Studio Pics

https://thump.vice.com/en_us/article/rjd2-gave-us-a-guided-tour-of-his-columbus-ohio-home-studio

Here's a cool little peek at RJD2's glorius poly-synth haven. Never knew the guy was such a gear head...

Really cool tech shit in there about how he restored a bunch of old gear.

  On 3/31/2016 at 11:08 PM, Audioblysk said:

https://thump.vice.com/en_us/article/rjd2-gave-us-a-guided-tour-of-his-columbus-ohio-home-studio

 

Here's a cool little peek at RJD2's glorius poly-synth haven. Never knew the guy was such a gear head...

 

Really cool tech shit in there about how he restored a bunch of old gear.

this is what happens when musicians get famous, spend it on more and nicer gear

i doubt his first album was as complex as this, just an mpc and vinyl i presume.

I saw him live back in 2004. He played with 4 turntables and (I think) an MPC.

But the article said he's been collecting them since 1997.

  On 4/1/2016 at 12:23 AM, Braintree said:

I saw him live back in 2004. He played with 4 turntables and (I think) an MPC.

 

But the article said he's been collecting them since 1997.

hm fair enough..

how was he live?

Fuckin' great! It was awesome to hear "Ghostwriter" at 100dB. His turntable skills are really impressive, too.

According to that article, he also made his own modules for his modular synth. That's impressive.

sounds fun, braintree. rj's old stuff is great, but when he started to sing....

Not the full studio setup, but here's a couple things:

Rack of mostly unpopular 80s and 90s synths. Yanked the card reader from my MPC2000xl MCD and replace it with a cheap, non-hotswappable one so I could put the original in the VP9000 (as far as I know it's the only card reader anyone has ever had success putting in one of those - works perfectly).

Weird, modded Otari MX5050 (it's one of the big, desktop MK IV's from the 90s that someone chopped and converted into a B III - they were essentially the same machine in a different case). Needs a lot of adjustment still but everything works and it already sounds good and the heads are almost new. Bought it for $20 years ago from a guy who got it free from Berklee when they were throwing out a bunch of their analog gear, but only had the time, money, tools and skill to start restoring it this spring.

Very nice! Nearly bought one of those Redsound Elevata's years ago, you use it much? The darkstar is quirky as.

I have redone the studio AGAIN this week with new console so will get some pics up later.

  On 4/6/2016 at 11:29 AM, Chesney said:

Very nice! Nearly bought one of those Redsound Elevata's years ago, you use it much? The darkstar is quirky as.

 

I have redone the studio AGAIN this week with new console so will get some pics up later.

Preparing for the mixing job?

yeah, need to solder a few new replacement faders first.

  On 4/6/2016 at 11:29 AM, Chesney said:

Very nice! Nearly bought one of those Redsound Elevata's years ago, you use it much? The darkstar is quirky as.

 

I have redone the studio AGAIN this week with new console so will get some pics up later.

It was a hassle to get the OS upgraded (the guy who developed it still sells it but he doesn't have an EEPROM burner anymore so you have to pay him for the hex file and burn an EEPROM yourself) and the output is really quiet unless you have the last version of the OS, I think it's something like 6db hotter with that version.

I actually really like it but it's still very buggy even with the latest OS (sometimes the encoders will jitter a lot when you adjust them, or change the values in 2s or 3s instead of smoothly, so it can get to be a hassle to adjust things sometimes - almost always it's stuff in the setup menus - the actual controls for the synth engine are pretty reliable) but the interface is really easy and fun to work with so that kind of offsets the occasional glitches. I've had it freeze up a few times but no more often than the Bass Station does.

It's not the greatest thing I've ever done, but this track from a few years ago is maybe 3/4 Elevata, and the whole thing was recorded straight to stereo through a line mixer with no EQ (although the whole mix went through a modded DBX117 onto VHS tape, so it's not exactly uncolored). The lead that comes in around 3:55 is a guitar through a low end pitch to midi box driving an Anushri, with the guitar signal also patched into the Anushri's audio input, and I think the sort of high pitched FM string pad that comes in sometimes near the beginning and end was from the TX802 but other than that I'm pretty sure all of the synths came out of the Elevata's main outs in one pass. I usually use it for kind of squeaks and chirps but it can actually get really thick and does a pretty god job at deep basses, too. It's not really analog sounding and definitely not warm but it has a quality I like, and it's really fun to use when it's behaving. If you have a chance to get one cheap (they're pretty rare but they're also pretty cheap, I paid I think $215 a few years ago and that seemed a little high at the time) I'd say go for it. If nothing else, the "formant" waveform can get you some very Casio MT-xx like sounds but with a 2 oscillator analog-style topology.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/uq5afq4wnu9tkds/20140617%20To%20the%20Crystal%20Core%20CDDA%20VHS%20MASTER.mp3?dl=0

  On 4/6/2016 at 5:06 PM, sheathe said:

video link

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

i know my monitors aren't in an equilateral triangle and idgaf

 

I liked the video. The music did a suitable soundtrack.

ah cool RSP, cheers.

Rad vid shea

Lush vid Shea

RSP, I like your commitment to slightly more obtuse/esoteric gear

I'm moving into a new place soon so I shall post pics of my modest setup when everything's nicely arranged under the eaves

The more obscure stuff is fun (and usually pretty cheap).

The nostalgia cycle is getting pretty close to hitting the turn of the millennium, I think a lot of the less popular late 90s/early 2000s groovebox and phrase sampler type stuff is going to be harder to come by pretty soon. My gut say that kind of low-rent, fake Crystal Method sounding stuff that was all over bad action movies and police procedural shows near the beginning of the Bush era is going to see a bit of an ironic revival in the next couple years, which I will most definitely not be participating in.

  On 4/9/2016 at 5:12 PM, RSP said:

The more obscure stuff is fun (and usually pretty cheap).

 

The nostalgia cycle is getting pretty close to hitting the turn of the millennium, I think a lot of the less popular late 90s/early 2000s groovebox and phrase sampler type stuff is going to be harder to come by pretty soon. My gut say that kind of low-rent, fake Crystal Method sounding stuff that was all over bad action movies and police procedural shows near the beginning of the Bush era is going to see a bit of an ironic revival in the next couple years, which I will most definitely not be participating in.

The only things from that era that have been on my wish list are some Nord synths and the early Electribes. I guess I better scoop them up soon.

Yeah, I'd love an ER-1 and an ES-1 but can't really justify or afford more gear.

A guy I know has a Nord Micro Modular and it seems really useful.

  On 4/10/2016 at 3:25 PM, RSP said:

Yeah, I'd love an ER-1 and an ES-1 but can't really justify or afford more gear.

 

A guy I know has a Nord Micro Modular and it seems really useful.

i almost bought a Nord Micro Modular a few months back...but luckily I checked into enough to realize that I also need an old laptop or something to even edit the fucking thing because Nord don't keep up their software. You'd think with the cost of their synths they could hire someone to update that older software as just a one-off gig, a couple of months of work basically. But no. Bastards.

edit: I'd love to just grab a couple Electribes now while they're still readily out there, but the space/cost is an issue for me as well. Trying to save up for a RYTM right now but I keep getting tempted by other shit. :/

You might be able to run the software in a virtual machine running an old OS, not sure if there would still be driver issues for USB communication (or is it all done via sysex? Never used one) though.

What is the real difference between a super-huge modular synth software vs Nord Modular (which you have to edit in the computer anyway)? Is there a feature in Nord Modular that would justify its use today?

  On 4/11/2016 at 12:46 AM, Jev said:

What is the real difference between a super-huge modular synth software vs Nord Modular (which you have to edit in the computer anyway)? Is there a feature in Nord Modular that would justify its use today?

- Price

- Sound

- Compactness

- MIDI control

- For the rack & key (not the micro) - ability to transmit snapshots of CCs and control all patch parameters from front panel

Also I've had very little trouble running the editor from Wine in OSX.

  On 4/11/2016 at 1:11 AM, sweepstakes said:

 

  On 4/11/2016 at 12:46 AM, Jev said:

What is the real difference between a super-huge modular synth software vs Nord Modular (which you have to edit in the computer anyway)? Is there a feature in Nord Modular that would justify its use today?

- Price

- Sound

- Compactness

- MIDI control

- For the rack & key (not the micro) - ability to transmit snapshots of CCs and control all patch parameters from front panel

Also I've had very little trouble running the editor from Wine in OSX.

 

OK, I understand the sound part (and that can be truly crucial for some people, so fair enough).

But everything else is 1:1 achievable with a computer and a programmable MIDI controller (such as Novation SL MK2), isn't it?

I am asking because I wanted to buy the synth myself in the past.

Well we're kind of talking apples and oranges here. I should have disclaimed those points a bit.

So if you're purely talking about twist a knob, have stuff go out of the computer's line out, then yeah, you can do basically the same stuff with Reaktor or something like that. It probably has a lot more power overall, but it's not going to have the same algorithms or patching interface. Furthermore, when you want to jam, you're going to have to turn on the computer if it's not on already and wait for it to boot, or get whatever you were doing on the computer off your mind if it is on already. Then you're most likely going to navigate to whatever program you're using to make sounds. Then you're going to wait for that to load. Then you load up your patch. Maybe that takes some time to load. Then you're ready to go, with the computer and all the intellectual baggage it brings.

With the Nord, you'll have to do all that crap when you -patch-, yes. But once you have some nice patches and MIDI controller mappings, you can forget all that. You start it up, select your patch, and start playing with it. It's pretty nice having a little box (very little in the case of the micro) that you can throw in a bag, take to a gig or wherever, plug it in, and get to work. It has a bunch of other shortcomings, sure, but if that appeals to you it's really nice. With something like an Octatrack that provides sequencing, sampling and effects processing, it's a nice pair and can help create the focus that some of us struggle to find with a computer.

Maybe a good analogy would be a video game console. Sure, you can play those games on your computer, but sometimes it's nice to have a dedicated console with a dedicated interface that just does video games (the old ones moreso than the newer ones that have Netflix apps or whatever)

Oh, I totally forgot that you could store those patches within the Nord and recall them even without computer. That should be so obvious. Of course, that is definitely a big difference compared to a computer-based workflow. Thanks for having the patience and explaining. I dunno how I missed that point.

Also I guess the latency of Nord is lower with a dedicated DSP chip, right?