The Hardware Megathread

The Studio
4939

Yeah, it looks like the digitakt has a lot of processing power built in, but we think it’s probably best to get a handle on the gear we’ve just bought, rather than straight away adding another piece of gear. We eventually went with an electro harmonix platform compressor and a mooer digital delay and reverb. They all had the functionality we’d want from effects of that type, and even if we get a digitakt later down the line, they’ll still be useful

Oh, we picked up a second hand zoom ms50-g too and it took less than 15 minutes to come up with a patch that made the drumbrite’s kick sound exponentially better

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4940

Yea. that is true. I’ll have to play with the both some more. I never had low end problem with U-he. It was actually the Behringer Pro-1 Res that seemed to suck up the low end, but it might have been other factors in the patch or my just miss hearing it. I may also need to update the firmware on the Pro-1 as they made a lot of changes that I’ve read most people found favorable in regards to its sound.

4941

Arturia’s folder in C:/ProgramData takes up 21GB o.O

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4942

Is their vintage synth collection sample based?

4943

Not that I can see, but I did find 64-bit VST2 and VST3 files in there. Good lord, they install the VSTs all over the damned drive o.O

That said I am leaving it alone and assuming they know what they are doing

Also, they do have virtual samplers with decent-sized libraries, too.

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4944

Yeah, I’m bummed that I can’t choose where their software installs, their software command center just puts stuff in the “normal” VST folders. On my C drive. Which is a 5-year old SSD with 128 gigs of space before 5 years of windows progress. Not a lot of space left.

Planning on a new music laptop towards the middle of the year if all goes well, and looking forward to just tossing 2 TB of SSD into whatever I buy and not worrying about storage for a few years at least.

4945

I wish I had gotten a 2TB NVME when I got my 1TB. My computer only has one slot for that, and while I have plenty of space left, games are getting just so damned big o.O Conan Exiles takes up 106GB atm (game+mods) and Microsoft Flight Simulator is something like 150-200GB or so atm). Either way I also have a 1TB SATA SSD and two 500GB+ SSDs so I’m not hurting for space really (and Windows sees my pCloud as another 2TB drive through some sort of network drive magic; Dropbox and Apple’s iCloud should make note…) Games are spread across most of the SSDs and I save the ones that would benefit the most from super-fast NVME for that drive (load times on Conan went from 15 minutes to under 2.5 on mod-heavy servers XD)

Unrelated, I was told the Nektar Pacer I ordered nearly a month ago would be in stock on the 26th but here we are on the 28th and I’m left wondering if other orders were filled ahead of mine, but calling to find out more won’t really accomplish anything; it’ll ship when it ships and while other places do have them in stock, they aren’t 20% off… so I just have to continue waiting :unamused:

4946

I’m hoping to go through the audio this weekend. Hopefully :eyes: And maybe record another few hours or even another precinct/area all together. The other night there was a manhunt in some woods, but the battery on my radio died :unamused: (I need to remember to keep that voice recording though lol. It’d be good for some dystopian techno :smile: )

The radios are only something like $25 (some Baofeng model) with another $15-20 on an antenna upgrade. I could get many radios and load up my 18i20’s inputs with different areas, but that’s the FOMO paranoid lunatic in me talking (or the efficient one…)

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4947

@White_Noise @Koldunya

A neat trick for those huge installs is to use a junction - basically an internal pointer to the directory somewhere else. The programs don’t know the difference.

Basically you just let it install wherever, copy the big ass directory to where you want it, open a command prompt and type mklink /J old_dir_path place_you_copied_to

So like if you want your VST folder on D:, you’d copy it to D:\VST, delete the old one and do mklink /J “c:\VST” “d:\VST” and it’d make a link to the d:\VST folder in the old spot, which you can see in file explorer (obviously replace c:\VST with wherever your actual VST folder was, Program Files or whatever).

The really cool thing is that any new stuff that gets installed to the junction location (like if a new program installs to c:\VST), it uses that link and everything ends up in D:\VST. It’s a little bit of work to set up, but it’s a great way to clean up your C drive and offload those huge sample folders. I’ve got all my audio stuff going to D and work stuff going to E and have a nice, clean C drive with a ton of room using that method.

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4948

I think I understood all that. Thanks!

Ofc I get the shipping email after fussing. I’m telling you, this is my superpower :joy:

4949

The red wavetable 1010 thing seems cool, I’m never able to get usable synths out of granular synthesis so I’ll just meh.

Edit: the fireball is exactly what I was after in the right form factor.

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4950

:open_mouth:

it’s a Blofeld’s Mini Me and then some. SKULPT is probably on borrowed time…

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4951

They are super tiny! Which has me skeptical about how I would personally get on with one. With the modulation sequencer you can probably get some nice movement going w/o having to play with knobs in real time.

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4952

Finally found the number of voices for the Fireball; 8. Which is fine, I just hope that doesn’t die off with certain effects ala Blofeld. It doesn’t say “up to 8 voices” like the Blofeld says “up to 25 voices” which seems to imply it won’t.

Edit A little disappointed that the Lemondrop is 4 voices. That’s annoying, but I don’t really see myself using such a synth “live” anyway. It’s pretty annoying in this age of pretty cheap DSP so many fully digital synths are limited to 4 voices tbh. Such a popular number, too, because trololol chords.

Yes. One chord. One f’ing chord on a poly synth you sanctimonious explanation assholes XD (not 1010 personally, I’ve just seen that thrown around a lot by people defending 4 voice synths of all types; I’m also just being cheeky)

4953

On voice counts, I think 4 is too few myself, because for house 4 is pretty much the base case for notes in a chord and I often go up from there. And ideally I want double to not mess with any release stages. That said, with FX afterward, and a short enough release, the number of times where voice stealing on lower-poly instruments is an issue for me is approximately zero (I’m referencing the Super6 here, so 6 voices and not 4). So I can confidently say 6 seems to be enough for me. I have a 16 voice Rev2 and I actively have to try in order to use 16 voices, even with a bitambral stack - and splits forget it, one side of the KB is almost always a mono bass or lead, so I have 7 voices just sitting there.

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4954

That’s my thing. Like, when I’m in Ambient Mode :tm: do not fuck with my release stage :tipping_hand_woman:t2: :joy: though it can be worked around a bit, of course. I mean I use monosynths all the time, and just… play less notes, I guess (which isn’t a bad thing) or just accept it. Or wait to trigger the next.

I have access to an Elektron Analog Keys atm from a friend’s collection, and it’s a lot of fun with “only” 4 voices, tbh. Sometimes I feel myself internally saying “But Sequential will give me 5 or 10, and Arturia 6…”

And since I mostly do 3 note chords, I think the PolyBrute and its 6 would be just about good for me, which probably means 8 notes would be very solid. I haven’t noticed too much of a problem on the SKULPT, either, at 4; a lot of it feels almost like it’s a mental block or reaction, FOMO, or just wanting “more.” 6 notes works out pretty well on an Alpha Juno, too…

Or I could just sample chords a lot more and solve it that way. There’s definitely that vibe of re-pitching sampled chords.

I guess I’m more accepting of voice limitations on analog instruments than newer digital is the big takeaway. I remember the old Nords had 4 voices, too, in the early days of VA hardware, and you could buy voice boards to expand it to 12 or something. I think several VAs did this, too? I know the MS-2000 and its MicroKorg Mini Me have 4 voices. But it’s 2022 and powerful DSP hasn’t been super expensive for a really long time by now. I’m not saying everything needs to have 64 or 128 voices like a ROMpler. Even a K5000 from 1996 has up to 32 voices with its additive engine. A DX7 from 1983 has 16. There are other early VAs with 8 or more voices, like the Red Sound Darkstar line. Even an OP-1 from 2011 with a low-power DSP to get more battery life is still 6 voices. So this near-obsession with limiting digital synths to 4 voices is just mind-boggling to me o.O In 1010’s case it’s probably just cheaper to manufacture both Fireball and Lemondrop with identical hardware and that’s just that; the best it could do with the granular engine taking more DSP power. Maybe they’ll add a polychain feature in the future.

I typed up a lot more than I thought. I slept a lot today, so I’m a little more wired/wound up than I should be at this time of night :eyes:

A Model: Cycles ‘Chord Machine’ is also 4 voices, but there’s no envelope really, just the LFO. I haven’t actually tried using the Chord Machine on all 6 tracks; maybe that could be a homework assignment XD Digitone is 8 voices. The Blofeld is how old with “up to 25” depending on DSP use? A Virus B from 1999 is 24 voices. To be fair, modern VAs blow away older ones on “waveform purity” or whatever as seen on oscilloscopes so they take more powerful DSPs or more resources from a given DSP. But there’s also been 20 years of technological advancement. Is it that slow in the DSP world?

I know these are only $400. With only two knobs, a small touch screen, and a handful of outputs on the physical side. Am I just being too critical here?

Edit Also, 1010 needs to make a purple one :eyes: Just call it Grape; I’ll allow it. Or Purple Drank lol…

4955

More than 1 note polyphony is an overkill for my fingers.

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4956

I don’t care what the Purple Drank does. I’ve already bought it in my mind lol

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4957

Same! Haha.

4958

My Nektar Pacer is basically in my city and Fedex UPS is still saying a Tuesday delivery. Tracking numbers are the devil for the impatient person still in me :eyes:

lol yes :smile:

I know 8 chords now XD The C family (they all use the same fingering on the white keys :eyes: )

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