Originally posted by cryophonik
You guys and your tens of thousands of dollars in synths make me feel so pathetic. My biggest dillema of the last few months is whether or not to spend a few hundred bucks replacing my Prophet 08 with an SE ATC-Xi Quad or SE-1X.
Replacing a polysynth with a monosynth?
The Andromeda is a decent synth, but I wouldn't never really tell anyone to go out and buy one. There are a lot out there with manufacturing problems that will ultimately kill them, and nobody has been able to completely figure out the serial number range, or even manufacturing date range for the bad ones. Kind of makes picking up a second hand A6 like playing the lottery, and hoping you don't end up with an expensive decoration at some point.
It has lots of modulation routings, easily accessible controls on the front panel for most important functions, and sounds "ok". Most of the people I've encountered who talk about it like it's the best synth ever made, have never owned another analog synth (or any synth) to be able to compare.
PreSonus Studio One V2 | Pro Tools 9 | Sonar X1 PE | Access Virus TI2 Keyboard | Kurzweil PC3X | NI Maschine
Dec-14-2009 16:01
kitphillips
is actually a guy.
Registered: May 2006
Location: Sydney, Australia
quote:
Originally posted by hexadecimal
Max/MSP never intimidated me much, but that's probably because I've been coding most of my life, and it just kind of made sense and forced my computer nerd and synth nerd sides to mesh and become one. I think the max for live idea was idiotic, though. There are going to be a lot of Ableton users scratching their heads after buying it, thinking it's just another instant gratification plugin.
Kyma is a great system. It would be a waste for most people, though. Lucky for the rest of us, those people usually end up selling their systems off cheap.
I think max4live is great and is going to revolutionise the way that dance music is played live. It probably will for me anyway. I think its a bit overpriced for what will be a preset player for a lot of users though. I think they should distribute a runtime at a cheaper price.
Where would I get a cheap kyma BTW? I've always wanted one...
Registered: Sep 2003
Location: Burlington, Vermont, USA
quote:
Originally posted by hexadecimal
Replacing a polysynth with a monosynth?
The Andromeda is a decent synth, but I wouldn't never really tell anyone to go out and buy one. There are a lot out there with manufacturing problems that will ultimately kill them, and nobody has been able to completely figure out the serial number range, or even manufacturing date range for the bad ones. Kind of makes picking up a second hand A6 like playing the lottery, and hoping you don't end up with an expensive decoration at some point.
It has lots of modulation routings, easily accessible controls on the front panel for most important functions, and sounds "ok". Most of the people I've encountered who talk about it like it's the best synth ever made, have never owned another analog synth (or any synth) to be able to compare.
I believe you're talking about the tuning issues with one of the batches made in Asia. It was just a single batch of the Andromedas that had this issue. Probably less than 10% out of every Andromeda out there. All you need to do is ask the person you're buying it from to run "Auto Tune" after letting it warm up for 15 minutes. If the person can't get every voice to tune (have a "T" under it), then it's a bad unit. All you need to do is disable the bad voices and offer the person 1/2 the average price.
I've owned a Prophet '08, Moog Voyager, Waldorf Pulse, and ATC-1 all at the same time as my Andromeda. The 24db filter on the Andromeda sounds A LOT like the Voyager's filter but the OSCs are much more modern and easy to work with (which I like). The Andromeda beat the crap out of the Prophet '08. The Prophet either sounded just as good or significantly worse. The Pulse and Andormeda are quite different beasts, but let's just say I sold my Pulse but still have the Andromeda. Compared to the ATC-1, I found the Andromeda to be quite similar. The only difference the ATC-1 could make is if you were using the 2600 filter. And now, with the sale of my ATC-1, the Andromeda is the only analog I own.
Sounds for your Virus TI, Alesis A6 Andromeda, Prophet '08, Nord Lead 3, and JP8000 / JP8080: http://www.alanmarcero.com
Dec-14-2009 17:54
hexadecimal
Supreme tranceaddict
Registered: Mar 2004
Location: Chicago, IL
I still own one of the first Andromedas made (some of my patches were in the preset banks for quite a few of the A6s that shipped between 2003-present)... so I am familiar with them
I was actually talking about power supply issues, voice boards dying, etc.
Dec-14-2009 21:50
hexadecimal
Supreme tranceaddict
Registered: Mar 2004
Location: Chicago, IL
quote:
Originally posted by kitphillips I think they should distribute a runtime at a cheaper price.
Max runtime is free. I'm not sure how much cheaper they could distribute it
quote:
Where would I get a cheap kyma BTW? I've always wanted one...
Look for used capybaras on ebay . Lots of people have been selling them off to upgrade to the new Paca/Paca Rana. Keep in mind that by cheap, I mean cheap for Kyma... which still isn't exactly "cheap"
Dec-14-2009 21:53
alanzo
Tha Equalizer Womanizer
Registered: Sep 2003
Location: Burlington, Vermont, USA
quote:
Originally posted by hexadecimal
I still own one of the first Andromedas made (some of my patches were in the preset banks for quite a few of the A6s that shipped between 2003-present)... so I am familiar with them
I was actually talking about power supply issues, voice boards dying, etc.
Ahh, yeah, I've heard of people having those issues. Mine is one of the first as well before they manufactured them in Asia so I'm hoping it won't go on me any time soon. Apparently it was in storage up until the summer of 2008.
Sounds for your Virus TI, Alesis A6 Andromeda, Prophet '08, Nord Lead 3, and JP8000 / JP8080: http://www.alanmarcero.com
Dec-14-2009 23:36
hexadecimal
Supreme tranceaddict
Registered: Mar 2004
Location: Chicago, IL
quote:
Originally posted by alanzo
Ahh, yeah, I've heard of people having those issues. Mine is one of the first as well before they manufactured them in Asia so I'm hoping it won't go on me any time soon. Apparently it was in storage up until the summer of 2008.
Nice find. The first couple years of production (basically up until the first time they were discontinued) were definitely the best as far as quality goes.
My biggest dillema of the last few months is whether or not to spend a few hundred bucks replacing my Prophet 08 with an SE ATC-Xi Quad or SE-1X. 
