Software vs Hardware

[vurt]

Why do you keep taking the bait? You do realise you cannot 'win' on the interwebz?

hold my beer...


one thing professional musicians don't do, waste time arguing on forums.

Absolutely you never hear about professional musicians fighting, or having dick swinging contests

It's why the Eagles have lasted so long with all original members, and who could forget the fantastic relationship of Roger Waters and David Gilmore who have been best friends and have collaborated on so many records and tours going back 50 years

Or how about the members of Journey it's not like they are using each other for Millions of Dollars

I mean everyone who has ever played in a band will tell you it was all rainbows, unicorns, and total peace and harmony

did i say they didn't argue at all? no. oh well..

[Stokely]

Pretty simple...use whatever you want. It all can sound damn good these days. Just boils down to how you like to do it.

I learned mixing and recording before computers were really involved...there were computer based sequencers but nothing like a DAW. Most consoles I used had no automation, and outboard gear was pretty limited in the smaller studios I was in.

Fast forward, I'm all about software at home I draw automation with my mouse. Sounds and effects on dropdown menus is like some kind of magic. The convenience is king for me. But if someone wants to have an impressive room full of keyboards, modules, tape machines or whatever, have at it! Our gear doesn't make our music suck, or great. Being inspired and actually finishing music (*ahem*, looks in the mirror) count for a lot more than the gear.

[IvyBirds]

Are you so incapable of logic that you think that the existence of systems that uses an ARM board somehow negates the existence of those systems which used a standard PC motherboard?

Are you so ignorant that you are denying that certain Korg synths used standard PC motherboards?

Dude who care what they use. Are you hacking a Modwave to install a F*****g Excell ?
No, so it's not a bloody PC with monitor, mouse and querty/azerty keyboard running any software.
It's been agees, they are using custon OS based on Linux running on DSP, FPGA, Arm, Atom or whatever they need.

What's nex? The classic quote. It's a vst in a box ?

Hate to break it to you but if you open a Korg Modwave hardware synth you will find a Raspberry PI Compute 3 mother board. That board has a 4GB solid state drive just like a PC, as well as the pinouts for a break out box that supports an HDMI port, a USB port, two camera ports, and two display ports.

It's running a Linux variant, you can literally use that hardware to install and run any Linux Variant you want, or even Windows if you really wanted to

From a Hardware Perspective the Wavestate is a PC. The only difference between it and a standard desktop PC that can run Windows or Linux is its pretty low powered and Korg sells it running different software

Like most hardware PCs you buy it doesn't come with a Monitor but most certainly can support one via HDMI, and a Qwerty Keyboard could be easily attached via USB

Many people do exactly that various Raspberry PI motherboards. The one Korg is using is used very commonly in Industrial applications that have a monitor and Qwerty Keyboard it's why when you buy that mother board it ships with the breakout box. The whole system is $30 or so and easily obtainable online

So if you want to argue about Software that the Wavestate ships with awesome, but then of course you are no longer talking about hardware but instead what is running

As for the hardware it's a just a MIDI controller and a cheap personal computer motherboard integrated into a package. It's running the same exact source code for the actual sound generation as the plugin version. The only difference is one is compiled to run in Linux and the plugin is complied to run in Windows or Mac OS and comes in a plugin wrapper like VST3

The Wavestate is displaying Data on a very tiny shitty screen and the Plugin is displaying its data on a significantly larger and higher resolution color monitor

Again however all of that is software not actual hardware

I have the Wavestate plugin, I would not waste the money on the hardware version with its tiny keyboard and very very limited physical controls with a lot of menu diving on a tiny shitty screen. That's literally a massive step backwards from the plugin version with good MIDI controllers

[Uncle E]

I have the Wavestate plugin, I would not waste the money on the hardware version with its tiny keyboard and very very limited physical controls with a lot of menu diving on a tiny shitty screen. That's literally a massive step backwards from the plugin version with good MIDI controllers

The X-Y pad is a great and it has 27 knobs. Honestly a pretty great controller, especially considering you can get a used one for under $400. The only controllers I can think of with a similar feature set are the X-Station and the first Remote SL, and those are around the same price.

[El°HYM]

Novation - Automap was actually quite cool, as long as it was still working. Remote SL's are pretty fine controllers though, nice keybed, lots of knobs, a little wonky faders maybe.

[IvyBirds]

Novation - Automap was actually quite cool, as long as it was still working. Remote SL's are pretty fine controllers though, nice keybed, lots of knobs, a little wonky faders maybe.

There is no need for automatic mapping in midi controllers in 2025

Pretty much every modern plugin has MIDI learn which is a far superior system as you only need to program your controller once for generic MIDI CCs which is easily done with modern controller editor software

Then in your plugin you just use the MIDI learn controls or if you prefer many have some kind of menu or matrix where it's easy to sign anything visible to your DAW to a MIDI CC

Why would you ever want to be beholden to a specific MIDI hardware controller or brand when you can just use what's already in the MIDI spec and your plugins and be controller agnostic

If a new controller comes to market in the future that is better than the Novation Launch Control XL for me, I will happily buy it. It will take me less than a half hour to configure it with MIDI CCs and those will work perfectly with the way all of my software is already configured

Thinking you need something like Novation Automap in 2025 is outdated

[El°HYM]

We know you like the Launchkey.

[Uncle E]

Thinking you need something like Novation Automap in 2025 is outdated

AKA NKS

[bmanic]

Novation Automap had proper user assignable scaling for the mapped controls. This gave a lot more control over the resolution and thus the "tactile feel" of the knob. It was a bit limited though as it didn't have any custom curves for acceleration (how fast you tweaked the controls only had a few presets like linear, slow linear and exponential) but it's way more than you get in most plugins built in MIDI CC mapping.

It's something nobody seems to really care about. Quite a few plugins are still badly implementing incoming MIDI CC messages so you get stepping artifacts. That is in my opinion absolutely inexcusable in 2025 but nobody seems to care and many users seem to think the limitation lies within the MIDI controller instead of looking at the poorly coded plugin. It's possible to code the plugin in a way that makes a generic budget midi controller feel like a million bucks (provided that it isn't too badly worn out and jitters all over the place when moving controls). A virtual knob could be as smooth as butter and responsive like analogue hardware.. but yeah, very few companies bother to as it takes some extra effort.

[IvyBirds]

I have the Wavestate plugin, I would not waste the money on the hardware version with its tiny keyboard and very very limited physical controls with a lot of menu diving on a tiny shitty screen. That's literally a massive step backwards from the plugin version with good MIDI controllers

The X-Y pad is a great and it has 27 knobs. Honestly a pretty great controller, especially considering you can get a used one for under $400. The only controllers I can think of with a similar feature set are the X-Station and the first Remote SL, and those are around the same price.

They can be, however if you just want a Touchpad controller Korg makes the NanoPad you can get them brand new for $60-$70. I used one for a long time. They also have the NanoPad Studio which has a two octave button keyboard, 8 knobs and a some drum pads for around $160

But before I would drop $400 on a used Wavestate for X/Y control I would just get a relatively recent used or new iPad ($269 brand new on Amazon at the moment) and use one of the many apps that have touchscreen MIDI controllers that can be easily configured to do many things. Of course many people already have one or an old unused iPhone which would work just as well and be basically free

There is an Android and a Amazon Fire version also. Buying a cheap Android or Amazon Kindle might be an even cheaper option but I have no experience with using them and MIDI

[IvyBirds]

Novation Automap had proper user assignable scaling for the mapped controls. This gave a lot more control over the resolution and thus the "tactile feel" of the knob. It was a bit limited though as it didn't have any custom curves for acceleration (how fast you tweaked the controls only had a few presets like linear, slow linear and exponential) but it's way more than you get in most plugins built in MIDI CC mapping.

It's something nobody seems to really care about. Quite a few plugins are still badly implementing incoming MIDI CC messages so you get stepping artifacts. That is in my opinion absolutely inexcusable in 2025 but nobody seems to care and many users seem to think the limitation lies within the MIDI controller instead of looking at the poorly coded plugin. It's possible to code the plugin in a way that makes a generic budget midi controller feel like a million bucks (provided that it isn't too badly worn out and jitters all over the place when moving controls). A virtual knob could be as smooth as butter and responsive like analogue hardware.. but yeah, very few companies bother to as it takes some extra effort.

I used Novation Automap for a long time and used to own multiple SL Zeros

Currently I host all of my VSTs inside of Voltage Modular which is then hosted inside of my DAW

Voltage Modular is a "Virtual Eurorack" but the pro paid version has a VST (2&3) host that turns your plugin into a "module". (You can also use it to host VSTs 2 and 3 inside of DAWs that don't support them like Protools)

The advantages to this is you can use all of the modular tools to attenuate and convert incoming MIDI CCs to all kinds of things, filter incoming note data and basically do all kinds of things with MIDI

You can also use it to do all kinds of things with audio

And since you can host multiple VSTs as multiple modules at the same time you can do things like create a layered patch with 2 or more plugins, route the audio to a mixer inside of it that is fully controllable via MIDI including sends and send that audio to another hosted plugin like say Valhalla Shimmer or something and you end up being able to do all sorts of amazing things with audio and MIDi and save all of it as a recallable patch

You can even host multiple instances of Voltage Modular inside of Voltage Modular

If you want to push the boundaries of what MIDI 1.0 can do I highly recommend you try it

I am looking forward to widespread adoption of MIDI 2.0 over the next few years that will offer thousands more CCs, hundreds of MIDI Channels, and significantly higher resolution of everything

[El°HYM]

Too bad you didnt keep one of those....

[Funky40]

Novation Automap had proper user assignable scaling for the mapped controls. This gave a lot more control over the resolution and thus the "tactile feel" of the knob.

the answer to this in 2015 is:
use GigPerformer as your Host. Load plugins there

Novation Automap had proper user assignable scaling for the mapped controls. This gave a lot more control over the resolution and thus the "tactile feel" of the knob. It was a bit limited though as it didn't have any custom curves for acceleration

you make a point !


i DO use GigPerformer. I can:
- set min-max values per CC
- draw out curvatures per CC
I DO use this functionality wherever i need to. Which is for nearly any CC

Who ever has ever seen what we can achive with just that, a good functionality within the cc mapping dialog, won´t ever go into a Forum and tell the people how good haptics and tactile feel HW has.

I mean, i see the point of Love towards HW.
But do you folks see the point how much better live jamm and perform setups we can create with sayed functionality at hand ?... i do have here a point

[Funky40]

edit: failed at edit

[pdxindy]

Who ever has ever seen what we can achive with just that, a good functionality within the cc mapping dialog, won´t ever go into a Forum and tell the people how good haptics and tactile feel HW has.

The mouse and screen is magnitudes faster and more agile at dealing with different software synths/fx than any midi controller.

For tactile feel and muscle memory... hardware is better because it is not trying to control multiple devices with different designs.

IME, the midi controller is stuck in between and sucks at both.