So have we gone all soft?

[Steven West]

For the ladies, I'm as 'hard' as a rock! But when I'm alone with the jelly, or with the scientists of cyberspace - they call me 'Soft Serve' for sure.

It's tough for a man to be 'hard' when he's surrounded by 'dicks' all the time. (Unless the guys gay? And defines 'dick' to his liking/licking?)

JUST KIDDING everyone! Love you and KVR too much to diss you all like that for real! I've got a SOFT spot for you all!

[Lady J]

That one LCD screen is dynamic and does basically what you say. You sellect a soft synth and then you have pages of parameters to tweak, all of which are labelled and can be automated. It is just as interactive as my Nord Lead 2 rack was. you have knobs, you have sliders, you can even flip them so the knobs do what the sliders do or vice versa. honestly, until you have used one you won't understand that old hardware just seems lika mackie control without the range of choices.

The Mackie sounds the way to go, but no, it's still not the same, not as much fun, and not as interactive. It has only one LCD screen? Pfffft! sounds like programming one of those h/w rack units that I mentioned.

It's the same way that a guitarist likes to interact with his guitar - you can make a very good guitar track with a sampler nowadays as long as you use good multisamples, velocity switches, layers etc - it can be done, but it isn't as quick, not as much fun, and its the musician interacting with his/her instrument that is an indefinable but key element. Sounds irrelevant but it's not - for me, to be able to play on a real keyboard is great - but it's greater to have those modulators, knobs, sliders, ribbons or whatever at hand on the actual keys I'm playing - I don't know what it is but playing on an "instrument" gains that little extra for me.

Controllers are definitely getting better, but they've a way to go yet - I don't see why someone hasn't made a controller with a screen for each knob/slider so that each knob's parameter is visible at that knob. In fact why isn't there a keyboard with a midi controller on it in exactly that way. I wouldn't winge if I could get one of those - a decent keyboard with a modwheel, a pitchwheel, a ribbon, a joystick, and a bank of knobs each with their own little screen to light up what parameter is what and their values. It's do-able, and it shouldn't be difficult. And then make it like the Mackie so that it will automatically load the main parameters. But it would need a fair old set of knobs - I for one need A, D, S, R, env amount, env dest, A2, D2, S2, R2, env2 amount, env2 dest, cutoff, res, filter type, LFO dest, LFO speed, LFO delay, LFO type, osc type, osc octave, detune, PWM rate as a bare minimum to make it user friendly - otherwise I may as well be programming one of those crappy 80s/90s black synths that had a 2-line LCD screen for 3,000 parameters and 700 sub-menus.

A true controller should be able to let you control every main parameter without sub-menus. I don't want to bang on about analogue synths all the time, because there are a few top notch VSTi's out now - but control surfaces have done nothing but regress IMO - that still is the beauty of an old synth - every knob, every slider labelled with its own function, right there in front of you for playing with and tweaking. All laid out neatly in sections.

It's like driving an automatic car - they're just no fun - you fall asleep at the wheel because you've got no interaction with it - it sets its own air-con temperature, cruise controls the speed, shit - now they even apply the brakes when you get to within a certain distance of the next car FFS!

I must be just a Troglodite I suppose - I even drive a 70s car. However - other drivers come to me and talk about the car and what it's like - they don't do that if you're driving the latest Mazda XVJ2-series-FiTurbo465-78valve-triplecam 888435XD4WD - even the names are boring. What happened to things like Interceptor, Rapier, Disemboweler etc?

[dr. orange]

[lex_strooder]

does anyone feel they miss something from taking down their hardware set-up and replacing with software?

yes, and im going back to hardware (but in combination with softies)

[Sascha Franck]

Logic/Mackie Control is shit, period.
Why?
Because you still can't reorder softsynth parameters at will, so it's likely that you end up with a setting with, say, cutoff and resonance on different pages. Couldn't get worse. That's simply because companies (regardless whether it's Emapple, Steinb0rg or Maggie) don't have a freaking clue.
These boxes are made to mix tracks the old-fashioned way (just as the build in automation in almost all sequencers is only done to please the "we want it PT alike" folks, even if it could be done WAY better).
Heck, I usually don't need all the tracks in my arrangements automated, yet they're all displayed on the freaking thing (unless I put them into folders which I don't like as long as things aren't visually cluttered).

However, bottomline: As a synth controller LC/MC sucks ass.

And let's not forget about all the other various shortcomings. As soon as you automate the volume of a track, you lose overall volume control, as there's still no "trim mode" available straight on the thing (they might've changed that by now, not sure). The same goes for send levels. Automate them and *blam* there goes your overall reverb send control on whatever track. Oh yes, you can open your automation lanes, select everything and do the clumsy "let's fine adjust my global send/volume level with the mouse" game. Brilliant...
I guess it'll take another decade until those progammers realize that for proper automation there's TWO parameters required to be existing: One "relative" control to do the automation and one "absolute" control for the overall leveling.
The funny thing being that, at least for volume, this is allready existing in MIDI land since ages. There's CC 07, main track/part volume, and then there's CC 11, expression = relative volume.

I had a Logic Control for a while and sent it back because the implementation sucked. Add to that that even for the most simple arrangement I wished for at least one XT board. 8 faders are defenitely not enough, especially considering all the lousy shortcomings.
Heck, you can't even go like "see, these are my 10 drumtracks, please group them and offer one fader access for the overall volume of that drumtrack". No, I'd have to route them to a bus first, make that bus show up in my arrange and probably even stuff the drumtracks into a folder, so they won't clutter my Logic Control anymore.

I can tell you, these programmers are so far out of the actual process of writing or mixing a song it's not even funny anymore.

Control surfaces could be sooooo freaking great if only the programmers weren't that retarded.
Right now you can chose between interactive but clumsy (see descriptions above) or non interactive but flexible. The latter requiring a lot of parameter routing, no motorized thingies and a host or plugin with proper MIDI implementation.
It's completely beyond my understanding why there is no mixture of the two approaches. Can't be that hard to add some "learn/configure" implementation to a LC/MC, so it'd still display things by selection while actually only displaying what *you* need, say, the volume of 4 tracks, cutoff and resonance of some synth and some FX send levels on the other faders.
That'd actually enable you to use the damn thing in a creative fashion. As is, it's only good for old-fashioned mixing control. And not even that is realized properly.

Sorry for the drivel, but these things are driving me mad.


Back on topic:
I'm completely happy to carry my entire "studio" around in a single bag. This includes laptop, audio interfaces and even a small MIDI keyboard.
Add a little rack with some preamp stuff in case I actually need to record multiple tracks simultaneously and there we go.

Yeah, I sorta miss some things, but as I've never owned great studio hardware either, I can perfectly live without it.
Sure, a control interface would be nice to have, but then... see my above statements regarding the matter.

Oh well, I still have my main control interfaces - my guitars that is. And as I'm playing between 50 and 100 live gigs a year, I still feel sort of "grounded".

[idobs]

I used to use hardware, and the wires drove me crazy. However, the part I hated THE MOST was trying to get a "hot signal" off of my synths. I felt like 90% of my time and effort was going into noise-reduction for the analog recordings.

With software, I don't worry about the recording phase anymore. Instead, I get to spent my time on the mastering phase, which I enjoy much more.


I'm actually going a tiny bit back into hardware this month, but only because modern hardware synths do digital-out. We'll see how happy I actually am.


-Ido

[Meffy]

=9_9=

Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2004 8:31 pm

[farlukar]

It's an undead thread

[Meffy]

No, it's dead. There's just someone holding it up and wiggling it around. I'll stop watching the show now. It's not as funny as Homestar Runner.

[androidlove]

happy thread resurrection

my hardware was always crap.

i'm a little harder now. i've been playin the new (real) bass.

[Sascha Franck]

Oh shit - I didn't even notice LadyJs post about the LC were that old. Heck, back then it was even WORSE.

[Sickle]

My intergration between hardware and software is increasing in scope and function. I started D.Audio all digital, but I've been slowly rebuilding my hardware gear collection. Mainly pedals, but a few rack effects/pre-amps as well. As far as synths and samplers go, it's all software and will probably not change in that regard.

[farlukar]

It's not as funny as Homestar Runner.

I thought you were an avid Flash-avoider!

[Meffy]

I got Flashblock. Even before that I'd seen some HR episodes on machines that weren't mine.

[kuniklo]

The physical interface on a well-designed hardware synth (Nord, Virus TI, Waldorf XT etc) is *so* much more pleasant and spontaneous than clicking on little virtual knobs on a computer screen.

Making music with virtual synths is kind of like cybersex. It's a whole world of tantalizing objects you can't really touch.