3 ms·

Synth nerds are among the most ardent gear fetishizers there are. Personally I'm very happy to have my gear finally reduced to a laptop and a set of headphones.

tomcam 6y ago
Cannot upvote this enough. The portability is one thing. Another is reliability. I love Roland and Korg, but I purchased the last two Korg flagships and they both stopped functioning right after the warranty period. They are essentially custom computer hardware with none of the service options or reliability available in the PC/Mac world. Also Korg somehow gets their distinct sounds near flawlessly in software, even though their iPhone apps are a tiny fraction of the price of the hardware in real life.
- colanderman 6y ago
  > reliability Pre-COVID I had a semi-regular synth jam session with a dude 100% invested in software synths. First 30 minutes (no exaggeration) of every session was him fighting with Ableton or whatever, and rebooting his Mac, trying to get something trivial to work, like MIDI clock or input monitoring. Meanwhile I just plugged my Minilogue into the power strip and mixer and did my own thing. There's something to be said for a musical instrument not to be joined at the hip to a general-purpose networked computing device.
  - tomcam 6y ago
    Can’t argue. I love playing a Minilogue or an Electribe or a Roland JD-Xi. They are all superb instruments for jamming. And you are so right, host environments can be frustratingly buggy. On the other hand, the Korg Gadgets on iOS are pretty damn reliable. My only argument is that with software versions you’re much more likely to get upgrades when bugs occur. And I personally will simply no longer buy a Korg flagship because of my troubles.
jim-jim-jim 6y ago
I think it could be worse. On the whole, synth wankers tend to be cool with modding and reissues. In constrast, it seems that guitar people ascribe magic qualities to very specific models from certain years and are paranoid about keeping these instruments as authentic as possible. With synths you have people looking at MS-20 serials to make sure it has their favored filter inside, but that's usually where the madness ends.
- oriolid 6y ago
  With guitars there's also a whole subculture of DIY modification and ecosystem of aftermarket parts to support it. It helps that Fender guitars were designed to be modular to begin with (AFAIK for easier manufacturing and repairs, the hackability was unintended), and for most components there are only a few common form factors so you don't need any woodworking skills to get started. Attempts to reproduce the exact '59 'burst sound are certainly part of the fun, but there's much more to it.

tomcam 6y ago

Cannot upvote this enough. The portability is one thing. Another is reliability. I love Roland and Korg, but I purchased the last two Korg flagships and they both stopped functioning right after the warranty period. They are essentially custom computer hardware with none of the service options or reliability available in the PC/Mac world. Also Korg somehow gets their distinct sounds near flawlessly in software, even though their iPhone apps are a tiny fraction of the price of the hardware in real life.

colanderman 6y ago
> reliability Pre-COVID I had a semi-regular synth jam session with a dude 100% invested in software synths. First 30 minutes (no exaggeration) of every session was him fighting with Ableton or whatever, and rebooting his Mac, trying to get something trivial to work, like MIDI clock or input monitoring. Meanwhile I just plugged my Minilogue into the power strip and mixer and did my own thing. There's something to be said for a musical instrument not to be joined at the hip to a general-purpose networked computing device.
- tomcam 6y ago
  Can’t argue. I love playing a Minilogue or an Electribe or a Roland JD-Xi. They are all superb instruments for jamming. And you are so right, host environments can be frustratingly buggy. On the other hand, the Korg Gadgets on iOS are pretty damn reliable. My only argument is that with software versions you’re much more likely to get upgrades when bugs occur. And I personally will simply no longer buy a Korg flagship because of my troubles.

jim-jim-jim 6y ago

I think it could be worse. On the whole, synth wankers tend to be cool with modding and reissues. In constrast, it seems that guitar people ascribe magic qualities to very specific models from certain years and are paranoid about keeping these instruments as authentic as possible. With synths you have people looking at MS-20 serials to make sure it has their favored filter inside, but that's usually where the madness ends.

oriolid 6y ago
With guitars there's also a whole subculture of DIY modification and ecosystem of aftermarket parts to support it. It helps that Fender guitars were designed to be modular to begin with (AFAIK for easier manufacturing and repairs, the hackability was unintended), and for most components there are only a few common form factors so you don't need any woodworking skills to get started. Attempts to reproduce the exact '59 'burst sound are certainly part of the fun, but there's much more to it.