Software vs Hardware

[Daru925]

I think paying 200 for 8 years use is pretty good value. But I get your reasoning.

I prefer to have the mindset that everything i buy is gonna break eventually so I usually invest in tools that I will use a lot, after demoing them extensively if possible.

And So far, by the time some of the tools I used got obsolete, there was a better replacement available. Lucky me.

So my only option is to convert everything into wav stems and hope I can convert them into the next format when wav also disappear..

[SebAV]

In 2025, virtual instruments sound so good that one doesn't even need to look at hardware.

Unless one prefers hands on bespoke interfaces,

There is 100% absolutely no more bespoke hands on interface than a good MIDI controller you have programmed to do exactly what you want it to and that's fits into your workflow

Well, there is no midi controller I know that has a one knob per function to match the soft synths I use. If you are very lucky you might get 16 knobs and 16 sliders....but that's unlikely, very expensive, and still doesn't cover everything.

For $159 you can get a Novation Launch Control XL that has 8 sliders, 16 buttons and 24 knobs.

You can get them at Amazon, Sweetwater, Guitar Center, Thomann and pretty much any music retailer

You can use the Novation Components software that comes with it (or use the online version) to set up very quickly and easily whatever MIDI Channel and CC you want and have 8 pages/banks worth of all those knobs and you can control the pages/banks via external MIDI and even sequence the changes if you want

And you can very easily set up unique USB device IDs for them and your computer can see up to 8 of them if you choose

It's a very simple, very easy, very low cost rock solid system

I’m with you with this idea but I always come back to mouse and screen computer because I can’t remember what each knob or slider controls.

[kritikon]

Yeah, midi controllers are so poor even today. I can't imagine anything less inspiring or useful than a row of blank knobs and sliders. It's perfectly obvious how much better midi controllers could be, but nobody makes anything even remotely intuitive, despite how easy it would be for some kind of LED indicators or even with those great small screens that are available nowadays. I look every now and then but IMO midi controllers are still uniformly shite. Haven't moved on and improved for years now.

[0degree]

You could have instead of creating another thread about a topic that's been beaten to death on this forum.

While that's true it's also true that hardware vs software discussion changes with time as both get better so the whole debate is always a moving target

[frag]

The HW vs SW argument always amuses me, as if all of the people commenting don't spend too much on both

Nailed it!

Now if you excuse me, I need to make 54 albums with a drone sound changing a bit. Don't you know that's "music"

[IvyBirds]

Yeah, midi controllers are so poor even today. I can't imagine anything less inspiring or useful than a row of blank knobs and sliders. It's perfectly obvious how much better midi controllers could be, but nobody makes anything even remotely intuitive, despite how easy it would be for some kind of LED indicators or even with those great small screens that are available nowadays. I look every now and then but IMO midi controllers are still uniformly shite. Haven't moved on and improved for years now.

And yet most hardware synths that the Hardware Evangelists talk about they need to have the tactile experience they claim is so important don't have tiny screens for each control or LED. It's always mind blowing to me that people hold MIDI controllers to some kind of higher standard than they do for hardware synths that supposedly have such a high tactile experience

If someone made such a thing with it would be to large and to expensive

The advantage to something like a Launch Control XL, is that is small and inexpensive Novation hit it out of the park with the size and spacings of the knobs and faders and buttons. For $159 or less you get 16 buttons, 8 faders, and 24 knobs that are spaced out just far enough that they are comfortable to use, but just close enough together that you can fit all of that in less than one square foot of desktop space.

Imagine something with 48 controls, which is way more than most hardware synths have, each having a screen and LED lights. That would be massively huge and expensive and again if they made such a thing the excuse would become well that controller sucks because it's to big and to expensive

The other mind-blowing thing are the people who pretend having a bunch of knobs and sliders is so important to them who then turn around and say having a bunch of knobs and faders is somehow not inspiring

As far as being "intuitive" or "inspiring" how much more "intuitive" or "inspiring" do you want?
Every plugin synth I own that has a filter cutoff and resonance control has them assigned to the same exact knobs. Same thing goes for three different ADSR envelopes the same knobs every single time. It really doesn't get more intuitive than that especially when many plugins have the envelope controls on a different screen than other things like effects

For example when setting the controls for delay and/or reverbs being able to tweak the sustain and release of envelopes is very very handy, but many times the envelope controls are on a separate page, and then when you do you realize that the output of osc 2 should be a little lower but again that's on a different page, there is nothing more intuitive and inspiring than just being able to turn a knob or move a fader to control those things that are universally the same for every instrument you use

[vitocorleone123]

Mapping controllers is not something I bother with. Been there done that. Easier and more enjoyable to use the mouse with software for me. I have synths with dozens of knobs on them that could be used a controllers, and I tried it out, and…. Back to my mouse.

If I want to use my hands on direct controls I’ll use my hardware synths and fx as hardware. Or not. Since most of my hardware can be controlled via the DAW with my mouse, too. Just depends on how I feel in the moment.

Again, it’s “+” not “vs”. I designed my system to be as seamless as possible to integrate both hardware and software - and was largely successful. I wouldn’t want to limit myself to just one or the other ever again unless I was forced to.

[uOpt]

I don't have too many gripes about using sw synths, apart from the obvious pain I get from too much mousing, but that applies to all sw, not just synths.

Yeah, that klickibunti FUI stuff can be annoying. For productivity work I avoid it.

I wonder whether anybody ever made a softsynth with a commandline interface?

[Examigan]

Yeah, midi controllers are so poor even today. I can't imagine anything less inspiring or useful than a row of blank knobs and sliders.

I'm not sure how many MIDI controllers have this, but mine has certain items printed on it: Cutoff, Resonance, Vibrato, Tuning, Panning, etc. so I can map those to the corresponding knobs. The sliders are the same way: Portamento time, Attack/Decay/Release, 2 Effect amounts, etc.

Those can be mapped to something other than what is printed on the controller of course, but it's helpful to have a starting point of some sort.

[Examigan]

Yeah, midi controllers are so poor even today. I can't imagine anything less inspiring or useful than a row of blank knobs and sliders. It's perfectly obvious how much better midi controllers could be, but nobody makes anything even remotely intuitive, despite how easy it would be for some kind of LED indicators or even with those great small screens that are available nowadays. I look every now and then but IMO midi controllers are still uniformly shite. Haven't moved on and improved for years now.

The advantage to something like a Launch Control XL, is that is small and inexpensive Novation hit it out of the park with the size and spacings of the knobs and faders and buttons. For $159 or less you get 16 buttons, 8 faders, and 24 knobs that are spaced out just far enough that they are comfortable to use, but just close enough together that you can fit all of that in less than one square foot of desktop space.

Imagine something with 48 controls, which is way more than most hardware synths have, each having a screen and LED lights. That would be massively huge and expensive and again if they made such a thing the excuse would become well that controller sucks because it's to big and to expensive.

That controller looks pretty cool, I didn't know about that one.

I am guessing you can do this, since its all just MIDI anyway, but.... can they be linked up somehow so you can have 2 or 3 of them at once to have a crazy amount of controls? They are cheap enough to do that, so I was just wondering.

[Examigan]

Mapping controllers is not something I bother with. Been there done that. Easier and more enjoyable to use the mouse with software for me. I have synths with dozens of knobs on them that could be used a controllers, and I tried it out, and…. Back to my mouse.

The problem I ran into with that is it seems the resolution isn't too great when using automation for things like controlling the filter cutoff, unless you use a controller. It sometimes can be too chunky versus smooth sounding.

[kritikon]

Likewise, I've tried using hw synths as controllers for plugins. It's better than some shite controller with blank knobs etc, at least you have the main parameters such as filter, env, lfos etc labeled, but generally still have to do some mapping. And having done that kind of stuff extensively in the past, I hate having to dick around with maps + presets blah blah. Kills the fun, kills the experience, kills the workflow. Using a mouse is easier for me with sw and the automation is considerably better that way. But mousing also kills everything as above. It's just a chore, painful, tedious. Maybe one day controllers will be made an awful lot better, but currently there is literally nothing on the market that tempts me. The best controller for any synth would be a big enough one with enough controls for all the main parameters plus labelling/screen/led/whatever. And with the price that would entail...it's effectively a hw synth .

Plugins and controllers are still a crap experience for me, despite I use some plugins because of various reasons. Good luck to anyone for whom that is their modus operandi. Not for me, and sw was a large part of the reason I had a long break from anything music related. Way back I had to go almost entirely sw for logistical reasons and it just killed any pleasure from making music. Fkn awful experience I never want to go back to. Nothing has changed with controllers etc since then. You'd think somebody could make a decent controller by now...oh wait, they do - they're called hw synths .

[vurt]

It would be equally stupid to sell my Make Noise Strega

yes, you would!
/wanders off to plug all 8 outs of multimod in to strega and see what happens...

this happens

[psycho45039]

An even bigger thing not mentioned here is the developer discontinues the virtual intrument/effect. So even if you have older hardware capable of running it, you can't. An example I'll give is I kept an old Power Mac G5 around to run NI Kore 2, Vokator and Spektral Delay. I still have the machine and I still own the software but 2 years ago I lost the system drive and didn't have a back up of it and now I can't reauthorize the software to use it. Since then I've been buying hardware synths and rarely if ever use a software instrument. I refuse to spend time and/or money on something that at any moment I won't be able to use.

My closet of broken hardware Synths that just stopped working one day would like a word

Hardware synths can and do break all the time, which is why I use software

I refuse to spend time anor money on something that at any moment I won't be able to use

Repairs are possible, usually the only thing that goes wrong are the electrolytic capacitors age out. That is something typical in all electronic devices. Besides turning real knobs on real hardware is much more enjoyable than mousing around. Here's a picture my current setup.

[IvyBirds]

That controller looks pretty cool, I didn't know about that one.

I am guessing you can do this, since its all just MIDI anyway, but.... can they be linked up somehow so you can have 2 or 3 of them at once to have a crazy amount of controls? They are cheap enough to do that, so I was just wondering.

Yes, Novation has baked into the firmware the ability to change USB device ID's. They have 8 different ones

That's important because when you have more than one of the same device attached via USB it's very easy to confuse your computer or your software/DAW

When these are attached your computer will see them as LaunchControl1, LaunchControl2, Launchcontrol3 etc

I have four of them attached to each one of my main studio PCs.

With four of them you end up with 64 buttons, 32 sliders, and 96 knobs.

Each one has 8 pages of different layouts so that is a lot of programability

One computer/controller is setup to universally to control softsynths that are subtractive in nature. The other is setup to universally control control FM Synths

The idea is not to make it totally knob over function but just the controls you use the most

For example with FM every operator has a level that is the bottom faders. I have 8 of them. I have some FM Synths that have 8 operators, some that have 6, some that have four, and some that have 2. It doesn't matter if I use all of them with every synth or not. They are all there to use of needed in a universal way.

Each operator also has a Course control (or the equivalent) for ratio that's the first knob above the fader again I have 8 of them, above that is fine

On both setups the second unit is just for envelopes. The faders are for ADSR 1 and 2, unless they are 8 stage like on the DX7 in which case they are L1-L4, and R1-R4. That gives me me 8 ADSR envelopes, and four Eight Stage envelopes, if I need more they are on page 2, need more they are on stage 3

The main advantage of using multiples is that the more you have the more logical you can arrange things