Ableton Forum

Been trawling the thread of everyones studio. Seeing what everyone is running, I keep seeing the morpho and blofeld in terms of hardware but really when it comes down to it, are you soft or hard?

I have massive, and animoog and all the ableton suite synths, I have maschine and a kaoss pad, and I am very tempted to sneak behind my wifes back and buy myself a nice DSI Mopho. But really, with todays soft synths, is it really worth buying a hardware synth?
Its hard to make do with what you have when the buying bug bites you....

I have a Slim Phatty, Nord Lead 2x, and just picked up a used DSI Mopho desktop. I love the analog sound, but for more modern sounds I use Massive and Sylenth

That's a lot of nice hardware. The desktop mopho was what I was thinking of sneak buying but part of my brain is saying " Oi you have so much nice software, use that"

a semi has usually worked just as well for me

Exactly, I use both hard and soft. Analog is great, but if you don't have any real need for the sound in your mixes, working all in the box is easiest. There aren't any rules here.

A lot of people might say it's good to switch it up.

If you're soft all the time you'll have less excitement and certainly be less hands-on.
If you're hard all the time you'll probably get sore.



Crash symbol please.

I just heard a real ssl. Compressor. Wow it's much better than my waves ssl emulation

The Carpet Cleaner wrote:I just heard a real ssl. Compressor. Wow it's much better than my waves ssl emulation

Yeah somethings are really hard to do in software. All tube emulations come to mind, I'll use them, but not a single one sounds like real tube distortion when compared side to side. Sure, certain settings on a tube distortion can be emulated, but the whole device?.. so far no one has got it down.

taffmonster wrote:Been trawling the thread of everyones studio. Seeing what everyone is running, I keep seeing the morpho and blofeld in terms of hardware but really when it comes down to it, are you soft or hard?

I have massive, and animoog and all the ableton suite synths, I have maschine and a kaoss pad, and I am very tempted to sneak behind my wifes back and buy myself a nice DSI Mopho. But really, with todays soft synths, is it really worth buying a hardware synth?
Its hard to make do with what you have when the buying bug bites you....

Does anyone really use hardware anymore? I got the Korg soft synths and I am in synth heaven.Especially the Monopoly...
WOW!

I'm thinking about the mopho, blofeld or venom. But I can't decide if it's worth it. I've owned hardware before, I've had a k station, a korg prophecy and a korg ms2000.

saxon2000 wrote:

taffmonster wrote:Been trawling the thread of everyones studio. Seeing what everyone is running, I keep seeing the morpho and blofeld in terms of hardware but really when it comes down to it, are you soft or hard?

I have massive, and animoog and all the ableton suite synths, I have maschine and a kaoss pad, and I am very tempted to sneak behind my wifes back and buy myself a nice DSI Mopho. But really, with todays soft synths, is it really worth buying a hardware synth?
Its hard to make do with what you have when the buying bug bites you....

Does anyone really use hardware anymore? I got the Korg soft synths and I am in synth heaven.Especially the Monopoly...
WOW!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wmdDYUFfMM

I just bought the dap kings 2011 album - I have so much respect for those guys - the only piece of digital gear in their studio is a CD player - play that album to anyone and they probably wouldn't believe you if you said it was released last year. Could have come Straight off the Stax label....

They go to great lengths to make sure every part of their chain is original authentic gear, and that's the sound they get as a result

but in that case, it's a whole combination of many, many bits of individual hardware all combining together to create the sound - no one bit of kit gives them their "sound"

I'd totally love to be able to afford to build a studio like that...

sound generation is hard, sequencing is soft, mostly

Hardware + midi sequencing.

I'm normally too lazy to end up plugging my hardware in these days, even though I do prefer it quite often. I'd be better off investing in some nice VSTs tbh.

When it comes to guitar though my sound doesn't even travel through a single bit of silicon unless it's in a parallel chain. hardware all the way avoiding anything with ADA conversion.

the real toss up is between max for live or a hardware synth. max being the cheaper of the options.