The Hardware Megathread

#6340

I wanted this as a start point when un inspired and a source for finger drumming exercises

#6341

First video I’ve seen since Dave passed. Actually bummed me out a little. But I’m glad they finished off his final project.

#6342

Might have to pick that up. Beats Dissected at Attack Magazine might be useful to you as well.

#6343

Scott Hansen (Tycho) did the front panel design in conjunction w Sequential.

#6344

Looks nice. I like the font. Need to take a closer look at the knobs, I noticed they’re new for this one.

Unrelated to looks, but it’s neat to still see Sequential getting mileage out of the prophet-6 architecture. I guess makes me confident support is going to be there for all 3 of these models for a while. I suppose since the '08 is still around as the Rev2, it makes sense they’d do something similar for the 6 voice range.

#6345

Cool, I’ve ask the wife to get me one for Xmas, will come in handy programming the Elektron’s

#6346

To quote @Koldunya, I need a new sampler like I need an STD

#6347

It’s easy to pick faults with it but for $239 that’s a steal.

#6348

I won’t.

#6349

I didn’t look into it, but are any of these sorts of things actually using whatever-bit hardware or just “emulating” it, or even just using cheap bit-crushing or something? I don’t imagine it’s easy or cheap to go backwards in technology, though I know some things like Arduinos, etc, use 8 and 10 and 12 bit DACs for their PWM pins.

#6350

I was just going post the same question as the website states “Retro sampling engine with 12bit Sampler mode” Im guessing that’s software because if they were using 12 bit DACs wouldn’t they be bragging about it? However listing to the demos it does have “that sound”

#6351

this tbh. If they had it, they’d advertise it. Like the Volca Sample is 16-bit 31.x kHz or something

#6352

Almost certainly software bitrate control. It’s cheap and easy on just about any hardware, doesn’t limit your output to that bitrate in case you want to do other things with the platform, and lets you apply different reduction algorithms to it instead of being solely constrained by the ADC/DAC.

Also, not buying anything with anime advertising lol

#6353

You’re missing out. Waifus 4 laifu. The half a dozen people who have anime stickers on their cars driving around my neighborhood concern me though. Lot of Sailor Moon suddenly eyeing me while I’m out on the town…

In all seriousness, I’ve never gotten the retro low-bit hardware as a selling point. I’ve got more than one software bitcrusher I can use on anything I want. The only thing that has come close is the Mega FM (low bitrate FM recreation of the Sega Genesis sound). And in that case it’s more nostalgia that had me want it than anything since a Genesis was my first videogame console about 25 years ago. Peel that away, take a hard look at my music, and I think it would hurt my sound/writing more than it would help.

I think the low bit rate ADCs/DACs still exist, just not usually for use in audio. I just took a quick gander and I’m no electronics expert but I was able to find three different Analog Devices families in production that are 12-bit, and a few more that are in stock but will be obsolete soon.

#6354

I look at them more like colouring rather than retro vibe. I don’t need that lofi feel on everything but as a colouring tool and to add textures

#6355

congratulations, you were in Sega US’s target market. First video game console is why they called the MegaDrive ‘Genesis’ in the US. But I digress…

That’s kinda my point, it’s more of a “why bother when I can do this anywhere on anything I want?” just about kind of thing. That and I wonder how much of “The sound” of the old gear was also a lot of the components surrounding the DACs/ADCs, how the hardware was implemented, etc which some plugins do emulate. Bitwig’s lofi plugin takes an approach similar to this vs just straight bit crush and sample rate reduction, as an example.

Too many things just “do it in software” which feels really pointless to me. I’m pretty tired of “lofi beats” in general, and the number of plugins that come out every week for it is just relentless and not really innovating, along with the occasional hardware piece that also isn’t doing anything new.

Even the 24-bit/96kHz OG OP-1 hardware sounds fairly bad; it’s loudly hissy/has a shitty noisefloor.

The waifu thing reminds me of a meme I saw once lol…

449.jpg576x915 66.4 KB

#6356

Classic, the day I box the Syntakt to make space on my desk Elektron adds 2 machines…

#6357

My new lo fi sampling method is recording straight from my laptop’s crappy sound card directly from YouTube lol

But this does look really cool. Maybe if I could get about $200 for the M:S I could trade up. But I have NO desire to go through that whole process…

#6358

If they add the compressor from Digitakt and the arpeggiator from Digitone the Syntakt will be complete for me.

#6359

I really like the new analog synth, basic but handy.
On a side note, I’m back home in Italy for a weekend and I have not brought any gear.