Synthesizers... what you've got / what you want

If I get one of the jobs I'm going for I'm buying myself an UDO Super 8, little brother of this (same engine, only one set of controls)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1y4XEJpqmg

That looks great. I always enjoy Hazel Mills’ demo videos.

My Volca Keys and FM2. I am no musician, I just like playing around with them and seeing what sounds I can get out of them:

https://i.imgur.com/gCLvBDT.jpeg

I've been popping my modular synth jams up on TikTok lately. I have a couple live performance gigs coming up soon, so I really need to figure wtf I'm doing.

https://www.tiktok.com/@moodles_mix/video/7497693744955739438

I no longer covet, I've committed myself to software synths and sampling, but I still use my little collection of the same Volcas posted above, Yamaha Reface CP (honestly so nice for making sketches, and I prefer using it for Rhodes and piano sounds to any vst), and the Yamaha VS-200 that I'm still borrowing (I rarely go to the trouble of hooking it up to the computer for resampling, but whenever I do I get back a bit of noisy magic).

Well ok, I'll probably never shell out for it, but that Telepathic Instruments Orchid looks so fun to use.

I love my Yamaha Reface CP, I’m picking up a DX this weekend. Aside from those, I have a Moog One and an ARP 2600 and nothing else

There's always more that I want to add to the modular rig: I'm waiting on a mixer designed for Eurorack, which should help a lot with live performance. I also have my eye on the Make Noise Multimod and Frap Tools Brenso Complex Oscillator, but need to save up for them. If I were ever to buy a standalone synth I'd probably go for the ASM Hydrasynth Explorer because it would be a good complement to the modular stuff.

I got my mom a Reface CP a couple of years ago, somehow it never occurred to me that she would hate electric piano sounds (who hates a WURLITZER ffs) so I've had to show her how to access the hidden acoustic piano every couple of months when it slips away from the half-notch.

She won't let me just buy a 88 key digital piano for her from the Guitar Center used section.

During COVID I finally got around to assembling a Eurorack modular system, which now looks like this:
https://i.imgur.com/qCwCTbW.jpeg

The spring reverb was non-negotiable. I want to stress that the cable leading from Plaits to the mixer is not as tight as it looks. That's an optical illusion. It's surprising how well it integrates with the Korg Volcas - you can use their clock outputs as trigger pulses. I tend to make a rough mix with Logic using software plugins, then gradually replace the tracks one-by-one with audio.

The difficult thing about Eurorack is knowing when to stop. See, I had some modules left over, so I bought a second case, a miniature case, to put them modules in, and then I started buying modules to fill out the second case... at which point I could feel myself slipping into the madness of addiction. The smaller case in action here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVyPHZNBIxA

One good reason to own an iPad is iVCS3, a recreation of the VCS3 that's surprisingly usable on an tiny screen. It takes a while to get the hang of the mod matrix - it's like a big flowchart that does a 90 degree turn half-way through - but it's incredibly satisfying when it clicks.

Using a synth with knobs really brings home how frustrating 1990s digital synthesisers were. They had a lot of potential power but were hobbled by horrible menu-menu-select-enter-up-up-enter alarm clock interfaces, and they generally didn't let you change parameters in real time.

Damn, that should be:
https://i.imgur.com/qCwCTbW.jpeg

AP OTM about iVCS3. I've haven't played around with an actual VCS3 yet, but I feel like the iPad version makes for a good flight simulator version until I take on the real thing.

In the house: Moog Opus 3, Yamaha Reface YC, Roland JV-30, Farfisa Compact, Vox Super Continental

I got to play with a VCS3 clone (Portabella) at a synth meetup, it's a cool object and the pin matrix is super satisfying to use but it was a bear to use - the gain staging was very touchy, only one wonky envelope. The new production suitcase Buchla Easel OTOH was pure joy.

Nice collection Elvis, I love an Opus 3

Like everything else in my house, my modular synth is covered in dust and cat hair.

https://i.postimg.cc/hP5TfP2g/IMG-0521.jpg

This rack is mostly for percussion voices and basically functions as a stand-alone drum machine.

The core racks:

https://i.postimg.cc/8PNwG5jC/IMG-0524.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/Wzg2w8Ms/IMG-0523.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/Wzg2w8Ms/IMG-0523.jpg

I have stopped buying modules, really - though will occasionally build them if there is a Thonk sale.

Duplicate pic should have been:

https://i.postimg.cc/9fLzDLBS/IMG-0522.jpg

currently: AN1X and Alesis Micron

past: SH-101 (first synth I ever bought, cost $100 used from a friend), Korg Polysix, JX3P + PG200, ARP 2600, DX7 (wish i'd held on to all those)

Damn dude you should have definitely kept all of those ;_;

In the interest of reducing hardware GAS, I bought one of those Akai MIDI controllers with 24 knobs and 8 faders, and spent a while meticulously mapping these to various soft-synth parameters. It still feels "off" though, I think because of the limited resolution of 128 values of MIDI cc. It's not that big of a deal, but it's bugging anyway. Any of you synth wizards know a way to improve this?

The Akai MIDIMIX (if that’s what you’re using) supports NPRN mapping. (NPRN is a way of increasing the resolution of a MIDI fader beyond the 128-step 7-bit resolution. My Luddite interpretation: when a fader is programmed to NPRN, every increment sends two bytes instead of one, allowing for higher resolution on a sweep. Moog and DSI have had certain parameters mapped this way for over two decades.)

I would imagine that if your soft synth can have certain parameters mapped to NPRN instead of standard 7-bit CCs, you could eliminate the zippering.

I myself am not so experienced with this stuff— I built MIDI info generators in Max/MSP almost twenty years ago and hand-programmed NPRN scaling to control certain parameters, and it definitely was a challenge for my smooth bachelor-of-arts brain

Specifically what I did, if anyone is interested, was I built a Max patch to receive a MIDI sweep from an Ernie Ball expression pedal. It took those 128 values and remapped them to a 1000-point scale, adding a slight slew (to smooth out the sweep), and applied a user-specified curve (to create a more natural sounding fade). The resultant values were then retransmitted as NPRN to a different software. All this to make “a nicer fade” lol; the zippering was really audible without this tweak. When I realized that the target software supported OSC, I ditched the NPRN interpreter and it was an easier bit of dumb-coding.

Anyway, I am consistently amazed that MIDI remains the industry standard when it comes to transmission of musical data, which is both a tribute to the robustness of Dave Smith’s original idea, and our collective stupidity in devising a more effective modern mode

Thanks fgti! I am indeed using the MIDIMIX, gonna try to see if I can get the software I'm using (TAL Noisemaker) to respond to NRPN. I've seen NRPN on MIDI spec sheets before but I didn't really understand what it was, so I appreciate the knowledge

They do keep trying to make MIDI 2.0 a thing, but manufacturers have been really slow to adopt for whatever reason

I scanned the Noisemaker manual, and there is no mention of NRPN. Maybe check on your computer to see if a parameter (that would make sense to have better-than-7-bit resolution, cutoff i.e.) has greater than 128 values. If it does, then you'd need to figure out how to get the MIDIMIX to map to NRPN and transmit 14-bit data to Noisemaker, effectively causing the plug-in to "learn" NRPN. If the cutoff is limited to 128 values, then I wouldn't anticipate that there's a way around this.

I think the first hardware synth I encountered that utilised NRPN was a 00s DSI offering (the P '08 maybe? or the Tetra?). It was interesting, because the range of values wasn't actually much greater than 0-127, it would be like 0-160 or something. At the time, it was a chore to find outboard controllers that would interface correctly.