Have Modern VST Instruments Replaced Your Hardware Synths ?

[anomandaris1]

From what I have seen in the local shop, even some of the best (and most expensive) modern midi keyboard controllers are complete garbage compared to decent digital pianos and workstations.
Seriously, how hard is to produce a 49 or 61 keys controller that won't fall apart in like 1 year and has good and responsive keys?

[chk071]

If your controller keyboards fall apart in 1 year, you're doing something wrong.

[layzer]

There is no reason and no advantage still buying and using hardware....

you will always need hardware to run software on.
what are you typing on now?

[layzer]

If your controller keyboards fall apart in 1 year, you're doing something wrong.

using it to split firewood, perhaps?

[THE INTRANCER]

, no total recall.

youve never even been to mars!

They recently re-released that movie here. I think it was even on the index for some time here.

Funny to read that, having just been listening to the rather awesome 'Total Recall' score. It's among the many favourite sci-fi film's I have that I only just yesterday added to the full length filmscore section of the site I'm building here.

[chk071]

, no total recall.

youve never even been to mars!

They recently re-released that movie here. I think it was even on the index for some time here.

Funny to read that, having just been listening to the rather awesome 'Total Recall' score. It's among the many favourite sci-fi film's I have that I only just yesterday added to the full length filmscore section of the site I'm building here.

It's a great movie.

Just saw that the soundtrack is from Jerry Goldsmith. No wonder it's good.

Don't get me started on the shitty remake...

[AnX]

If your controller keyboards fall apart in 1 year, you're doing something wrong.

or you bought a crap keyboard, poss second hand.... or you might be hitting it with a hammer, so you may be right....

[lotus2035]

If your controller keyboards fall apart in 1 year, you're doing something wrong.

Mine did but then again I used 'em to hammer nails in.
Was that wrong?

[AnX]

I don't find any right rules!

there are no rules in music

[D-Fusion]

Yes i replaced my HW Synths with vst's
I now have the dream setup i wanted around year 2000 and more ITB

[v1o]

Their overall sound and quality is bad, they have less features, especially the sequencers, much of the current analog gear sounds worse than VSTs, some are trying to emulate VSTs, especially workstations and you still have to use a DAW.

Right so something like a Behringer Pro One or even their Deep Mind 12 is worse sounding than a similar VST plugin.

Personally I don't think its just about sound quality but also the experience of playing an instrument. For example owning a Kontakt piano library is not the same experience as sitting in front and playing a real quality piano although YMMV. Most midi keyboards feel cheap and plasticky, the high quality ones are prices the same as buying a hardware synth.

[EnGee]

I don't find any right rules!

there are no rules in music

... and no rules in choosing the tools in making music.

So, that's it. Close the forums and invent in a better way to waste our time but no fakebook or other insults to our minds!

[THE INTRANCER]

It might surprise some to know that I've never actually had a keyboard which didn't have it's own built in sounds and associated buttons, knobs and displays. I guess with having grown up as a kid in the late 1970's early 1980's trying to span my hands across an organ and actually play something was a bit of a stretch, particularly more so given that for the first 4 years of my life I was around 95% deaf and rarely ever spoke apparently. Another aspect was that in pre school and primary school there was always an enormous piano in the classroom the teacher played to us. It would be strange to look at what school teachers are using these days and find that they are using a cheap controller keyboard and computer to entertain kids these days and not a mini grand for example. For me though, I find it hard to envision buying a keyboard without a built-in synthesizer, but more than that now, I do require more emphasis or at least equally the advantages of being a controller that goes beyond the bog standard level.

Another interesting aspect is that whilst real world instruments are indeed physical entities, the ability or indeed want, to physically change the design of them, is inadvisable and more time - consuming if one goes down that route. It's not like you can just throw a tin of pain on one and expect it to still work the next day or if you want to be more realistic, stripping it down and re-spraying using the correct procedure the manufacturer had used. In the digital domain, we have greater abilities to change how instruments can look in an instant, even if the virtual instrument doesn't allow it. An interesting paradox is that as the computer you use, to run a virtual instrument increases as you upgrade to newer faster technology, the capabilities of the virtual instruments grows as well. Conventional instruments such as synthesizers remain fundamentally the same because the likelihood is that you won't be replacing the CPU that's built within it, isn't going to be upgradable and more than certainly surface mount on the PCB.

I remember when I was over in Germany back in 1999, and entered the huge music store, far bigger than anything I had seen in the UK. It was small city / large town located near to Weimar, the place in which I was living at the time. Loads of synthesizers adorned the racks such as the weird upright Roland synth with lots of knobs and mic that allowed you to speak into it to create a digital version of yourself. With having a Casio SK1 Sampling keyboard in the 80's, that wasn't too far off the planet to what I used previously... I had only ever dreamed of actually being able to use one as I had seen them in Future Music magazine... Wiemar did have a music store also, which had Yamaha CS6's, so I think that was the first time I really played a dedicated XG Soundset based synth beyond the Yamaha PSR 330 I had at home in the UK. Ironically this now lives in the loft in perfect working order and condition whilst the Yamaha DJX that replaced it, became a worn out broken piece of kit after 15 years of continual use. In 2003 I had actually brought one for my older sister which is still in perfect working order today.... Many different pro's and cons..., but I'd find it difficult to be exclusively a software only user without using hardware.

[anomandaris1]

If your controller keyboards fall apart in 1 year, you're doing something wrong.

or you bought a crap keyboard, poss second hand.... or you might be hitting it with a hammer, so you may be right....

Actually the opposite, the cheap ones usually last longer and right now I still have one Nektar GX (which is like playing basically plastic) that is perfectly fine, but NI S49 = almost dead, won't buy again from these guys again anytime soon (only the keys feel fine, the whole build of the rest of the keyboard is shit).
I have actually never bought second hand any software or hardware, or anything else except books.

[SynthRatings]

Yes.

The last major foray into hardware for me was a Eurorack setup, which was more like a crack addiction than a tool for making music, so I ended up getting rid of it and now I do everything in software.