The Hardware Megathread

#1577

Ruismaker Noir is really good for weird percussion sounds.
As a musician I owe a lot to Bram Bos, the guy behind these apps. His old softwares like Hammerhead and Tuareg got me into electronic music in my early days.

#1578

Oh wow! I didn’t know that is who made Hammerhead. I was really just “playing” when I used it, but it helped me get interested in making music on a computer. How cool. I’ll have to see if I can shoot them a thank you email.

#1579

I did the same thing and sent him a message on his Facebook page, he seemed genuinely happy about it. Unsung hero of electronic music.

#1580

So i came across this Marantz PDM740 6 channel 4-track recorder on eBay the guy has only used it once and its been boxed up ever since. I never knew Marantz made any 4-tracks, did a bit of research and found they entered the 4-track marked around the time cassette was about to die, this unit is from around 1993 and cost £849 brand new back then. Whats cool about the VU meters is they light up green whilst playing and red whilst recording.

A few days ago i set up a Gixen Sniper for £500 but to be honest id just bought the Oto Bam and id be digging into life savings, so i reduced the sniper to £350 5 minutes before the end, anyway i lost the bid it went for £360. I think if id of left it at £500 id of still lost as i guess the other buyer probably has a big sniper on his side.

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#1581

Before the Oto Bam arrived i read a lot of forums, youtube videos, read the manual and as far as i was aware it has 7 settings Room, Hall, Plate, Ambient, Chorus, Non-Linear and Primitive.

When i opened the Bam box there was a note inside stating this Bam had the latest 1.4 firmware installed which gives you an 8th setting called “Thru”.
Thru lets you feed audio through the BAM circuitry, Pre-delay, input gain, filters and 16 bit converters but without any reverb, quite possibly an interesting colouring tool?, i’ll hopefully try it out tonight.

#1582

I’m starting to feel the Hail Hydrasynth vibes. I know I want some sort of hardware instrument to pair with my MPC Live, and atm it’s basically between the Argon8M and the Hydrasynth module. They both have their advantages and disadvantages over the other, but the effects on the Hydrasynth and being able to make your own wavetables on the device itself is leaning me that way. The mutation thing looks fun, too. It’s slightly larger than the Live :joy: but does have those handy buttons for playing notes. An input to use its effects section would have been great, and using reverb/delay as post-fx.

Really wish Akai would let us send MIDI to USB already. It seems silly that the USB ports are only good for attached storage or MIDI keyboard inputs :woman_shrugging:t2:

#1583

Exactly, my Craftsynth would love this, but I guess the usb and the audio would cause some extra noise.
The force just landed, really nice so far, very Abletonesque in approach.
But ergonomically it’s a nightmare, I need to find a way to give it a better tilt.
Haven’t sold my Live yet, will decide soonish.

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#1584

maybe next up is a Force Live that drops the CV and adds a battery :thinking:

If this thing could be used as extensive a Bitwig controller as a Push can, including screen access, I’d be all over it.

#1585

I watched the NAMM coverage of the Akai stuff. The thing they said that jumped out at me was that over the next 10 years, they expect you to be able to make music coherently across platforms regardless of where you start and finish. Whether that be home, studio, laptop, MPC, or Force. I hope that extends to other DAWs too. The example they gave, that would work relatively easily right now, is that you should be able to take a project from Ableton and do anything from a live remix, DJ it, or play (or replace) any instrument from it that you choose live on stage (with the rest clip-launched ableton style). Realistically, if you took the midi and had it chopped up to match your audio clips, you could do that with any DAW right now, but it would be a pain. So my hope is they find a way to automate a lot of that tedium.

I don’t exaggerate when I say that setting up a 45 minute set in FL 20 with a launchpad to control it was almost two weeks of rendering and chopping stems, naming them, and getting them arranged in a manner that I could reliably play. And after all that I still had problems with keeping clips in sync and 1 tempo change that needed to happen live with two tracks playing through it. Had to scrap the set over that. Add learning how to manage a Force project structure into that, and it’s just not a task that I relish (impressed as I am with everything else that thing can do).

#1586

Not heard of this synth until you made this post but I giggled like a loon at the Marvel reference.

Giggles aside I see no purpose for hardware digital synths unless you’ve had them long enough that their hardware has degraded enough to change the sound somewhat. That’s a bias of mine and could possibly be shot full of holes by someone determined to get one. Its the primary reason I’ve never bought a Virus synth even though they make some very dandy sounds.

#1587

I would be one to talk, since I don’t have any 100% digital synths, but I could see going that route for the interface. For the Hydrasynth example, the keyboard version has polyphonic aftertouch and a full length ribbon controller. And I have the Osmose on pre-order because of the MPE controller with the bonus that it has a synth engine built in for when I don’t want to fire up my laptop and run a softsynth. Stuff like that. I know a lot of synths out there don’t have that, but that’s what has been piquing my interest in the last few months, and I could see the market going that way (especially with MIDI 2.0 just formalized this NAMM).

#1588

The only digital synth I’ve owned I’d have back is the Monomachine. There are some iPad apps that sound better than most VSTs. iMini comes to mind. Edit: The Digitone is on my wish list and that is purely because it has Elektron’s sequencer behind it. Could probably ultimately do all that in a daw but, I think its actually faster on hardware.

#1589

I miss my Monomachine sometimes. Then Elektron discontinued it and prices went to the moon and I stopped thinking about it (much) lol.

#1590

Portability and road-worthiness, I’d think. There’s a use case for relatively bomb proof on stage that can be hard to get with some laptop/hybrid setups that have lots of peripherals hanging around.

Also for people that like the sounds but want to just twist knobs and push buttons. Hardware’s pretty objectively shit for deep dive, complex sound design compared to a mouse, keyboard and a couple monitors, but that compact, visceral twist-and-shout can be a lot of fun and inspirational in a way that software sometimes isn’t.

#1591

I’m kind of hoping the do some kind of tribute to it. Like if they do a follow up to the Model:Samples that is a stripped down mono machine with the same sequencer <3

#1592

You almost figure, while they can only do some many new types or configs, that they’d remake certain boxes, to a degree. Not to stifle vintage markets but I could see them renewing the monomachine. Unless there are similarities with it and some of the newer things, like octa, etc. I don’t really know.

I do know, when I first started paying attention to the Elektron stuff, 10 or so years ago now, a bit shorter than I’ve been apart of these forums. It was because of this place I even knew what they were and wanted one though. This thread on top of it.

They had a really neat, almost strange tut video for the monomachine. Found one. They were marketablely neat AF…

Hector sold me on one before I could afford to buy one. Like I fell in love with the idea of owning one because of Hector.

#1593

I read recently that Ableton’s “.als” format is “just a gzipped xml file” which probably explains why so many companies are able to let you export projects to work with Ableton Live. Kinda pissed at Bitwig now for theirs apparently be closed and proprietary >_>

That’s totally valid and I even understand where you’re coming from. Sometimes I just like to put my hands on something and play with it. That said, if Akai gives MPC owners Hype, I feel like I’d be pretty satisfied with digital synths in an outside the box environment and probably not really worry about it. It does support MPE which isn’t super common in hardware, yet (but growing), and I have an interest in something like a Linnstrument or whatever.

Model:Machine!

Hector is :fire: Those Octatrack and Analog Four videos were crazy :open_mouth:

#1594

I was so sad when they ditched Hector. He was the man!

#1595

saw this over on MPC Users:

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MPC Live Mk II :eyes:

Apparently the MPC One similarly appeared mentioned in firmware 2.7

#1596

What is that? Some coding thing?