Your favorite old digital tech.

[RABid]

Everyone loves old analog gear, but digital is quickly replaced with new units, faster processors, and more memory. What old digital gear has survived in your setup and what do you do with it?

 

Something I sat aside for 10 years and now have started using again is my old Line 6 M13. This is a matrix effects four units wide and three deep. You can use up to four effects at a time, and choose 12 different pedal effects to fill the 12 slots. Foot switches select which effect you want in each column, and the top of each colume has 6 knobs for editing the active effect for that column. That is where the magic begins in a DAWless or eurorack setup. Keep it on the desk and tweak all you wish. It also has a looper and tap tempo. Though it does not have the latest, greatest HX effects, but Line 6 has not released anything this tweakable since. With DAWless it is all about being able to grabs the knobs.

[KuruPrionz]

I miss my Deltalab Effectron digital delay unit. It was horrible but all knobs and it could do some freaky stuff. You could capture a segment and then turn the time knob and get crazy. Probably 8 bit or so, I have no idea. When you slowed things down they got grainey and hideous quickly, I loved that for some reason and still do. 

I was in a recording project called the Posers and it was our only effect unit. 4 track cassette, 6 channel Tapco mixer, 2 SM58s and a borrowed drum machine. 

Here's one, probably mid 80's. This is the story of a man who skins himself alive. 

 

https://metapop.com/opossum-apocalypse/tracks/hula-boy/171612

[Anderton]

To me it's all still valid. The Korg M3 remains my main keyboard, and I also use the Casio XW-P1. As to effects, having plug-ins does the job for me. With a multipoint touchscreen, sometimes I expand an effect's window and edit it that way. Being able to use a computer without needing a control surfacek, and doing things like adjust delay feedback and mix simultaneously, is pretty cool. No contact cleaner needed, either  

[Dave Bryce]

1 hour ago, KuruPrionz said:

I miss my Deltalab Effectron digital delay unit

You and me both.  Loved my Effectron 1024.

 

Oldest piece of "digital" gear still in my studio?  Probably D50 and M1R.  What do I do wjth them?  Not much.

 

dB

 

 

[KuruPrionz]

33 minutes ago, Dave Bryce said:

You and me both.  Loved my Effectron 1024.

 

Oldest piece of "digital" gear still in my studio?  Probably D50 and M1R.  What do I do wjth them?  Not much.

 

dB

 

 

I should probably hunt down another one but I fear that now I won't love it like I did then. 

Probably no way in Hell to get one fixed if it dies either.  "Uhh, we haven't had parts for that since 1987..."

[David Emm]

For several years, I got incredible mileage out of a Boss DSD-2 sampling/delay. It was a great companion piece for any tape deck that came within reach. Most of us probably cut our earliest effect-teeth on a guitar pedal. The Boss line treated me well and set me up to properly wrestle Logic's effects chains today. I had a parade of others, including a few Ibanez pics, but its hard to match that early fun of timing it all by hand.

 

I also naively bought a powered Boss mixer with a noise floor so high it tickled my nose. It weighed like a Mellotron and put out Pop-Tart-melting heat. Best use: spare anchor for the boat in "Cape Fear."

[KenElevenShadows]

This is a fun list!

 

TC Electronic M300 hardware reverb unit: Works great, just never bothered getting anything else. 

RME Fireface UFX: I dunno, this thing just works great and is rock solid. Never has issues syncing unlike other audio interfaces I've used.

Mac Pro 1,1 tower computer: Made in 2006, this just keeps going and going. Completely stock except for replacing the main hard drive with an SSD and stuffing it with more RAM. There's a very good chance this makes it to 20 years. Why? It save me money, it's convenient (all the hard drives are inside already....I don't need to do anything), works great, gets more tracks than I know what to do with, and....well, it doesn't sound any better if I upgrade to my other computer, so I just keep this going and going. I love this thing. I sometimes can be the very customer that computer manufacturers don't want to have. That said, I do have more modern computers for other things. But this just keeps going....and going....and going. I'll eventually replace this with a Mac Mini or some such thing and stop being Rip Van Winkle.

[NewImprov]

I built a rack of stuff in my studio I called RAIDAR, for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Delays And Reverbs, I basically racked up an old ADA rackmount 2 sec digital delay, an Ibanez rack delay/pitch shifter, and Lexicon LXP 1 and 5, Lexicon Vortex and MXP 100, with a patchbay. It was all stuff that was sitting in my garage unused. Got some really cool recycling feedback patches by interpatching between devices. It was loads of fun, but I ended up unracking most of it because I needed the rack space for more practical stuff.

[The Real MC]

Lexicon Model 200.

[Anderton]

8 hours ago, Dave Bryce said:

You and me both.  Loved my Effectron 1024.

 

I have a Compueffectron. Yes, I really do. It still works, and still has what is perhaps the most user-hostile interface on the planet. It always seemed liks a solution in search of a problem, but I gotta admit, it has a pretty cool sound quality.

[Notes_Norton]

Yamaha TX81z. FM synthesis. Most of the patches are dated, but there are some that FM just does better than other methods.

 

Yamaha WX series wind MIDI controllers. When they quit making them, I bought spares and plenty of spare parts like reeds, mouthpieces and octave keys, the parts most likely to break. I still gig with them.

 

Notes ♫

[Anderton]

TX81z and TX802 - I'm with you. It's too bad FM became a "fad," pulling those out now sounds fresh because of how they've kind of fallen by the wayside.

[analogika]

Dynacord DRS-78. Love it. 

 

I almost got an Effectron 1024 on the cheap some years ago, but sadly missed it. 

[ElmerJFudd]

Yamaha EX5 / EX5r 

AWM2 (Advanced Wave Memory) Synthesis, AN (Analog Physical Modeling) Synthesis, FDSP (Formulated Digital Sound Processing) Synthesis and Virtual Acoustic (VL) Synthesis - all under the same hood - no plug-in cards necessary.  If it had the processing power we have today it could also have run FM and CS engines making it the closest thing to a Kronos Yamaha has ever made.  IMHO (of course it was out the same time as the SY99 and probably didn’t want to cannibalize and AN and CS have things in common). 

 

I had hoped that this would be something Yamaha would put out at their 40th anniversary.  Not that the Montage isn’t the best FM synth Yamaha has ever released - but it could have been an historic conglomerate of Yamaha digital synthesis.  

 

[Notes_Norton]

MIDI. It's old and still works fine.

[ElmerJFudd]

Alesis microverb, midiverb, quadraverb rack units.  Inexpensive fx units with over-the-top reverb fx.  I also have a few Lexicon units and a Boss SE-70.   Still useful stuff for live if you’re using an older analog mixer that doesn’t already include digital FX.  

[Anderton]

Gotta mention the Korg M3, it was such a strong combination of functionalities for its time, and it still sounds good. Reliability issues aside (ahem), which required replacing the touchscreen, it's still my go-to keyboard.

 

And while we're on the subject of things with the number 3, the Kawai K3m has some truly gorgeous and evocative sounds. It was all over my 1989 Forward Motion album, nothing sounded (or sounds) like it. I think I want to sample all the basic sounds, just in case.

 

[Notes_Norton]

Master Tracks Pro MIDI sequencer. It does just about anything I need for MIDI sequencing, and every dialog box is only one menu click away. Since it doesn't share audio like a DAW, the menus are small, all appropriate to what I'm doing, and there are no menus and sub menus to waste my time. Since I do my own backing tracks, a one-second delay on a function I may need to do hundreds of times adds up. And since I've done over 600 backing tracks from scratch, every instrument from the drums to the bass to the comp (not the leads, they are too much fun live) it's probably saved me months of time.

[Greg Mein]

I sometimes wish I'd kept the Digitech RP2000, it just seemed to have sounds and effects that I found inspiring.

 

I'm clinging to an old (I think 2012) MBP, the last year of the 17" screen. For a long while I thought I'd still use it for recording music but I'm beginning to believe that may just complicate my whole process considering I have faster and newer computers. Currently I'm thinking it may be a good machine for working on graphics and video, I still have some good animation, video and image editing programs on it. It's got things my newer MBPs don't have like an optical burner, USB and firewire so it could still be very useful.

[RABid]

On 4/14/2022 at 2:37 PM, Anderton said:

Gotta mention the Korg M3

I had the M3M and wow, that touch screen was a lot of fun as an expression input as was the screen on the VSynth XT. Strange, I had the two at the same time and they had very different takes on what the touch screen as input device should be.

[Notes_Norton]

Yamaha VL70m synth module.

 

The physical modeling synthesis is the most naturally expressive synthesis method I've ever used with my wind controller.

 

It doesn't have the best tone, but it more than makes up for that in the ability to be expressive. When playing my wind controller, it's the only synth that makes me feel like I'm playing an instrument instead of controlling a synthesizer. I can change the tone with reed pressure and breath force, I can do lip slurs on the brass patches, I can add flutter tongue and throat growl on the wind patches, when I slur two notes it sounds like a slur instead of switching from one note to another, and so on.

 

Sadly, Yamaha discontinued it, and abandoned physical modeling. Others have dabbled in PM, but so far, nobody I know of has come close to the old Yamaha PM synths.

 

Notes ♫

[Anderton]

2 hours ago, Notes_Norton said:

When playing my wind controller, it's the only synth that makes me feel like I'm playing an instrument instead of controlling a synthesizer

 

In the movie Apocalypse now, a lot of the cello parts were played with a wind controller, because of the expressive. It was used for other non-wind-instrument parts as well, IIRC.

 

Fortunately, physical modeling is still alive and well - for example, the Pianoteq virtual instruments, and AAS's cool instruments, like Chromaphone and Strum.  

[Notes_Norton]

7 hours ago, Anderton said:

 

In the movie Apocalypse now, a lot of the cello parts were played with a wind controller, because of the expressive. It was used for other non-wind-instrument parts as well, IIRC.

 

Fortunately, physical modeling is still alive and well - for example, the Pianoteq virtual instruments, and AAS's cool instruments, like Chromaphone and Strum.  

Are any of those available as hardware synths? It doesn't appear so from their websites.

 

On stage, I prefer hardware synths. They have only one function and never-ever crash.

 

Notes ♫

[JohnG11]

On 4/13/2022 at 2:10 PM, Notes_Norton said:

MIDI. It's old and still works fine.

As a moderator of the MMA forum I just had to upvote this one.

[RABid]

Speaking of MIDI and old digital equipment, I have never found a sutable replacement for the MOTU MTP AV. It had such a nice, quick interface for pulling the unit up on screen, dragging and dropping to link MIDI channels. The ability to set 1 and 2 as MIDI controllers, and all channels at destinations, then from your controller all you had to do to change devices is change the MIDI output channel. I have not found anything modern that does it so well.

[Anderton]

On 4/13/2022 at 8:10 AM, Notes_Norton said:

MIDI. It's old and still works fine.

And don't forget, MIDI 2.0 will still be able to talk to it.

[Notes_Norton]

5 hours ago, Anderton said:

And don't forget, MIDI 2.0 will still be able to talk to it.

As long as they never give up the 5 pin DIN connector, I'm happy.

 

USB is cool, and a nice addition, but a lot of my old tech has the 3 pin DIN connector. And some of that old tech does what it does better than newer products.

 

So far, as I understand it 5 pin DIN is still in.

 

Notes ♫

[Anderton]

5-pin DIN will still work, you don't have to worry about that. It will still be a slow serial port, though, at least for now.

[JohnG11]

But, as I understand the specification, it's not possible to send MIDI 2.0 messages across the DIN interface. Or am I wrong?

My AN1x will never be able to respond to a Capability Inquiry message; it doesn't have a USB interface.

So it's NOT backward compatible. As far as I can see. But I'm eager to be corrected. ;-)

 

5-pin DIN is capable of sending around a thousand three byte messages a second. (31,250 / 10 / 3)

I know I can't play and operate controls that quickly. So actually quite fast ... for playing music.

Extremely slow for audio or video, ii's true.

 

Forgive me Craig, (I really don't mean to be rude), but there's a lot of hype around MIDI 2 (IMHO) and zero product. (No response from Roland yet I take it?)

My issue is that there are already aspects of MIDI 1 that manufacturers don't implement properly, or not at all.

e.g. Why do so few manufacturers implement all fourteen bits of pitch bend? Some well known ones not even 7 bits in their top end products.

How many polyphonic aftertouch keyboards are available?

 

Where is the MIDI 2.0 file specification?

 

Sorry to be so negative, but I'm rather disappointed.

JohnG.

[Anderton]

As I understand it, MIDI 2.0 sends a data packet that can be understood by both MIDI 1.0 and 2.0 devices. If the MIDI 1.0 device can't identify itself as a MIDI 2.0 device to a Capability Inquiry, then the MIDI 2.0 device speaks to it using the MIDI 1.0 language. The MIDI 2.0 specification is available here for download. 

 

As far as zero product, that will take a while. It's not just about the pandemic and no trade shows, but also "gating elements." For example, Apple only recently added native MIDI 2.0 drivers to their OS. I don't think Microsoft has yet. So, there's not much incentive to show products that won't run on current platforms   Also, development tools that will expedite the design process are just starting to hit the world.

 

Remember that the MIDI 2.0 spec is very much about being ready for the future. Look how long it took for MPE or USB transports to become part of MIDI 1.0. This is why it was so important to allow people to use existing MIDI 1.0 gear as the spec and products evolve. Besides, not all MIDI gear needs all of MIDI 2.0's capabilities. There's nothing "wrong" with MIDI 1.0, obviously it's worked well for decades...so there's no need to just throw it out, and for companies to say "okay, everyone has to get MIDI 2.0 gear now." 

 

The hype about the protocol itself is justified. It's a very well-thought-out spec, and there's a huge amount of potential in there. It's designed to (hopefully) be relevant for decades, just like MIDI 1.0. There are products in development (I suspect there will be some prototypes shown at NAMM), and my understanding is that some current products have MIDI 2.0 capabilities, but they're "hidden" until something can actually be done with them. Some MIDI 1.0 products can also be retrofitted for some MIDI 2.0 features, but no promises have been made yet. That will be up to individual manufacturers.

 

The bottom line is keep using your MIDI 1.0 gear. When something MIDI 2.0 comes out that's so compelling you want to add it to your studio, go for it! It might be end of this year, it might be 2030. But you'll be able to keep making music with MIDI 1.0 gear until then, and after then as well.