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Modeling suffers a lot from bad interface design. It's not the digital that's the problem, it's the interface. I recently picked up a Boss SY-300 guitar synth.
by beat 8y ago
Modeling suffers a lot from bad interface design. It's not the digital that's the problem, it's the interface.
I recently picked up a Boss SY-300 guitar synth. It sounds great, but I hate it. It's almost impossible to manipulate its behavior in realtime. It really needs a computer plugged in, and a lot of clicking around with a mouse. It's completely outside my music-brain. I don't have these problems with a traditional analog synth, with knobs for everything (I play an Arturia Microbrute regularly).
It CAN be done, though. I use a digital tape-modeling delay, and it works beautifully and sounds amazing. It just respects how we work things with our hands.
- TylerE 8y agoThe Line 6 Helix UI is pretty great. That's the unit I'm running. Everything easily tweakable from the unit, or connect it to a PC via USB and use the their software which is even easier since you have a mouse, drag and drop, etc. Way way better than, say, Fractal. This video shows what the UI on the unit itself is like... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-i_i1nrRy0&t=295 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-i_i1nrRy0&t=295
- beat 8y agoA bandmate of mine was using a Helix (with an electric cello). He replaced it with a board full of cheap Chinese mini-pedals and analog amp sims. It definitely sounded better than anything else of its ilk I've heard, though.
- TylerE 8y agoTHe thing I really like it not having to deal with a board full of pedals, and all the cabling, power supplies, etc.
- beat 8y agoI wish I could be there. But I'm too fussy about the tone of my drive systems (amp and pedals), and too into knob-level manipulation of delay and reverb pedals.
- TylerE 8y agoActually for knob-fiddling the helix is great... you can have up to 3 expression pedals, and ANY parameter can be mapped to them - so you could have say delay time on one pedal (with user definable bottom and top range), and a wet/dry blend on another.