Suck factor is high...

[Dave Bryce]

Well, we already have a thread about people's favorite synths...how about a little equal time for the other side of the coin?

 

What is your all-time most un-favorite synth, and why?

 

For me, it's probably the Korg Poly-800. Cheesy construction, cryptic interface, thin sound...plus, the thing only had one filter. Period. Consequently, if you held down a chord and then repeatedly played a bass note, the filter would retrigger over the chord as well. Ugh.

 

Although, it did come with strap-locks on it so you could wear it around your neck... http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/rolleyes.gif

 

Anybody else wanna pick on a poor unsuspecting synth?

 

dB

[synthetic]

Hey, the Poly 800 was my first synth. I didn't know any better. I think I even have a picture of myself wearing it on a strap! But you're right, it was a wheezy sounding wet noodle of a synth.

 

I apologise to almost everyone on this board, but my list has to start and end with the Nanobass. I just never dug Alesis bass sounds, they're too midrangey, complex, and not very playable. I prefer the present yet icy sound of a Roland (i.e. JV80) or the warm yet mushy sound of a Korg (i.e. Wavestation) better.

 

This thread could get ugly in a hurry. -jl

[Dave Bryce]

Originally posted by synthetic:

 

This thread could get ugly in a hurry.

 

Only if we're really lucky... http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

 

dB

[Oli P]

Think it was called Bit99

[Max Ventura]

Synthetic,

I own a NanoBass and I honestly think it's the best source of basses I have found so far. Mind you, I don't use synth-bass sounds, only those derivated from electric basses. I have had producers asking quite a few times where I'd found those bass sounds, and had them note down the name of the module.

As far as "worst synth", i'd pick any menu-only machine ever built. I just hate when synths don't have realtime controls. I couldn't care less about the quality of the sound if I have no direct connection with it with my hands.

Max

Italy

[Pim]

I fully agree with Dave. The Poly800 is the worst synth by far.

No matter what you do, it always sounds like a cheap organ.

 

Second worst to me is the DX7. Thanks to the DX7 millions of musicians think a Rhodes has a kind of bell as attack.

The DX7 was the start of emulating natural sounds.

To me a synth has to sound like a box of wires an resistences. The DX7 does not.

 

Third: The Yamaha TX16W.

I know how to handle it... Thanks to it I am in good shape to handle my mother in law.

She can't be worse than a TX16W.

http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/wink.gif

 

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www.dancewave.nl

[Synthworld]

This is easy -

The Oberheim OB-Mx.

The thing had zippering out the wazoo and just plain sounded un-musical.

There is a vast difference between an electronic musical instrument and a box of electronics that makes sounds.

It has to sing. It has to have a voice that you WANT to hear sing.

I remember seeing a couple of people checking out an OB-Mx at a store one day and one guy asked the other guy what he thought about it.

He said, "Maybe its broken or something."

That summed it up pretty well.

 

Zon

[Dave Bryce]

Originally posted by Oli P:

Think it was called Bit99

 

I remember that - 6 voice DCO unit circa 1985, if I recall correctly...by Siel, yes? I don't really have a recollection of what it sounded like, but it was kinda cool looking, if I remember correctly...

 

dB

[Dave Bryce]

Originally posted by pim@dancewave.nl:

I know how to handle it... Thanks to it I am in good shape to handle my mother in law.

She can't be worse than a TX16W.

http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/wink.gif

 

 

You're not gonna sit there and try to tell me that the TX16W was worse to handle than that horrid abomination known as the Roland S-550, are you? http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/eek.gif

 

I'm still a little wary of all samplers from owning one of those...

 

dB

[Dave Bryce]

Originally posted by argomax:

Synthetic,

I own a NanoBass and I honestly think it's the best source of basses I have found so far.

 

I actually use mine a bunch as well - it's the only one of the three Nano modules that I even have powered up...I'm especially fond of the stereo chorused fretless...it's got a bunch of the samples that we got from Emerson's modular Moog in it, too - they're some fun.

 

I kinda think the NanoBass got a raw deal being in a 1/3 space module. Should've been a full rack with some editing features...oh well, we tried...

 

Alesis blew them out pretty cheap over the summer...if you can find one, it might be worth taking a listen to it...one thing's for sure - with 64 voices, you're pretty much guaranteed not to run out of polyphony! http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

 

dB

[Jim Aikin]

My nominee would be the long-forgotten Roland W-30. I never worked with one, but I have fond memories of it from when Marans did the Keyboard Report. It was a true pig.

 

The Prophet-VS pioneered some cool technology, but when I bought one I took it home, played it for an hour, and then took it back. The aliasing in the upper part of the keyboard was gross.

 

The Memorymoog sounded great -- it was one of the first synths to include programmable overdrive in the filter/mixer section -- but it was sort of legendary for its oscillator boards blowing up.

 

--JA

[Pim]

Originally posted by Dave Bryce:

I remember that - 6 voice DCO unit circa 1985, if I recall correctly...by Siel, yes?

 

It was by Crumar. You could modulate the PW by almost anything, except by an LFO...

De detuning of the osc's could not be saved.

 

The TX16W had two memory banks; one for samples and one for editing. You had to transfer the sample from the sample buffer to the edit buffer for every adjustment you wanted to make. This transfer had the speed of a snail in its reverse...

 

However both the TX16W and the Bit One didn't sound too bad...

 

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www.dancewave.nl

[Pim]

Originally posted by Jim Aikin:

The Prophet-VS pioneered some cool technology, but when I bought one I took it home, played it for an hour, and then took it back. The aliasing in the upper part of the keyboard was gross.

 

And now you have so much regret... http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/wink.gif

A synth which has some dated sonic disadvantages is always well sought in the future. Buy an OBMx today; make a lot of money with in the future.

 

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www.dancewave.nl

[dansouth]

The original nordlead. I liked the interface - aside from the fact that you can't name programs - but the sound is less than inspiring. But that's not the worst thing. Every time I played the nord for longer than about two minutes, I had a nasty ringing in my ears. There must be some sort of inaudible but sinister stuff going on at the D/A stage.

[dansouth]

Ooh! I actually thought of one that was worse than the nord: the Marion MSR-2. The sound didn't work on anything, and there was a lot of latency between note on and audible output. I even sent it back for a mod that was supposed to fix the problem. No luck. I'd give the thing away, but the recipient would hate me forever.

[Erik Norlander]

I can't answer this question.

 

If I cited the Korg M1, I would surely offend several of my friends in the industry. So I won't.

 

Just for the record, I didn't actually say anything here about the M1. Really. No, really.

 

Cheers,

 

Erik

 

PS - Korg made and makes some great synths. The MS-10 and MS-20, The PS-3200, the original CX-3 and BX-3, the Triton and Trinity ... the list goes on. I'm anxious to hear the *new* CX-3 (although I wish they had used a different name -- geez, guys). Please note that I didn't actually say anything negative about the M1 above.

[Pim]

Originally posted by dansouth@yahoo.com:

Ooh! I actually thought of one that was worse than the nord: the Marion MSR-2.

 

Try to modulate the filter with more than one source: dithering all over...

Turn the vca attack to zero; it still sounds as if it was on 0.4 seconds...

 

 

 

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www.dancewave.nl

[marino]

Fun, this one.

 

Hey, the Bit99 didn't sound SO horrible. It was a little nice analog synth, much better than a Poly-800 for sure. And the Yamaha TX16W was MUCH worse than the S-550 to program. I still have one of my S-550s.

 

My gallery of horrors:

 

Mirage. Need to say more?

Roland W-30: the worst collection of presets and onboard samples found in any machine to my memory.

Akai AX-60 (not 100% sure about the name), sounded like the sick grandson of a drunken calliope organ.....

 

Then a couple of ones I guess most of you don't know:

The Davolisint and the FBT Synter 2000. They were Italian synthesizers of the early '70. The Davolisint had a single oscillator (!) and, in a later version, a suboscillator that seemed to thin the sound even more instead of making it bigger. It was awful!

The FBT was a little better (two oscs) but you had to tune it every 5 minutes.... etc..

 

The ones that were actually good, but a nightmare to program:

The DX7 wins hands down this one, IMO. Well, maybe a tie with the Mirage (which ALSO sounded horrible, however).

The Rhodes Chroma was a masterpiece of a synth, but you couldn't program it without referring continuously to a large sheet of paper with the list of parameters. Aaaarghh. It was very buggy too. But not as much as...

The PPG. My Wave 2.2 did the strangest things you can imagine, like switching programs or waves, playing random notes, speeding up the sequencer or shut down completely; usually every bug showed just once and never repeated. I sold it.

 

Oh, and did you ever try to program a Wavestation SR, or to tune a Wurlitzer electric piano? (adding pieces of solder to tiny metal bars...)

 

BTW I'll give the crown of Most Horrible Electronic Sound to any GEM organ of the '70s. "Cheesy" doesn't start to describe it; a Farfisa, in comparison, had a noble and full sound. I actually played a few ELP pieces on one of those 25 years ago, and I'm still trying to convince myself that I didn't do that, really.

 

marino

[Jim Aikin]

Originally posted by marino:

Oh, and did you ever try to program a Wavestation SR...

 

I own one, but because I bought it direct at the very end of its production cycle, I didn't get a manual. I have ***never*** been able to figure out how to edit the effects section. Dan, are you lurking here? Jack? Give me a tip!

 

Another nominee in the Worstest category (the Brown Ribbon): the Peavey DPM 3. Craig Anderton liked it, and I'm sure it had some good features, though by now I can't remember what they were.

 

I could pick on a couple of design details, such as the fact that they stole the "pole" waveform from the M1, and managed to add some distortion in the process. But it really deserves a Brown Ribbon because of the breathless hype about how this synth was never going to become obsolete. Remember? The general-purpose processors inside, we were repeatedly assured, could do any type of synthesis. By that measure, the DPM 3 fell further short of its design goals than any other instrument in history.

 

Peavey deserves credit for creating the PC 1600 slider box, a still unsurpassed MIDI utility. But the DPM 3 was not their finest hour.

 

--Jim A.

[marino]

Jim, although I never program the Wavestation SR because I own an A/D too, I'm pretty sure that the effects editing works like this:

Start from the PERF level

Press EDIT

Press PAGE+ until you see FX SELECT

Press EDIT again

From here, with the PAGE+ and PAGE- buttons, plus cursoring left and right with the little diamond, you should be able to reach every effect parameter, routings etc.

Hope it makes sense; please forgive me if you already knew all this stuff.

It is really tedious, but it is worth it IMO; I just love the Wavestation sound. It is still my main solo voice live.

 

marino

[Oli P]

Originally posted by Dave Bryce:

I remember that - 6 voice DCO unit circa 1985, if I recall correctly...by Siel, yes? I don't really have a recollection of what it sounded like, but it was kinda cool looking, if I remember correctly...

 

dB

 

Well....I thought it sounded like crap...especially since it looked so cool http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/smile.gif

 

I think it was by Siel ...not Crumar.

[Dave Bryce]

Originally posted by marino:

Akai AX-60 (not 100% sure about the name), sounded like the sick grandson of a drunken calliope organ.....

 

Wow - great description!

 

Akai made two synths right about the same time (mid 1980s) - the AX-60, which kinda looked like a Juno-106, and the AX-80, which was a 2 osc per voice 8-voice that looked like it was made by another company entirely...it had a really cool LED ladder interface for all of the parameters...very spacey looking synth.

 

I liked the 80, didn't dig the 60 - like Marino said, really thin sounding.

 

dB

[Dave Bryce]

Originally posted by Oli P:

Well....I thought it sounded like crap...especially since it looked so cool http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/smile.gif

 

I think it was by Siel ...not Crumar.

 

 

The Bit 01 rack mount and the Bit One keyboard were both made by Crumar. For some strange reason that I can't explain, I seem to remember that Siel marketed the Bit 99, even though it was a Crumar piece...maybe they went out of business and sold the piece before it's release a la ARP and the "Fender" Chroma.

 

Anyone know for sure?

 

dB

[Erik Norlander]

Here's a good idea gone bad: the Roland Juno-60.

 

The Juno-60 was a *great* synth. Who would have thought that you could such such fat and warm sounds from a single oscillator? Great filters, great chorus, great envelopes.

 

Then came the Juno-106. Bad. Thinner, less dimensional, cold.

 

Then came the Alpha Juno series. Worse.

 

And the MKS-50. Eek.

 

The Juno-60 along with its microprocessor-challenged sibling Juno-6 are classic synths. The rest are ... well ... crap.

 

Cheers,

 

Erik

[Peake]

I certainly agree: the Peavey DPM3 was pretty darn bad. It's filter was thin-sounding, it had zippering in the audio, the envelopes had strong variation between minimum time and the next available stage, it had samples of waveforms from other sampling synths (!) and it sounded bad all the way around. Come to think of it, the Ensoniq EPS rack I once had suffered from noticable aliasing in the audio. It also had weak filters and sluggish envelopes. The JD800 made me sad as well. It's envelopes were nowhere near logarithmic (the ear prefers log shapes) and the filters were strange-sounding. I dislike any synth with an all-Curtis chip signal path. (A couple of synths that use either just the Curtis oscillator(s) or filter can be okay, such as the Chroma or digital synths with the Curtis filters, like the Emulator 3.) And man, Roland had a lot of mistakes IMO: the TR909 (especially since the TR808 is so good!), the entire Juno line, the TB303... Comparing any of them with their own System 700 or Jupiter 8 is quite amusing.

 

All that aside, the Poly 800 stands out as the worst of the bunch. What a departure from the company that had (then) recently given us the PS3300... The Poly 61 didn't help much either!

[Marzzz]

Yamaha DX-7

 

The DX-7 Rhodes and all those "smooth jazz" (aka lobotomy jazz) stations must die.....

[Max Ventura]

Dave,

Crumar and Siel were both in the area where I reside, near Ancona on the east coast of Italy (look at a map). A lot of companies there do favors to each other, such as QuickLok and Fatar marketing each other, and generally they're friends. All Crucianelli people (an accordion factory that created the brand Crumar) and the Siel people went on to work for Gem (Generalmusic), which is also around the corner. The Bit 01 and 99 were anyway Crumar products. Today Those engineers who are not working at Gen,eralmusic make the keys for all Roland and Yamaha and Korg machines, and manufacture some of them here altogether.

Max

[Dave Bryce]

Thanks for the clarification, Max.

 

dB

[The Soundsmith]

I have to agree about the Korg M1. Listen to any of the orchestra samples, they sound like cardboard.

 

The REALLY scary part was, if you played it for about an hour, it started sounding not so bad - another hour it was almost acceptable! http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/confused.gif

 

And this was one of the top-selling synths of all time http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/rolleyes.gif

 

------------------

The Soundsmith

[dansouth]

Originally posted by The Soundsmith:

I have to agree about the Korg M1. Listen to any of the orchestra samples, they sound like cardboard.

 

The REALLY scary part was, if you played it for about an hour, it started sounding not so bad - another hour it was almost acceptable! http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/confused.gif

 

And this was one of the top-selling synths of all time http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/rolleyes.gif

 

Sounds that suck on their own sometimes work beautifully in a mix. The converse can also be true. The M1 was the first to offer the kind of effects and multi-timbral operation that we've come to expect. Compared to a D-50 or a DX7, the M1 was miraculous.

 

The Minimoog and Prophet V didn't have much in the way of orchestral sounds, but they are highly regarded as synthesizers. http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/rolleyes.gif