho is a really great price for a really great sound. I almost bought one and decided on the SlimPhatty instead. However I may get a little mopho one day.

its either VST or real analog

so which VST's u recommend?

In the computer music world, there are basically two kind of instruments : samplers & synthesizer.
- for samplers a VST is (almost) as good as hardware, after all, both are digital. In this case, I guess everybody will agree Kontakt from Native Instrument is your best bet. I tried a few. Then got Kontakt. Never looked back.
- for synths, it's a really different topic. IMO, Hardware analog synths, are way better than VSTs and VA (HW synths which use sampled waveforms) are. They also need an oscilator(+filter) per voice and therefore are, much more expensive. However, you still have a few not-too-bad VST synths out there. I'd personaly recomend minimogue (a minimooog emlulation, but polyphonic. It's freeware !), fm8 (from NI also), alchemy (camel audio). Many people praise omnispher but I never tried it. I just know it's quite heavy on your proc.

Like it's been said above, I really don't get the point of a VA (Virus TI, etc etc ... )


HTH

How bout this one is it good? http://m.guitarcenter.com/Arturia-Analo ... 1531385.gc

I think you need to look into what sort of sound you need.

VST's don't take up any room, keyboards do!
VST's sound like synth VST's even if they are emulating a keyboard. However, nothing wrong with that: they have their own distinct sound! So what! So therefore the question of which is best is completely irrelevant.

Keyboards are keyboards and are rather sexy - more than a VST! but sound better???? They sound different!

NI Kontakt - certainly worth a look - although this is a sampler (although comes with it's own sample lib but expect to spend more on sample libs).

ImpOSCar2 worth a look at http://www.gforcesoftware.com/products

Modular Tassman 4 at http://www.applied-acoustics.com/tassman/overview/

Arturia at http://www.arturia.com

the only issue i had with vst plugins were that many of the good ones would become cpu intensive if you start using them on every track. as a result, having a hardware synth resolves this issues as you just record audio clips. also since using audio clips only, i am automating stuff realtime, which makes my clips far more interesting than when i automated manually within ableton. for these reasons alone i think it is worth making the jump, even if its not an analog synth.

i got a miniak for £200. to be fair, i wish i got an analog synth (almost got a juno 106 before the seller sold it to someone else ), but to get a poly one generally costs a bomb. miniak is ace btw - getting some amazing sounds out of it (much better than most of the vsts i hav).

be warned that the mopho is mono only, so you cant play more than one note at a time. thats not to put the mopho down - i aim to get one myself. just worth mentioning as you are limited to one voice.

Using VSTs and keeping everything in the box has huge advantages over using real hardware. You can take your Live projects anywhere with your laptop and work. You can easily email files to collaborators, no need to lug gear from studio to studio. Etc. Etc. The convenience cannot be beat and the best VSTs sound as good as digital synths.

As soon as you go outside of the computer you add complexity...you have to deal with MIDI and audio latencies, audio interfaces/mixers, third party drivers, backing up your hardware's data, etc. So along with the gain is some pain and of course expense. My current master keyboard cost me just shy of $2000, I could have bought a monster computer or a few high-end software packages with that money.

So my advice to anyone on a tight budget is stay with software until you have a really compelling reason to add hardware instruments.

[quote="doghouse"]Using VSTs and keeping everything in the box has huge advantages over using real hardware. You can take your Live projects anywhere with your laptop and work. You can easily email files to collaborators, no need to lug gear from studio to studio. Etc. Etc. The convenience cannot be beat and the best VSTs sound as good as digital synths.

As soon as you go outside of the computer you add complexity...you have to deal with MIDI and audio latencies, audio interfaces/mixers, third party drivers, backing up your hardware's data, etc. So along with the gain is some pain and of course expense. My current master keyboard cost me just shy of $2000, I could have bought a monster computer or a few high-end software packages with that money.

quote]

midi works fine on my setup. i think for me, i couldnt justify paying £200 for a controller when i could have a synth which has its own sounds. def are some good vsts - just discovered the korg digital vsts - the m1 vst is ace.