marino

With a (good) synth action and no hammer response, I think it could be even lighter. Dreaming is free, right..?

I would agree with your whole wish list, especially the internal PS and a good action. It would be basically an Integra 7 with keys and master keyboard functions - but the capacity to accept their vintage emulations would be welcome too. I already have an Integra, but I could sell it to get such new instrument. Even though I'm afraid that Roland would say "go get a Fantom..."

You are not... the XP-80 has been my main live controller for a long time, when a piano feel was not required. I also used it as a sound generator, with four expansions. Decent keyboard with aftertouch, good master keyboard capabilities, not too heavy, and a surprising deep voice channel. The only thing that I didn't like was the left-hand paddle. Then the 'red glue' problem showed, and after a couple of unsuccessful attempts to resolve it, I sold it for very little money. I would welcome a modern version.

Here are a few: And the one from the other thread: I'll upload another one for the new year! 😉

This year I'm feeling a bit less the celebration mood, given what's going on at several levels... so I'm offering the most, let's say austere song in the Christmas tradition, "Adeste Fideles" ("O Come All Ye Faithful" for you anglo-saxons). It's hopefully lightened up a bit by the jazz arrangement, and it's complemented by a rather random collection of images of various churches. (I'm not particularly religious, but the traditional Christmas iconography is with me since childhood) Regardless, happy holidays to every corner of the Keyboard Corner!

Totally iconic!! Please note the *telephone* in the lower left section.

I guess that most AARP members are younger than the Stones! P.S. - I googled AARP to learn what it is...

Oh my brother. I have done that several times - and on a very hot August afternoon, I got locked for two or three hours in a tiny elevator with the Chroma in its case, and a friend who was helping me with a move... When I got the Stage 73, I was so happy that I could finally get rid of the Wurlitzer and enjoying the Rhodes sound. Well, after a couple of trips with the thing, my back felt separated from the rest of my body. Later I had two operations for several slipped discs...

Yeah, I forgot to mention that. A first for Behringer synths. And a *strong* plus point imo!

I'm not an Oberheim expert, although my faithful Matrix-12 has lived with me for the past 30 years... plus I have had the chance to play a Four-Voice several times recently. I have certainly played the vintage OBs at times, and the OB-6 as well, but I'm not an authority on them. So I'm not sure how well this thing nails the sound of the OB-Xa, but it sounds lovely to my ears in the video, and also feature-rich, 16 voices with splits and layers, etc. Of course, I'd like to hear it in person without YT compression and added reverb. Speaking of which, I would have appreciated some built-in effects... purists could always disable them. About keyboard feel and poly AT, I didn't like the response of the Hydrasynth while I had it, and the Fatar action on the Iridium feels only slightly better to my fingers. So I'm *very* curious to test a (presumably) good Behringer action with the UB-Xa, given that I hate their current ones with a passion... I absolutely agree with this. When Behringer embarked in their "vintage for the masses" operation, they took a dangerous route in my opinion. They aim to make perfect replicas (with a few enhancements in some cases), and of course they are encountering both technical and ethical issues. They have launched or announced clones of instruments whose creators are, or were, still around designing similar instruments, or even reissuing the same ones Behringer are cloning. They claim complete freedom of action, sometimes bringing this attitude to disturbing extremes. Now to contradict myself, I appreciate to have at home, after several decades, a decent, 'analog' minimoog clone which costs penauts, weights less than 2 kg and sounds good. And a 2600 clone which sounds even better. And I appreciate when they hire the original designers to make modern versions, like with the Polyvox for example. But I've made a conscious decision to pass on the Pro-800, for example. (I already got the perfect replacement, just to avoid further temptations... ) And like many other musicians (I guess), I have mixed feelings about the whole Behringer synth storm. The main danger, to me, is to ruin the market for small firms that have innovative ideas for new instruments, who can be forced to keep the prices higher because they don't have the means to produce big quantities, purchase components in bulk or even make them in-house, etc. So with the marked inundated with inexpensive synths, the smaller or middle-ground manufacturers could struggle. I hope to be wrong.

My best wishes for a speedy and full recovery. And thanks for sharing your experience!

Sad to see all the heroes go. Gentle Giant were fundamental for my appreciation of complex, adventurous music. Their mix of reinassance music, rock, funk, folk and experimental music is unique to this day. Ray was an absolute column of the group.

😳 😭 😟 Oh no.

Thanks Dan, the PS3300 is one of the few historical synths that I've never played... btw it's clearer now: It's true polyphony except for the oscillators, which are based on frequency dividers. And of course, now I'm curious about the lfos... global or poly?

Wait a minute: The factory demo video mentioned that the PS series used divide-down circuits. This is new to me; I have always thought that it had true whole polyphony, one voice card per key. Does anyone know the truth?

Plus chorus/delay/reverb...

With Resonators, too!!

Well, it's a well-know anthem of the Acid Trance genre. (teaching sound design in school brings you to know a lot of stuff from the younger generations... ) Very interesting about the decay phase. Btw my 303 is long gone, but the main feature seems to be its 3-pole filter, which can stand high levels of resonance without killing the body of the bass range like the Minimoog. I think that the 303's internal sequencer was not used in this case. It just can't articulate long phrases like that. So no "accent", and no gliding from particular sequence steps. They probably used an external sequencer. The timbral modulations sound automated to me: You can tell from the *exact* repetition of whole sections. There were a few hardware modifications available, allowing cv control of most parameters. Unless of course they simply copied/pasted the audio! 🙃 All this, *assuming* that it really was a 303! I wasn't able to find a conclusive word to confirm it...

Thanks, I have seen that video and I have already built several synth bass sounds in that fashion... however, that Solar Quest sound is based on different premises: Big aggression factor mixed with a sort of cleanliness, extreme timbral flexibility, and the right type of distortion. I suspect that along with classic timbral modulations like cutoff and resonance, the distortion amount is controlled in real time. I have achieved good results with fm... Also, it retains a certain clarity even at high distortion level; this tells me that in case an analog synth was really used, it was a single oscillator affair (like on the 303 indeed).

I've always been curious about how *exactly* George Saunders (Solar Quest) achieved this well-known bass line. Well, it's mostly one note, but it's the articulation that counts here. I doesn't seem much at first listen, but I have attempted to reproduce it on various synths and was able to approach it quite closely, but some magic was always missing. I'm told it's a 303, but there is obviously some distortion stage, which is perfectly calibrated in type and amount. Timbre modulation seems to be a bit more complex than simple cutoff and resonance tweaking. Probably, compression is involved as well. Then the delay effect does its thing...

I saw the Gadd Gang in New York in 1986 - Tee, Cornell Dupree, Eddie Gomez and Steve Gadd. Richard played "Rhapsody" in a longer free solo version. Absolutely great.

I feel exactly the same. Very weird. I'm going to keep my mouth shut, to avoid saying unpleasant things.

Speaking only about non-weighted keyboards: It seems that at the beginning of the velocity-sensitive era (the 80s), many manufacturers strove to produce better actions. I can remember several good keyboards from that era: DX7, JX10, XP80, etc. Today, there's a tendency to accept horrible things like the Korg Wavestate/Opsix, some Behringer stuff, etc., even in "professional" instruments - and that goes hand in hand with mini-keys, external power supplies, fragile plastic cases... I'd say that on average, the quality of keybeds on pro equipment has lowered. On the other hand, the Fatar keybed on the Pro 3 (probably adapted by Sequential) is among the best synth actions I've ever played. But it's one of the few. Of course, manufacturers are taking into account that many synth-buying people of the last 30 years aren't players... Edit: Btw I'm still waiting for a decent, controllable, progressive aftertouch...

Absolutely. If one doesn't need those extra envelopes and lfos, nobody is forcing him to use them. Also: Thinking about the synths I had in the 90s, most of them have some kind of complex envelopes: Matrix-12, TG77, Kurzweil K series, XP80, Ion... all of them have extra segments, and they often give control over curves too. Today, many subtractive-style synths stick to simple ADSRs, and just two of them... even high-end machines like the Trigon or the OB-X8. I don't get it.

Well, remember that envelope is not synonymous with ADSR. Some synths, like Kurzweils, have different, consecutive decay stages. As an alternative, you can modulate filter, or other aspects of the timbre, with two different ADSR envelopes at the same time, with different decay times.