Members LANSTARR Posted May 6, 2004 Members Share Posted May 6, 2004 What are some of the hardest synths to program in your opinion?Specifically, of the synths made after 1980, which are the hardest to get good sounds out of? Meaning what are the synths that you have to put a lot of time in to get good sounds, but is worth the hard work? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members scubyfan Posted May 6, 2004 Members Share Posted May 6, 2004 Menu-driven FM synths. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members noonehere Posted May 6, 2004 Members Share Posted May 6, 2004 Mirage Binary anyone? Select 26, set to 2 then select 60, set to F0 then select 61, set to F7 You have now allocated a small amount of memory for a wavesample! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members mytee2.0 Posted May 6, 2004 Members Share Posted May 6, 2004 as softsynths go, cs80V horrible, tiny, intricate interface:mad: yeah its just like the original but so what, that means the original sucked as well. http://www.arturia.com/en/csscreenshots.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Is. Posted May 6, 2004 Members Share Posted May 6, 2004 FS1RK5000SSY99 Those synths come right to mind. I've never actually used an FS1R, but there seems to be a general consensus on that one, it's just damn hard to program. I've owned both an SY99 and a K5000S in the past, though. With both of those synths, if you don't know what you're doing you won't get much in the way of useable sounds, and even if you do you aren't going to have anywhere near a 100% success rate. But when the results pay off on those synths, it's damn sweet because you might hear something you've never heard anything like before, and that's not often for most of us synth veterans. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Is. Posted May 6, 2004 Members Share Posted May 6, 2004 Originally posted by myteeGTi as softsynths go, cs80Vhorrible, tiny, intricate interface:mad: yeah its just like the original but so what, that means the original sucked as well. Yeah, that one too. I wasn't too crazy about the sound, either. Kind of neat, but not anywhere close to neat enough to warrant the horrible interface. Damn, Arturia would have to pay me $249 to use that one. Maybe more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members tjwett Posted May 6, 2004 Members Share Posted May 6, 2004 i'm having a hell of a time figuring out my ARP Odyssey Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members spectralab Posted May 6, 2004 Members Share Posted May 6, 2004 having owned them all, I'm going to back up Is.'s assertions: FS1-RSY/TG-77/99K5000 I would not touch the SY/TG without Sound Diver. the FS1-R I got the hang of after a while, but even Sound Diver couldn't ease the pain there. I'd say the K5000 is relatively the least difficult of the three - the interface itself is pretty straightforward (as much as it can be based on what it does, anyway), but it's still pretty time-consuming and if you don't understand additive synthesis, it will probably piss you off pretty quickly. I'd have to give honorable mention to the Morpheus and Wavestation here as well. Morpheus isn't so bad - again, the interface itself is straightforward, just that some of the functions (or should I say function generators) are time consuming to do something interesting with... and the Wavestation - granted, I owned an SR, supposedly the worst interface of the 4 models since it was intended as a preset-only "expander" to the other models - but that said, it's another synth I wouldn't have touched without Sound Diver... maybe the EX and AD models had better interfaces, but the SR - I would have been tempted to drop it out of a window without Sound Diver... in fact, on second thought, I think this award should go to the Wavestation SR Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members MuzikB Posted May 6, 2004 Members Share Posted May 6, 2004 Originally posted by scubyfan Menu-driven FM synths. Ditto. :mad: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Mintbeetle Posted May 6, 2004 Members Share Posted May 6, 2004 I've heard the Fizmo is a bitch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members U&I Posted May 6, 2004 Members Share Posted May 6, 2004 Handsdown in my experience ..well to get really pro sounding patches out of them I'd have to say Yamaha SY99 and 77 Ditto the DX-7 Oberheim X-Pander (deep as all hell) the matrix mod was the biggest headf#uck when I first used one some 14 years ago. Korg S3 - drum machine . Way more than a humble beatbox and capable of some truly amazing results but a terribly convoluted operating system for sure. Ensoniq Mirage - as stated above Hex hell ewwww thankfully the EPS was a huge step up in OS enhancement. Korg DSS-1 - another unit capable of some awesome sonics bogged down by a nanosquats worth of sample memory and a hideous operating system also. PPG Wave 2.2 - sorry they sound great but ummm try programming one from the front panel . I bought an Emulator II+ instead at the time (and no I didn't regret it . It still works and I still own it). All the top end Yamaha CS range - convoluted architecture layout IMHO Matrix 6 Rack - dont try programming one from the front panel trust me you'll go bald rather quickly. Waldorf MicroQ - ditto only marginally better ,though the MicroQ rack actually makes sense after a while. Super Collider & C Sound - if I wanted to be a rocket scientist I would have (takes the fun out of synthesis ...hang the results). Reaktor is a major improvement but I still feel Tassman 4 pipps it to the post in ease of use and in the physical modelling department. So Reaktor sadly gets a vote also. Emu Morpheus and UltraProteus - try wrapping your head around the function generators from the front panel ,what's that I hear you scream "f#@k off" ? Yeah I thought so. Amazing synth none the less. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members TDman Posted May 6, 2004 Members Share Posted May 6, 2004 Sure, the K5000S is hard to program (though I prefer to say 'time-consuming'), but the results are SOO worth it. The large, informative display definitely helps. Just imagine a diplay like that on a DX... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members keybunk Posted May 6, 2004 Members Share Posted May 6, 2004 Long live the DX7. The most awkward yet most interesting synth I've ever loved. Kinda like my wife. Love them both dearly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members aeon Posted May 6, 2004 Members Share Posted May 6, 2004 most any Yamaha synth, but especially the FM ones... because Yamaha has that Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Pilot Posted May 6, 2004 Members Share Posted May 6, 2004 Yamaha PSRs can be difficult because you need a computer to do it for a start. All the editing stuff is sysex which you can do without an editor if you're a masochist and like programming in hexadec. A bit like Noonehere was saying about the Mirage. Bryan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members the_resonator Posted May 6, 2004 Members Share Posted May 6, 2004 i gotta agree with the Mirage. that thing was a big frustrating tank... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members D'Traveler Posted May 6, 2004 Members Share Posted May 6, 2004 All things Yamaha. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members TDman Posted May 6, 2004 Members Share Posted May 6, 2004 No ome's mentioned the fact that some of these units also had the WORST manuals known to man... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members the_resonator Posted May 6, 2004 Members Share Posted May 6, 2004 the worst manuals dude, that is the very truth. but even after you knew em well enough not to need that anymore, they were still a pain. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members triton76 Posted May 6, 2004 Members Share Posted May 6, 2004 I'm not surprised to see Yamaha SY99 on this list. It was the hardest to program by far of any synth I owned. Envelopes for all modulators and carriers plus endless routing options made it time consuming. Sometimes I could change things around and hardly hear any difference. I did lots of head scratching with that one. But it had the best FM sounds ever. The only thing harder than programing a good FM sound on that thing was transporting it. Fricking Behemoth! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Array Posted May 6, 2004 Members Share Posted May 6, 2004 the supernova 2....oh wait...no it isnt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members J3RK Posted May 6, 2004 Members Share Posted May 6, 2004 I actually really liked the interfaces on the MicroQ and the Xpander. I owned an uQ and uWaveXT30 and both were quite easy to program (though the uWave had a lot more depth to it with all the extra envelopes and such.) I borrowed a friend's Xpander for a while, and I had a lot of fun with it. The display is limited, but I found my way around pretty well. I'd say some of my ROMplers were the more difficult ones for me. Like the XP-80. It's not that it's a bad interface, but the menus just keep going on and on and on. I've never really had a problem with analogs or VAs. My mind just tends to understand where the audio is going and why. I've never had the misfortune of using hardware menu-driven FM synths. I love FM sounds, but that's where presets usually come into play for me. (Using FM 7) Array: (Unfortunate) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members J3RK Posted May 6, 2004 Members Share Posted May 6, 2004 Ahh, nearly forgot one. The K2000R that I had was kind of hard to get used to. When I got it I had just gotten used to my XP-80. It took quite a while to do more than just play back simple samples. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Trillian Posted May 6, 2004 Members Share Posted May 6, 2004 "PPG Wave 2.2 - sorry they sound great but ummm try programming one from the front panel . I bought an Emulator II+ instead at the time (and no I didn't regret it . It still works and I still own it)." I totally disagree. the PPG 2.2 and 2.3 had very intuitive interfaces. I had a 2.2 with MIDI and I could fly through the pages and always get what I wanted. When I sold it later and got the first generation Microwave, now that's when I hit a brick wall. It had the sound but was a huge pain in the rear to programme. -Sheryl Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members TheProteus Posted May 6, 2004 Members Share Posted May 6, 2004 DKI Synergy and Synergy II+. Binary LEDs anyone? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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