With All These Emulations Coming Out...

[TechHaus]

I remember going to a shop to check out an Andromeda and Minimoog Voyager.

There was a $600 Jupiter 6 and a $400 Sequential Circuits Pro One.

My dumbass bought none of the above - grabbed the just came out Korg MS2000r.

[Grizzellda]

I have no experience with the Andromeda, but soon I will be installing IKM's Syntronic, which includes an emulation. Will that give me a good taste of it??

[kraster]

The A6 sounds great, but its biggest problem IMO is that it lacks identity. It’s got an almost iconic status, but no resume to back it up. When you consider all the classic synths, like the Prophets, Obies, Jupiters, Junos, Moogs, and even digital synths like the DX7 and Virus, they all have identifiable sounds and you can point to well known songs, synth parts, even entire genres (e.g. Virus) that feature them. Personally, I can’t name a single well-known song that features an A6 and I couldn’t even tell you if I’ve ever actually heard one in a song. And, if someone said, ooh its got that “Andromeda sound”, would anyone know what that means? To be clear, I’m not saying it’s a bad synth, but it just doesn’t have a readily identifiable sound. I’d say the same thing applies to the PolyBrute - amazing and very capable synth, but lacks a distinguishable sonic identity. Just my 2c…

I think a lot of that is by design.

The A6 was designed as a kind of no holds barred analogue polysynth. Part Oberheim, part Moog and a bit of everything else.

It’s probably best described as an analogue workstation. 16 voices, 16 part multitimbral

The mix mode allows you to layer up to 16 programs in one go. Each of those programs is like an individual monosynth with 3 LFOs, 3 envelopes, 2 oscillators with multiple waveforms and FM, 2 filters etc.

A lot of the classics you mentioned are more immediate, more accessible and more “finished” sounding but ultimately more limited.

The Andromeda isn’t so much about having a signature sound but more about having the flexibility of a digital workstation but with analog oscillators and filters.

[Lbdunequest]

I have no experience with the Andromeda, but soon I will be installing IKM's Syntronic, which includes an emulation. Will that give me a good taste of it??

No it wount, its not an emulation, just sampled patches

[whassup]

I went back and read the Sound on Sound review from 2000 (I think it was). Author said he initially wasn't impressed because of the factory patches which he found were not very good (I think I read as much in this thread) but as he got to know it he really liked it a lot.

Yes, makes tons of sense to me. With any synth.

[dionenoid]

wtf is wrong with this site lately

[beely]

nm

[Teksonik]

I have no experience with the Andromeda, but soon I will be installing IKM's Syntronic, which includes an emulation. Will that give me a good taste of it??

It will give you some taste of it. I think Galaxy has some very nice patches but obviously it would be impractical to deep sample every sound an Adromeda can make otherwise it would be terabytes in size.

"Syntronik 2 Galaxy by IK Multimedia is a dedicated virtual synthesizer instrument modeled after the legendary Alesis Andromeda. It combines deep, multi-sampled analog oscillators with a hybrid sample-and-modeling engine, offering stunning sonic accuracy alongside modern features like advanced filters, arpeggiators, and multi-part layering".

No it wount, its not an emulation, just sampled patches

As I wrote before, one could argue that high quality samples can sound more accurate than a generated emulation. After all samples are the exact core sound of the instrument as you would hear it coming out of your speakers.

I acknowledge there is a general myopia at KVR surrounding samples but really sample based synthesis is one of the most powerful forms since anything you can hear you can sample.

The notion these days that everything has to be modulated a thousand ways is somewhat over rated because sometimes a great sounding patch is all that's really important without the need for modulation gymnastics. Sometimes people seem to focus more on what goes in to a Mod Matrix than what's coming out of the speakers.

The notion that "the hardware always sounds better" is another misguided concept and I say that as someone who grew up using hardware synths. The power we have "in the box" these days truly puts us in the golden age of synthesis. But again I realize this is KVR where hardware is automatically deemed to be king and analog is faithfully worshiped as a god.

At any rate the fact that there isn't already a generated Andromeda emulation may mean there will never be one for whatever reason so we may be left with options like Galaxy and other synths that in combination will give us a sound very close to the A6 and almost certainly well beyond what the hardware can achieve.

[Teksonik]

wtf is wrong with this site lately

"Lately" ?