J.F.N.

Kurtz Weil..

This guy's roadies totally would love him to get a modern workstation synth instead...

Re: Duran Duran Fantom EX Video Shimmer reverb is totally overrated, always makes me wonder if my tinnitus is coming back again! Else, it's a pretty powerful machine, definitely wouldn't mind owning one, not that I need one, and I defintely don't have space for one... haha!

Everything we use here to communicate is made in Asia, which I always find funny in these conversations on music forums, it's apparently a conversation of importance where the instruments are made, while we all sit here since decades and tap on devices that more or less was never even in production in our own part of the world (smartphones, tablets. etc.). China has become pretty good at manufacturing these days and the growing middle class in China are extremely quality conscious in their own consumption as well. Factory workers can still have shit wages though, but wages have increased during the last decade and keep growing, in contrary to how it is in Malaysia and Vietnam, where it's not uncommon for companies to move their production (from China), and save a couple of bucks...

"Plugins get tricky because you start to hear with your eyes. Some of them have flashy interfaces - they make you think they’re doing more than they’re actually doing" https://www.musicradar.com/news/st-vincent-interview

Korg Prologue is a strange story, I have a Prologue 16 so I'm good, but I can't understand why they discontinued it. There was a rumour about some problems with a new EU law regarding electricity and that it had a transformer for its power that was not approved, and maybe they didn't sell enough of it. However, it's ridiculous how bad it was marketed, sold as a polyphonic analogue synth, which is definitely not the full truth and made a lot if people ditch it as it wasn't considered to be up to par with other poly analogue synths on the market, while its real power is instead the unique hybrid thing, with the multi oscillator, making it a fabulous machine! Though I don't understand Korg at all these days, it's like there is no marketing dept. and they just churn out everything they can assembly with the technology they have, without having a clue about what they're doing strategy wise.

5 voices, 3 1/2 octaves, 1699€... In software this would be could crippleware, but this is way too expensive no matter what. Luckily Uli has already taken care of this for us.

This doesn't make sense, IIRC, 1 layer consumes 1 voice, which then add upp with what you say about a 32 layer cascade, this would then give you 4 voices in total, 128/32 = 4, right? If one layer consumed 4 voices and you create a 32 layer cascade, you would end up with exactly 1 voice, 4x32 = 128, right?

N-track it is...

Nothing surprises me with Korg these days, looking at the last 2 years of product chaos it seems they've fired the entire marketing dept. and left the keys in the hand of some rigid bean counters not understanding yota about anything...

As it is for now, if you grab a Suno subscription, everything you create is owned by you. I know that France has stipulated some funny law that AI generated stuff can't be used commercially, I'd love to see how they are keeping track of that.... I am very sure all this is going to pan out just fine in the end, when the worst fear expressed by conservative people in politics has faded away and they've understood that this is the new workflow tools, in all areas, there is no way to stop technical evolution with protectionistic laws, if there was, Meta would have been put out business a long time ago already...

I take it your B4D is no longer drawing any bars for you...

I added the laptop tray from K&M to my 18953 for my B4D.

More details here: https://www.gearnews.com/roland-fantom-ex-synths-new-flagships-with-jx-3p-expansion/

Seems to be exactly like that: "Released in November 2023, the $199 EX upgrade for Roland’s Fantom added a handy collection of sound expansions and workflow enhancements to the company’s flagship workstation synth, but was only available as an add-on for existing owners. That’s now changed, as it’s just been announced that new purchasers can now buy the full Fantom EX experience as a complete package."

There seem to be an 88 in the works: https://device.report/arturia/astrolab-88

That actually looks pretty decent, let's hope the quality of the moving parts are keeping up!

It seems like the big companies we already know and use are not really seeing any potential revenue on the iOS platform, and when they try, ime it is always mediocre at best. Being a Studio One user, I tried the tracking apps from Presonus, which both do the job okay of tracking, and then you save and import that into Studio One on your computer. However, they do not even offer MIDI sync or any other way of making the tracker software run together with anything else, which is a huge mystery to me. I've sent them an email about it, if they just add MIDI/MTC, their tracking apps could be very useful, not as a full workflow software, but as an audio multitracker in any other environment.

" The Fantom EX comes 61- 76- and 88-note versions, known as Fantom EX 6, 7 and 8 respectively. These are priced at $3,200, $3,700, $4,200. The smaller models have a semi-weighted keyboard, while the larger one has a hammer action. " https://www.musicradar.com/news/roland-fantom-ex-hardware

We are all (or most of us, depending on where we live) free to do what we want, I believe in a context where song writing is not just a passionate hobby, but the clock is ticking and the customer is expecting delivery, it will for sure be a really welcome workflow tool. Or when you need a bunch of songs quick for meeting up with a talent in a writing session and you're expected to have some great ideas with you already, used right this could definitely be a time saver.

If it does it's a fairly new addition, it definitely didn't do this before IIRC.

The most competent DAW in iOS I found in these regards, and in terms of sync options, is the N-Track, unfortunately I had problems with audio routing on it using interfaces with more than one stereo output pair, ie. making it NOT send out audio on all the output pairs/streams, and other things related to this. In general N-Track is a very competent iOS DAW imho, compared to most of the others available (not tried Logic as mentioned..), you can even set it up to slave under midi clock or MTC, very rare even on computer based platforms! Reason I was looking for this was when using a hardware sequencer, having audio just following while the sequencer is the master and where I control everything.

I've spent a lot of time testing iOS as a platform for running a DAW and unfortunately my final conclusion is that the platform is too unstable for this. Maybe Logic works better (released just after I gave up), but I have tried basically every iOS DAW out there, and they all are buggy or have weird behaviours with hardware integration, plugins crashing, MIDI lagging, etc. I ended up getting a Microsoft Surface Pro and Studio One instead, rock solid and working like a charm!

I've spent a fair amount of time with the Suno AI, totally amazed about what can be done with ML now, my thoughts; - It sucks on lyrics, so does ChatGPT, for obvious reasons, there will be no way to teach these pieces of code the emotional and intellectual experience of good pop lyrics, poetry, etc. as it only mimics based on references. - For now the sound quality is terrible, this will likely improve in short. - It amazes me with the geniality of creating melodies, very well balanced between verse, bridge, chorus etc. and more or less always really strong chorus parts. - The way it build up a song, is definitely competent, yes, most often kinda by the book, but this is what is expected in standard pop/rock etc. - It's impressive with how it build arrangements, and buildups of dynamics etc. and Yes, the sound quality sucks, but as a sketch pad, incredible! - Truly impressive with its cultural awareness, I have played around with Portugues Fado as reference genres, in different variations, and DANG, what comes out is definitely authentic. Conclusion: If I could be bothered writing pop/rock songs, I would definitely use it as a creative inspirational sketch pad, ditch the lyrics, maybe keep the concept ideas of the lyrics but have a human write new lyrics. Then I would simply recreate the song in its entirity in the DAW, as a starting point, and take it from there, and bring in a great real human vocalist for singing. Imagine in a year or three, when someone (FL Studio, Ableton?) uses this kind of generative AI as a guide when starting up the DAW, a new type of music creation workflow, asking questions like; What kind of music would you like to create today? Any specific instruments you want to use? How long should the song be? Is it going to be an instrumental piece or do you need lyrics? if so, do you already have some lyrics that can be used? if not, describe your idea for a story in short. Etc. And then you click "GO" and get the full song, as audio stems and MIDI tracks in the DAW, using virtual instruments, plugins, etc. instead of just generating a finished mix! Go figure.

I am sure the AI services machine learning on music is lots wider and versatile than my narrow listening habits. Set the AI to write ten songs, and me to do the same, then have a copyright team analyze all of it, I'm sure there would be more stuff in my songs busted than in the AIs...