A Beginner's Guide to Buying A Synth

[BCM]

Anybody know the name/model of that 80s roland that is basically a juno but with built in speakers and much cheaper?

HS-60

[Entorwellian]

3 hours ago, sweepstakes said:

Yeah, one half-decent (and fun) monosynth, plus something that can sample and layer it, is an excellent way to start. You quickly figure out that with persistence, you can get all the foundational sounds from those, and striving for mastery beats hoarding gear every time.

Really I think its most important just to have a good set of headphones with a flat response ($150-250 akg or sennheisers are fine) and a portable recorder for sampling, like a tascam or zoom recorder. After that just loading up OpenMPT with slickEQ plugin and Audacity as a multitrack wave editor is good enough.

[Limo]

5 hours ago, Entorwellian said:

Really I think its most important just to have a good set of headphones with a flat response ($150-250 akg or sennheisers are fine) and a portable recorder for sampling, like a tascam or zoom recorder. After that just loading up OpenMPT with slickEQ plugin and Audacity as a multitrack wave editor is good enough.

Yeah, but we were talking about buying a synth, which is orthogonal to making music.

Which is why I still hold: buy a Volca Keys. It can do almost everything you could think to do with a synth and it can do it in a way that your computer (or a mobile app) can’t which means it’ll still be somewhat useful  when you move on to better things. And if you decide making synthesizer sounds is not for you, you won’t have wasted all that much money on it.

 

[chim]

The monologue sounds great for farty electro but that's a pretty specific usage, there are way more versatile options.  The sk-1 could at least sample anything. The microkorg had polyphony, superb built in FX, a vocoder that you can even plug a guitar into. Yamaha put out a reface DX that takes you to FM heaven for cheap. Heck, you might be able to pick up a true classic roland d50 for the same price. 

My point is that on these cheap analogs, the options are limited and the VCO's aren't exactly amazing sounding, which goes for even the 1000 eur stuff like the deepmind or prologue. The moog grandmother or maybe behringers pro-1 or model d are probably better options but do you really want a mono for your first synth? So you're likely better off with a more workhorsey digital option. 

[Entorwellian]

8 hours ago, rhmilo said:

Yeah, but we were talking about buying a synth, which is orthogonal to making music.

Which is why I still hold: buy a Volca Keys. It can do almost everything you could think to do with a synth and it can do it in a way that your computer (or a mobile app) can’t which means it’ll still be somewhat useful  when you move on to better things. And if you decide making synthesizer sounds is not for you, you won’t have wasted all that much money on it.

 

I think the volca keys, and most of the volcas in general, are poor choices because their amplitude envelopes are piss. A lot of them only have basic attack, decay and release, and not even for every individual oscillator. Panning also doesn't exist on a lot of them because they have mono outs. The Volca bass is the worst offender, imo.

[Limo]

51 minutes ago, Entorwellian said:

I think the volca keys, and most of the volcas in general, are poor choices because their amplitude envelopes are piss. A lot of them only have basic attack, decay and release, and not even for every individual oscillator. Panning also doesn't exist on a lot of them because they have mono outs. The Volca bass is the worst offender, imo.

True dat. But for the price they can’t be beat. Well, maybe by the Behringer 101. Dunno.

[Alcofribas]

8 hours ago, chim said:

The monologue sounds great for farty electro but that's a pretty specific usage, there are way more versatile options.  The sk-1 could at least sample anything. The microkorg had polyphony, superb built in FX, a vocoder that you can even plug a guitar into. Yamaha put out a reface DX that takes you to FM heaven for cheap. Heck, you might be able to pick up a true classic roland d50 for the same price. 

My point is that on these cheap analogs, the options are limited and the VCO's aren't exactly amazing sounding, which goes for even the 1000 eur stuff like the deepmind or prologue. The moog grandmother or maybe behringers pro-1 or model d are probably better options but do you really want a mono for your first synth? So you're likely better off with a more workhorsey digital option. 

Having a mono as your first synth is totally fine imo. You can learn a lot and get so many incredible sounds from monosynths. Something like the grandmother can get you to all kinds of amazing realms while also being quite easy to understand. Same with the pro-one (dat modulation section). If you can’t make amazing music with either of those, even as a first synth, it’s possible you’re just not good at synths.  
 

I don’t think there is some ideal first synth that checks every box and does a bit of everything. Lots of different ways to get into synths, it’s entirely dependent on what the user is into and what kind of interface works for them. For a lot of people FM would be a horrible place to start imo

[auxien]

9 hours ago, chim said:

The monologue sounds great for farty electro but that's a pretty specific usage, there are way more versatile options.  

half the time i've used the monologue in my tunes i was just running other hardware through its filter. there certainly are more versatile options in hardware, even at that price yeah.... maximum versatility isn't always an asset tho. 

[sweepstakes]

1 hour ago, Alcofribas said:

For a lot of people FM would be a horrible place to start imo

FM is where I started lol. Well, after Rebirth-338. Only a broke teenage basement dweller could have the patience and persistence to dive TX81Z menus.

[Alcofribas]

25 minutes ago, sweepstakes said:

FM is where I started lol. Well, after Rebirth-338. Only a broke teenage basement dweller could have the patience and persistence to dive TX81Z menus.

i'm just saying it depends on the situation. i'm a firm believer in equipment being far less important than persistence 

[Entorwellian]

Dedicated fm synths are one of the few machines out there where you can use the presets and no one will think worse of you for it.