johnchop

+1 to CrossRhodes sentiment. Chops and ears and harmonic sensibilities of the highest order, and there’s something interesting going on in the sort of frenetic presentation of it all. I can’t quite connect with his vocal timbre, but his enthusiasm and love for music is infectious. He’s quite generous in sharing his process and ideas, too. Good bloke. As for the topic of this thread, I was pondering the same the other day. Why does it feel like some folks output too-hip-for-the-room hyper-noodling, while others drive fast around a lot of tight corners but you still enjoy the ride? Still haven’t figured that out, so just adopting “Enh, I just dig it” reasoning.

Seriously, K2700 needs consideration here. I’ve been doing similar research, and as much as the Nord Stage does, for me, it wouldn’t be worth spending almost twice as much to get it.

That’s half the dudes on this forum

For me, the best tunes have some sort of tension-release going on, or at least some element that is unexpected. I don’t care when it was written or recorded or if it uses “the four chords” and drum loops… just don’t play it so safe. I know it’s pop. It’s a product with a formula. But maybe it doesn’t have to be boring from start to finish. That’s my old-man-yells-at-clouds moment for today. This is where AI can be a good thing—There’s so much output to wade through these days, and smarter song recommendation engines could guide you to new and maybe obscure tunes that you’d dig. But yeah, life is pretty short. Embrace joy.

I bought a Virus TI2 desktop a little over a year ago. The tech in that box is circa 2009. Sounds amazing to me, even though there’s aliasing with higher frequencies. I can’t think of a recent hardware synth that attempts to best what it offered in terms of multitimbrality, hands-on control (such that it was), and oscillator variety. Maybe the Iridium.

I’ve been thinking the same thing re: the Astrolab. It’s not trying to be a workstation. It’s not trying to be a programmable synthesizer. It’s literally what they say it is: a way to play Analog Lab sounds (ok, minus a few instruments) without a computer. I appreciate the simplicity of that concept, because sometimes I just want to play, tweak a few parameters and not get lost in features. We are spoiled for choice right now. If you can’t make music on what’s available these days, well….

Got it at a reduced price myself, since I paid into a full license a little while ago after the plugin alliance decoupling. Haven’t taken all the features for a spin but loving the animated wires! I like the Relayer concept, because I like to build and control instruments plugins as if they were hardware. Not only that, but I get far more control over instrument stacks than I can with most DAW solutions, AND I don’t have to concern myself with plugin track limitations in “lite” DAW versions. Cool beans.

CLONK After emulating others, why not emulate… yourself? Will demo later. As a current V collection owner, it’s 49 bucks.

I’m thinking more about music tech as creative tools here, although I recognize that there are still a lot of products and innovations specifically aimed at the performing musician.

JamPro … AI isn’t the only thing that produces crap for cheap. Ever hear me play? SMcD… points for inscrutability. Okely dokely.

Absolute brain melt from all these product drops in the past week. The sheer range of cool sh*t — especially relatively affordable cool sh*t — is continually mind-blowing to someone who wandered music stores (remember those?) in the 80s and wondering if the Korg M1 or D50 was just the end-all-be-all. (There was also a Matrix 12 on the display floor, and that thing was from outer space and sonically crushed everything in its path.) Even the stuff that’s spendy, e.g. Polybrute or Iridium, is still so gobsmacking potent. What a time to be alive. Anyone else feel this way? Perhaps not if you don’t like soft synths, or iLok, or external power supplies, or lack of expression pedal inputs, or any of the other things we tend to whine about. I just know that 11-year old me would fall over at what’s available. Just me?

Got the demo. Presets hint at some cool stuff, but a lot reflect some pretty standard VA sensibilities. It’s new to me. What should someone coming from Prophet/Juno programming mindset seek out in the Chroma?

Every bit as good as the original, and way easier to use with the updated UI. Something about GForce synths… they can pump out some absolutely thunderous low end. And subtle harmonic distortion (“warmth”) is uniformly well executed. To my (admittedly crappy) ears, they don’t sound midrange-y and muffled like competitors can. Worth your time to demo!

4K on the street. sounds right for what you get love the color! holy moly what a time to be a synth nerd

I saw it more “when” than “if”, as they were blowing out version 2 a few months ago. Anyway, glad to see it’s here! Happily upgraded and about to install. One of my faves.