Taupe Beats

Apologies, but a rant forthcoming (spoiler alert: I agree entirely with the quoted post). The hostility of the Devilfish engineer's response was off-putting to me, and frankly made me want the Behringer clone a whole lot more (and I don't regret getting it...). A lot of attitudes from gear nerds around 303's for a long time has felt like elitism disguised as authenticity. 303's have been prevalent in music yet not only rare and quite expensive, but the more accessible/affordable clones were typically derided based on their cost. Which feels gross to me because the 303 was originally designed to be an affordable alternative, itself! I'd feel slightly more chartable to the frustrations from the Devilfish mod creator, if they created the device originally being modded. But they didn't. So essentially, because they were the first to advertise the choice of mods for that device, they can arbitrarily claim ownership? I don't agree with that at all. Then furthermore, to claim said ownership and keep the production pipeline both a) extremely slow, and b) impossible to meet demand. I very much disagree with that. It stinks of entitlement. Especially when you see that certain well-known producers are gear-porning numerous Devilfish mods on Instagram vs. lesser known producers having to wait years to get theirs. Doesn't sit right with me at all. TL:DR:HT version, I think the Devilfish clone guy's rant comes across as promoting rich boy gear philosophies and "stay out of our clubhouse" elitism, while simultaneously misunderstanding wtf a 303 was made for is the first place.

Thank you!!!

November 17th, CMI plugin in V Collection plz.

You made me a birthday song once and it was one of the most thoughtful things anyone has ever done for me. Sadly I have lost the song to time but the memory suffices. Thank you.

Some focus on modern speed garage in this one

I don't focus on modern speed garage in this one

Focused on the modern Speed Garage on this one

And yet you couldn't even quote me. Are you scared that I would have seen this on a message board and thought you were trying to show me how tough you were as some kind of threat? You may want to reevaluate how you made yourself look with this one, tough guy! Go listen to my mixes which I post here for you. No modular setup. Charter member of the Criterion Channel. And someone who can see how pathetic people who obsess over Boards of Canada are. Pathetic insecure fake.

Your mother's sweet ass.

I'd suggest never generalizing about "people" in regards to literally anything. Especially not when it comes to the context of Boards of Canada.

True there's a lot of menu jumping for the Pyramid. I tend to like using its randomness and probability so I don't find myself needing to jump from track to track to change things. For instance, I tend to like to dedicate an entire bank to messing with CC's/notes/whatever on a single channel, and then mute tracks as needed within the bank to bring in what I want. Maybe have a master bank in a sequence to do something like that but with more than one channel? To a totally unrelated subject. Am I the only one who thinks it's crazy that Ableton doesn't offer true onboard sample editing? Baffling that I can't truly crop samples on a Push and then have the sample actually cropped if I need to play the sample back elsewhere. I'd love Ableton's sampler if it actually did this.

The thing about the Pyramid that @auxien is totally right about, there is a high learning curve for it. Certain things can be surprisingly complex to navigate compared to other sequencers (changing the BPM, for example), when you're not familiar with it. I admittedly had one for a long time before I finally started to gel with it. But that was also due to having other sequencers around and being too lazy to put the time in. I have since done so and found the Pyramid well worth it for precisely what you're mentioning @dcom. There are a ton of things you can do on that box that most hardware sequencers won't ever consider. Some things so unique that a lot of old curmudgeonly fucks will legit doubt is true when you tell them about it (hello prick from the Audiobus forums when I mentioned being able to send PC's on a MIDI LFO!). That kind of thing makes the Pyramid a lovely device, imo. Kinda like Elektron boxes, if you put in the time to learn their workflow, you'll get rewarded for it.

He just did a Boiler Room set yesterday that was awesome

Gotcha, and yeah the BSP being mono only for melodic stuff is a limiter for sure. As a Squarp Pyramid owner, I'd recommend that. 64 MIDI tracks at any given time, and a whole lot you can do within each track. A ton of great MIDI effects/tools that most hardware sequencers don't have. Also can do CV/Gate stuff (including conversion to/from MIDI) if you need it. Ever check out an FL Studio Fire that Akai made? https://www.akaipro.com/akai-fire

I personally don't find the Arturia sequencer approach to melody all that great. For me anyway, my mind isn't running fast enough to be able to quickly think about gate and velocity changes per-step when looking at 16 identical knobs. For live sequencing, ok sure. But once you get into tweaking steps, it's not as intuitive imo. From what I've seen of your rig, I'd recommend a Beatstep Pro. 2 mono melodic sequencers (where the channels can be changed easily onboard *snicker*), the same drum track as the Drumbrute, and the roller strip can be used for either melody or drum tracks. Individual CV/Gate outputs (with an extra Mod output for the velocity) for the melodic tracks. A whole lot more I'm not talking about.

I have the 2S. Had the original Drumbrute (not the Impact). The 2S has some really cool parts and major frustrations. I am not huge on Arturia's oscillators. The envelopes are great and can be looped ARP-style. I wish they'd implemented the filter exactly like it works on the Microbrute (other than having the ability to have an open gate for external signals which is easier to do on the 2S). The Microbrute's (and assuming the original Minibrute, never used one) filter is a thing of beauty. They put the "Brute Factor" drive stage at the filter level rather than the master volume on the Minibrute 2S. So much better in the Microbrute, imo. Patchbay's cool, a lot of modulation potential (and there's 2 attentuators). And one of the dumbest things about the Minibrute 2S (and Microbrute, for that matter): You can't change the MIDI channel without the software. WTF is a synth doing putting a sequencer on it and then tethering it to one MIDI channel without having to stop everything and run software to change it? Still waiting to see if Arturia ever updates the firmware for that. Ridiculous. Overall, surprisingly high learning curve for a monosynth, that can give you a likely wider sound palate than most other monosynths. And it's big (but not nearly as big as a Matrixbrute so silver linings). Drumbrute Impact has the same sequencer as the original Drumbrute. By far the best part of it (and the same as the Beatstep Pro'd drum track). The Drumbrute's sounds were mainly underwhelming (The bass drums were ok, BD2 esp). The FM voice on the Impact looks cool but I'd still rather have the Volca Drum for that stuff. The individual outputs is a nice touch.

With absolutely no evidence, I think that Soul Mass Transit System are Mak & Pasteman under a new name.

Nymphes is polyphonic, btw I'd go for the Nymphes. True analog poly 6-voice is pretty nice. Good MIDI control and modulation.

pre-jail Boosie ruled

I hear this (lookin' at my rack of nothing but AMT8's). With that considered however, technology is about what's attainable rather than what's practical, for better or worse. One of the big debates with MIDI 2.0, has the 1.0 spec been around for so long with so much money invested into gear designed for it. I look at other types of tech and the willingness to abandon it after large monetary investments (home media formats, data port types, etc.), and feel confident MIDI 2.0 will arrive eventually.

I'd personally say it's not quite "hitting with a hammer twice a day". I guess the point I'm making is that while I agree that there is stress run on it with each use, it's nowhere near the level of stress you're implying and that the devices are overall going to be a good piece of security in a rig. With the awareness of how long the item's been in use as they have a lifetime of ~10 years. I'm not saying it's the only piece of security you need. I could always run my own rig safer, no doubt, guessing this is the same for most. Where I think we disagree is that I would consider it a somewhat important piece for 99% of rigs (the 1% being professional studios with a more heavy-duty solution). In another subject, the Bastl Microgranny is a sneak wonderful sounding D/A. I really like the way it makes drum samples sound before you even start messing with parameters. Have a feeling it will get more of a reputation for this over time.

Yes this is all true. The analogy is to consider them like bike helmets. You're gonna need it when it counts.

This all sounds nice but I'd definitely not call it "easy" in any sense. This is all a ton of manual back work to code all that transposition that would end up being timely and/or expensive (or someone would be a saint and share their own work). And to the 2nd paragraph, I promise that's not true. There may not be a ton of outliers but I promise there are plenty of synths who use all the "standard" cc's for stuff that has nothing to do with the intended use. It needs to be a foundational change for future implementation first. Then the idea of retrofitting is more realistic. We have learned to be patient for MIDI 2.0 so I'm more than happy to wait and keep my fingers crossed that the new spec is greatness.