Poll: Do you use outboard synths

[admin]

It sounds raw too.

[Marc_Garcia]

i have 4 real synth of which i use 3 almost all the time.

Moog Little Phatty - sick and phat sounding beast. i dont think a soft synth comes even close.

Roland Juno-60 - awesome, very warm, love the chorus and arp on it

Waldorf Microwave 1 - nothing sounds like it, very unique sounding synth


JD-990 - nice synth, too lazy to program it though, use it for strings and 80s sounds sometimes

and the MPC....which i use all the time...

[sven hauck]

Hi Marc, did you vote in the Poll?

Thanks.

[Marc_Garcia]

i did now

must have forgotten ....

[sven hauck]

Thanks Marc.

So the results so far show that over half of the respondents use a hybrid approach: outboard & software synths. This makes for a strong combination, no doubt.

Coming in second, but by not a very large margin, are those that use software synths exclusively. This shouldn't be too surprising, with the advent of better computing technology enabling quality synthesis. I think this solution also speaks to those that need portability.

At the same time, speed could also be considered one of the benefits of this approach, as you can run your VSTi within your host sequencer (for the Virus/Snow fans out there, you can run these synths as VSTis as well).

However, as pointed out by Jesse's recent review of Ableton Live 7, with the External Instrument & External Effect plugins you can setup your external pieces one time, then drop them into the project at your leisure. This is very powerful indeed.

Jesse, doesn't Cubase SX have something similar, albeit more clunky?

Then last but not least, one respondent sticks to the old school and makes it all happen via outboard gear.

All valid approaches. This is clearly not meant to be a debate about which is better, more what works best for you. Thanks everyone for responding, and to those new forum members that just registered or the existing members that haven't had a chance, feel free to vote at your convenience.

[admin]

Yes Cubase does. With that you set up the connection settings in the Studio Connections window, where the other i/o resides. In theory it should work ok but it seemed to not always remember the settings if my soundcard choice changed. Live's is just simpler, more cut and dry with no surprises.