Here's a Weird One - I'm Buying Hardware Again!

[Kriminal]

Should have got the TAL version....

I would have thought the MiniBrute would suit your music. Its a fantastic synth.

[bones]

Minibrute only has two octaves of keys, which isn't enough for me on stage. It is why I ultimately got rid of my Korg MicroX (which I loved to death). The three octaves in the Ultranova and Minilogue are perfect. The Minibrute is also monophonic, which is a bit limiting.

[Kriminal]

Yeah.... but it sounds nasty!!!!

[bones]

The Minilogue can do nasty pretty well, with unison, and I just bought a little Yamaha mixer, AG-06, that has an amp sim effect built in that should make it even nastier. The more time I spend with the Minilogue, the more I like it. It can't touch the Ultranova for strings but it does them well enough and the other sounds we need are all in there, so it's not a disaster. The other thing I can do is run the Minilogue through the Ultranova and use the Ultranova's effects on it, which should make for some ridiculously huge stacked sounds.

I had to buy the mixer because the Ultranova won't work with my laptop. It seems the driver is not compatible with USB 3. Hopefully Novation will fix it, as it is still a current model, but I can't see us having it for our gig next month so I've bought this mixer as a back-up - it has it's own USB audio I/O and a reverb to go with the Amp Sim. The Ultranova is too big to carry with us when we return to Europe so getting by without now will make traveling easier next year.

[bones]

OK, after a frustrating couple of months, I've decided my new hardware is garbage and I'm getting rid of it. The Ultranova makes both the Minilogue and the Boutique synths sound like krap. I'd be doing our music a huge disservice to use any of it so I am sticking with the Ultranova and selling the new stuff on eBay. It was a stupid impulse decision to buy them in the first place, so I have no-one to blame but my own, stupid self. I am going to keep the JP-08 because it's tiny size is perfect for working on my boat but I'd never consider using it live or in any recordings, it's far too limited.

The Ultranova still won't work with my Surface Book, so I'm getting rid of that, too, and buying something a little less bleeding edge that won't constantly cause me hassles.

[bones]

Oops! I did it again, again. I bought some more hardware. This time, though, I went in with a more cynical attitude, fully prepared to be unimpressed and walk away, but the stupid thing is fantastic and I bought it. I got a shiny, silver Korg Monologue and in less than an hour I had it working in three songs where the Ultranova struggles.

At first glance it just looks like a cut down Minilogue but it sounds quite different. It's much fuller and harder, even before you start to crank up the built-in Drive. It seems as if they have taken a lot of user comments about the Minilogue on board, then stripped out the bits no-one cared about and supercharged what was left. And there is one area where they have actually put more stuff in - the sequencer now has 16 buttons, instead of eight, and it seems easier to use now than it was (although that could just be because I've used the old one). Overall, though, it only has about half the number of controls and an octave less keys. It is physically much smaller, not as tiny as the Roland Boutique stuff but still small enough to fit in my laptop bag (i.e. carry-on baggage).

I haven't got around to selling the other stuff yet so I can do some side-by-side comparisons if anyone is interested, although I'll have to move some things around to make room to set it all up. I'm going to compare it to the Minilogue, just to satisfy my own curiosity, but I don't know if I even care any more how it stacks up against the Roland synths. They are just too toy-like to take seriously, even though they have a few great features I wish the Korgs had (like a USB audio I/O).

Today feels like my early experience with Orion. After spending 12 months or more trying Cakewalk and Cubase, then giving Fruityloops a red-hot go for a good six months or more, I spent just a few days with Orion and got more done than I had the previous 18 months. And today I got more done in a couple of hours with the Monologue than I have in six months with the JP-08, JU-06 and the Minilogue. the JP-08, in particular, I have played around with for countless hours, yet not really got any great sounds out of it. Some useful sounds, sure, but nothing that really excites me.

It's possibly down to the way they work and the quality of the presets. With the Rolands and the Minilogue, there are a lot of parameters to wade through if you want to take a preset and customise it to your needs and, because the controls are in random positions, it's easy to screw it up and not be able to go back. But the Monologue is far more simple and I've found it really easy to know exactly what to tweak to get what I want, really quickly. I also think it has a lot more presets that are really useful for the type of music we make, which helps a lot.

[Moe Shinola]

I just recently got a JDXi, it's so much better than the Microkorg I bought over Christmas. Sold that one to get the Roland, couldn't be happier. I can make 4-part arrangements with it, complete with drums!

[bones]

the JDXi seemed a bit cheap and nasty to me when I checked it out. And if it's keys are the same as the Boutique ones, they aren't a patch on the Monologue/Minilogue's. It's certainly got a million features, kind of like my old Korg Trinity with the Prophecy board, in a tiny package and the design is very sharp.

[fea]

Anyone tried Access Virus synths and Orion?

[bones]

No, I still have both my kidneys. But any synth will work with Orion, that's what MIDI is all about.

[nix]

Yeah, I have an original TI desktop.
It used to have sync issues with the arp,
but that's better if not fixed with firmware updates.
O doesn't real-time render, so you need to record it.
Sure, I can recommend it. It works I think.

Mine just lost a row of pixels on the LCD-dang