Guest LJG Posted January 30, 2007 Share Posted January 30, 2007 What do you lot think of Triton synths? I'm going to be wanting another hardware synth with some programmability, flexibility, and polyphony at some point, and I'm just trying to figure out what's a good foundational piece of gear, nice sounds built in but with tweakability, etc. I've looked a lot at the Nord stuff, which is great, but seriously I shouldn't spend that much money at all. I really shouldn't. So what's a nice basic synth to use if Tritons aren't worth it? Any advice? I know there have been threads on this subject generally before, but in the interest of current updated blah blah here we go again... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest aron Posted January 30, 2007 Share Posted January 30, 2007 not really too much insight on the subject, but i had a triton LE at my house for about a month not too long ago. it was pretty fuckin dope i thought. it had lots of absolutely deadly sounds. it was pretty easy to put a song together in it too, but i never really tried to tweak the sounds out too much. it didnt seem that complicated to mess around though. it was definitely fun and easy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kcinsu Posted January 31, 2007 Share Posted January 31, 2007 first, lets clear some things up. A triton is nothing like a nord. A triton is more of a sound module then a synth. It has preprogrammed sounds for you to write music with. While there is a little bit of synthesis going on, there is a good amount of samples, and the triton doesnt really let you create sounds from scratch. Nords, while they come with presets, allow you to make sounds from scratch. It is a true synthesizer. So, you need to ask yourself, what is it you want? If you want a bunch of (in my opinion, thin and shitty) sounds to put together songs, then get the Triton. If you want a synth that lets you make your own (great sounding) sounds, get a nord. hope that helped. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acid1 Posted January 31, 2007 Share Posted January 31, 2007 What do you lot think of Triton synths? I'm going to be wanting another hardware synth with some programmability, flexibility, and polyphony at some point, and I'm just trying to figure out what's a good foundational piece of gear, nice sounds built in but with tweakability, etc. I've looked a lot at the Nord stuff, which is great, but seriously I shouldn't spend that much money at all. I really shouldn't. So what's a nice basic synth to use if Tritons aren't worth it? Any advice? I know there have been threads on this subject generally before, but in the interest of current updated blah blah here we go again... Most of the good sounds have already been used it seems, very popular Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest feta lol Posted January 31, 2007 Share Posted January 31, 2007 tritons arent really synths, theyre workstations. and yes i do think that of the major workstations, tritons are prolly the best. but most people who use workstations to create entire songs write music for paris hilton or are rappers. use different pieces of hardware to achieve a more diverse sound. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ten fingers ten toes Posted January 31, 2007 Share Posted January 31, 2007 Also, Triton's come from the sea. Most of the Synths used in electronic music are land dwellers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kakapo Posted January 31, 2007 Share Posted January 31, 2007 first, lets clear some things up. A triton is more of a sound module then a synth. tritons arent really synths, theyre workstations. I take your points, but these are misleading. They are very much synthesizers. They may not mimic the architecture of subtractive synthesis in quite the same way a Nord does, but they are still synths. And most 'workstations' have a significant amount of tweakability to them, they're just maybe not as hands on as a VA. Confusion comes about as the Tritons have a reputation for being preset machines, but there's a bit more to them than that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest feta lol Posted January 31, 2007 Share Posted January 31, 2007 first, lets clear some things up. A triton is more of a sound module then a synth. tritons arent really synths, theyre workstations. I take your points, but these are misleading. They are very much synthesizers. They may not mimic the architecture of subtractive synthesis in quite the same way a Nord does, but they are still synths. And most 'workstations' have a significant amount of tweakability to them, they're just maybe not as hands on as a VA. Confusion comes about as the Tritons have a reputation for being preset machines, but there's a bit more to them than that. ya but if youre looking for a synth then a wrkstation isnt really the route to take. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LJG Posted January 31, 2007 Share Posted January 31, 2007 first, lets clear some things up. A triton is nothing like a nord. A triton is more of a sound module then a synth. It has preprogrammed sounds for you to write music with. While there is a little bit of synthesis going on, there is a good amount of samples, and the triton doesnt really let you create sounds from scratch. Nords, while they come with presets, allow you to make sounds from scratch. It is a true synthesizer. So, you need to ask yourself, what is it you want? If you want a bunch of (in my opinion, thin and shitty) sounds to put together songs, then get the Triton. If you want a synth that lets you make your own (great sounding) sounds, get a nord. hope that helped. Yeah, I can see that. I do really enjoy programming my own sounds- however, I'm feeling a lack in the real basic stuff ahhhhh like good piano samples, basic instrument patches, you know, somewhat more boring meat and potatoes stuff... tritons arent really synths, theyre workstations. and yes i do think that of the major workstations, tritons are prolly the best. but most people who use workstations to create entire songs write music for paris hilton or are rappers. use different pieces of hardware to achieve a more diverse sound. LOL @ your new sig... diversity in hardware is certainly worth a lot. I guess I'm feeling a bit lost though- I've never done electronic stuff or synthesis of any kind until this summer, and I'm not sure what the essentials are, I guess. I've got a monophonic synth, which is great, and hella fun to program- however very difficult to do pads with, or any kind of nice basic sounds. I'm pretty much just trying to avoid stupid moves without simultaneously blowing all my cash before getting some actual experience under my belt... Also, Triton's come from the sea. Most of the Synths used in electronic music are land dwellers. YAAAAAARGGGH SCURVY KORGS YA DOGS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kakapo Posted January 31, 2007 Share Posted January 31, 2007 I'm feeling a lack in the real basic stuff ahhhhh like good piano samples, basic instrument patches, you know, somewhat more boring meat and potatoes stuff... One option would be the korg micro-x. Note: not the microkorg, this is something else. http://www.korg.com/GEAR/info.asp?a_prod_n...p;category_id=1 Synthesis engine is based on the triton. Its fairly new so you may have trouble finding someone who has used one. I had a fiddle on one in a shop before christmas, build quality was ok, but it wasn't amped up, so i couldn't tell you how it sounds. SOS gave it a glowing review in the dec 2006 issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pcock Posted January 31, 2007 Share Posted January 31, 2007 how are you finding your EMX-1 LJG? i find the sounds are pretty nice, i am just boggled at how little layering you can do on it before it just turns into a horrific farting noise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LJG Posted January 31, 2007 Share Posted January 31, 2007 I'm feeling a lack in the real basic stuff ahhhhh like good piano samples, basic instrument patches, you know, somewhat more boring meat and potatoes stuff... One option would be the korg micro-x. Note: not the microkorg, this is something else. http://www.korg.com/GEAR/info.asp?a_prod_n...p;category_id=1 Synthesis engine is based on the triton. Its fairly new so you may have trouble finding someone who has used one. I had a fiddle on one in a shop before christmas, build quality was ok, but it wasn't amped up, so i couldn't tell you how it sounds. SOS gave it a glowing review in the dec 2006 issue. Cool, I've seen that around- I'll have to investigate a bit more- thanks! how are you finding your EMX-1 LJG? i find the sounds are pretty nice, i am just boggled at how little layering you can do on it before it just turns into a horrific farting noise. I totally love it, totally. It does take some working with, and some creative fiddling, but I've been thoroughly pleased, apart from the aforementioned difficulty in creating nice pads without using up all your synth parts. This is actually my only gear, so I have a very live approach, and practice songs just as I would on say, guitar. It has been a nice core piece for starting out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pcock Posted January 31, 2007 Share Posted January 31, 2007 its the drum beats that annoyed me, if you layer up your bass drum with like 3 effects to make it reasonably heavy, it just drowns out all the other drums that play similteosly. i was just gonna buy this qy700 sequencer and layer up 10-20 seperate tracks of the same drum beat, with different effects to get it as heavy as i want. only gotta get 150 more quid thinkin about it actually, bangin. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LJG Posted February 1, 2007 Share Posted February 1, 2007 its the drum beats that annoyed me, if you layer up your bass drum with like 3 effects to make it reasonably heavy, it just drowns out all the other drums that play similteosly. i was just gonna buy this qy700 sequencer and layer up 10-20 seperate tracks of the same drum beat, with different effects to get it as heavy as i want. only gotta get 150 more quid thinkin about it actually, bangin. Yeah, the drums have definitely been difficult to tweak once you start layering. What I've found is that you can modulate the amplitude of the drums in the synth mod section, set the waveform for a single decaying note, turn the speed all the way up, and the mod all the way up, it has the effect of instant and continuous amplitude without clipping. Otherwise you have to select the most important part and reset the levels of all the others to avoid clipping. I'm very minute with regard to panning as well, even just a couple of degrees of it will really clean stuff up a lot. I'm broke as fuck and have no gear, but I imagine you could work around this with a good mixer and some outboard effects- assign all the drum parts to outputs 3 and 4, run those through a mixer with effects loop, etc. But rly, I've thought much more seriously about picking up the ESX-1 to handle more of the drum work... meh, me and money are only fair weather friends... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Braintree Posted February 5, 2007 Share Posted February 5, 2007 Yeah, I hate the Triton. Sounds cheap because it mostly houses samples from other cheap keyboards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LJG Posted February 6, 2007 Share Posted February 6, 2007 I'd like to redirect this thread just a tad towards the concept of workstations. Please bear in mind that I'm completely new to electronic music, synthesis, sequencing, and keyboards of any kind. So what is the major benefit of a workstation then? What features should one look for, and how does the sequencing actually work on these things? Just a casual glance makes this actually seem like a good way to go for me, particularly if some sampling functionality is included... but I really know nothing. I dig my hardware though. Tell me more. They need an electronic music production for dummies book, I'd be all up in that shit. But the reality is the answers here are going to be better- framing the question is the difficult part. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest feta lol Posted February 7, 2007 Share Posted February 7, 2007 I'd like to redirect this thread just a tad towards the concept of workstations. Please bear in mind that I'm completely new to electronic music, synthesis, sequencing, and keyboards of any kind. So what is the major benefit of a workstation then? What features should one look for, and how does the sequencing actually work on these things? Just a casual glance makes this actually seem like a good way to go for me, particularly if some sampling functionality is included... but I really know nothing. I dig my hardware though. Tell me more. They need an electronic music production for dummies book, I'd be all up in that shit. But the reality is the answers here are going to be better- framing the question is the difficult part. im pretty sure that the roland fantom has on board sampling on all of its models standard. i believe that the yamaha and korg base model workstations need a seperate chip to really get any kind if smapling power. i may be wrong on that as i havent looked at them in a while and was never totally interested in any workstation. basically workstations are an all in one music creation tool. onboard sequencers, a million different presets for all different kinds of music and some have some pretty good sampling capabilities. to me workstations are the easy way out. there really isnt much to alter your preset drum sounds and the acoustic recreations sound like shit, especially crash cymbols. i, and i think many others actually prefer to use software drums and hardware pads and leads. take for instance myself: i use my moog and my korg for all of my melodies. i then record onto my computer and make all of my beats on either floops or reason or both. all of my effects on the drums are down in wav editing programs and many of the effects i use on my synths are also vst. go get yourself a nice synth with midi capabilities and then maybe a firebox (if you have firewire). then go get reason or any other program with nice drum sounds and play with different effects until you get something that you like. when recording onto your computer from your synth youre gonna need either protools, cubase or the program that sony makes (i cant think of the name right now). make sure that are aware of what hardware works best with what software as this can be a huge issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LJG Posted February 7, 2007 Share Posted February 7, 2007 ^^ Yeah, this seems like a good sort of "component system" approach, where the strengths of individual parts are spread among the devices that do them best, rather than one single piece that may do some well and not others. A computer is probably going to be my next purchase, and I'm leaning toward just doing a custom build that can handle routing, low latency, etc, and get into some software for production. I'm still pretty pleased with the synth that I do have, and I think it's a nice springboard that can be expanded upon, probably first and foremost with some software digs. We'll see... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest feta lol Posted February 12, 2007 Share Posted February 12, 2007 ^^ Yeah, this seems like a good sort of "component system" approach, where the strengths of individual parts are spread among the devices that do them best, rather than one single piece that may do some well and not others. A computer is probably going to be my next purchase, and I'm leaning toward just doing a custom build that can handle routing, low latency, etc, and get into some software for production. I'm still pretty pleased with the synth that I do have, and I think it's a nice springboard that can be expanded upon, probably first and foremost with some software digs. We'll see... when buying a computer make sure that it has the newest firewire. fuck usb 2.0. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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