Crappy gear that appeals to you for no good reason

  On 11/25/2015 at 7:36 PM, Lane Visitor said:

Actually, yeah, like RSP im in a similar boat with needs...

 

I'm actually looking for a hardware sampler under $1k w/ filter that can help me get that lush liquidy vibe you hear in a lotta french house like cassius, daft punk, sound stream, etc. I've heard ppl recommending the ASR-10 and also the Emu EMax .. would be interested in the Sp1200/12, Emulator II etc, but those are outta by budget...

i wanted to try the Korg Volca after someone showed me a pretty awesome demo of what it can do to house grooves in terms of loop-ifying, but i did research and saw that it only has a 3.5 mm input, which seems like it would degrade the quality pretty heavily.

The size of an input jack does not affect the quality of the sound. The biggest problem with those 3.5 mm is that they are more flimsy and disconnect more easily than the 1/4th inch jacks. I think its a lower sample rate for the korg volca but the quality is pretty good for the most part.

  On 11/29/2015 at 8:00 PM, Ingwe said:

well the emax is def a good choice for under-$1k sampling with analog filtering.

 

It seems like only a couple years ago they were a good choice under $200. Alas.

Not crappy at all and really makes me jelly:

http://www.ebay.de/itm/ETI-Maplin-4600-Vintage-Classic-like-Moog-EMS-Buchla-ARP-/191750263714?hash=item2ca534d3a2:g:ZGkAAOSwAYtWK9lV

That patching matrix!

  On 12/6/2015 at 3:55 PM, RSP said:

That patching matrix!

Yeah, EMS. This whole box looks very EMS design driven.

This kinda makes me horny. I dunno why?!

Super crappy indeed

i picked up one of these, and i fucking love it...

I fucking love the entire Quadrasynth family.

EDIT: and THE WEDGE

  On 12/15/2015 at 3:07 AM, RSP said:

I fucking love the entire Quadrasynth family.

 

 

EDIT: and THE WEDGE

yup.. everything that orbital and 808 state uses.. is what i want!

If you get one, try to pick up the "Sanctuary" Q-Card.

  On 12/15/2015 at 5:58 AM, RSP said:

If you get one, try to pick up the "Sanctuary" Q-Card.

This is something ive heard about .. Pretty lush? I imagine it has all the enigma-esque choirs & bells i can dream up? (:

  On 12/15/2015 at 7:58 AM, Lane Visitor said:

 

  On 12/15/2015 at 5:58 AM, RSP said:

If you get one, try to pick up the "Sanctuary" Q-Card.

This is something ive heard about .. Pretty lush? I imagine it has all the enigma-esque choirs & bells i can dream up? (:

 

And organs and harps, yeah.

  On 12/15/2015 at 4:45 PM, RSP said:

 

  On 12/15/2015 at 7:58 AM, Lane Visitor said:

 

  On 12/15/2015 at 5:58 AM, RSP said:

If you get one, try to pick up the "Sanctuary" Q-Card.

This is something ive heard about .. Pretty lush? I imagine it has all the enigma-esque choirs & bells i can dream up? (:

 

 

 

And organs and harps, yeah.

 

ooh yum!

Saw a Roland PMA-5 in a second hand store; I'm wondering if it's worth the $200AU pricetag—I've been looking for a small GM sound module for a while and it seems to suit my needs pretty well but I'm wondering if I should hold out for something a little cheaper.. Does anyone have a reason why I shouldn't buy it? Or does anyone want to sell me one? :D

  On 11/29/2015 at 8:00 PM, Ingwe said:

 

  On 11/25/2015 at 7:36 PM, Lane Visitor said:

Actually, yeah, like RSP im in a similar boat with needs...

 

I'm actually looking for a hardware sampler under $1k w/ filter that can help me get that lush liquidy vibe you hear in a lotta french house like cassius, daft punk, sound stream, etc. I've heard ppl recommending the ASR-10 and also the Emu EMax .. would be interested in the Sp1200/12, Emulator II etc, but those are outta by budget...

i wanted to try the Korg Volca after someone showed me a pretty awesome demo of what it can do to house grooves in terms of loop-ifying, but i did research and saw that it only has a 3.5 mm input, which seems like it would degrade the quality pretty heavily.

 

any recommendations? thx

 

p.s. - i already use Fab Filter's Volcano on the software end for filtering, and i love it, but I just want some of that tasty outboard/hardware DAC grunge and the sweetness in the mids that some of those rigs can produce

 

well the emax is def a good choice for under-$1k sampling with analog filtering. but the sound is a bit more depeche mode than french house - the latter i would associate more with the asr-10 or a 16 bit akai. no analog filters on those though. prophet 2000/2002 and mirage are solid cheap-ish lo-fi + analog filter alternatives.

 

volca sampler sounds neat but yeah i imagine input/output and converters are super cheap.

 

So I found an asr 10 for a really good price and am planning to pick it up tonight.. one drawback is it's missing the OS disk, but i ordered one for like $7 plus shipping online. I saw pictures and it looks like decent condition, powers on, led lit up, etc, but i guess i wont know if it has sound until i put that disc in it, (right now it says "please insert disc" on the LED.. fingers crossed. excited to hopefully be able to start adding some creamy tone and grit to some of my sounds. (:

p.s. anyone that's familiar with these bad boys, do you think this sounds like a risky move, or should i go for it? price is like 1/5 of the regular ebay prices right now.

I'd say if it's that cheap, even if it's broken you could probably sell it for parts/repair and come out more or less even.

  On 12/16/2015 at 8:59 PM, RSP said:

I'd say if it's that cheap, even if it's broken you could probably sell it for parts/repair and come out more or less even.

Ah good point, yeah i think ill go for it, thanks for the encouragement (:

will post results

  On 12/16/2015 at 6:02 PM, Lane Visitor said:

 

So I found an asr 10 for a really good price and am planning to pick it up tonight.. one drawback is it's missing the OS disk, but i ordered one for like $7 plus shipping online. I saw pictures and it looks like decent condition, powers on, led lit up, etc, but i guess i wont know if it has sound until i put that disc in it, (right now it says "please insert disc" on the LED.. fingers crossed. excited to hopefully be able to start adding some creamy tone and grit to some of my sounds. (:

 

p.s. anyone that's familiar with these bad boys, do you think this sounds like a risky move, or should i go for it? price is like 1/5 of the regular ebay prices right now.

I researched those classic late-80's/early-90's samplers a while back

When I was shopping for gear

And I really fell in love with them all

As slow as they are relative to newer stuff

I love the workflow

And there's really nothing like that crispy dirty aliasing

I would say yes buy it absolutely

I forget the differences between all the ASR's

But regardless, I think limitations foster deep creativity

And deep familiarity

And the workflow and aliasing grit will both give your stuff character up the wazoo

(I.E. It's impossible to make generic DAW aimless-piano-roll-clicking choons with an ASR-10)

Sent from my pee-pee using poo-poo

I haven't used it in a while but I still treasure the Akai S612 one of my professors gave me back in college.

Just in general, I have a feeling part of what makes a lot of early digital gear sound so special is that the cutoff for the antialiasing filters had to be so far down into the audible range. There's a block diagram on top of the Ibanez HD1000 a friend of mine gave me a while back and I don't have it in front of me but I know there are at least four different lowpass filters in the signal path (one on the input, one on the output and two in the feedback insert). The thing is 8 bit an has a pretty low sampling rate but it's one of the most musical sounding pitch shifters I've had my hands on, and that's got to be a big part of it.

  On 12/21/2015 at 4:45 AM, LimpyLoo said:

 

  On 12/16/2015 at 6:02 PM, Lane Visitor said:

 

So I found an asr 10 for a really good price and am planning to pick it up tonight.. one drawback is it's missing the OS disk, but i ordered one for like $7 plus shipping online. I saw pictures and it looks like decent condition, powers on, led lit up, etc, but i guess i wont know if it has sound until i put that disc in it, (right now it says "please insert disc" on the LED.. fingers crossed. excited to hopefully be able to start adding some creamy tone and grit to some of my sounds. (:

 

p.s. anyone that's familiar with these bad boys, do you think this sounds like a risky move, or should i go for it? price is like 1/5 of the regular ebay prices right now.

I researched those classic late-80's/early-90's samplers a while back

When I was shopping for gear

And I really fell in love with them all

As slow as they are relative to newer stuff

I love the workflow

And there's really nothing like that crispy dirty aliasing

I would say yes buy it absolutely

I forget the differences between all the ASR's

But regardless, I think limitations foster deep creativity

And deep familiarity

And the workflow and aliasing grit will both give your stuff character up the wazoo

(I.E. It's impossible to make generic DAW aimless-piano-roll-clicking choons with an ASR-10)

 

 

 

Sent from my pee-pee using poo-poo

 

cheers to that!

so, i decided to pick it up.. When I went down to meet the seller, the power came on but since the OS disk was missing, there was no real way of testing the sound. Also, the lowest key was chipped off- but still playable (no big deal to me), and a few of the buttons/sliders were a little loose and lacked the snap/click. These issues were of no big deal to me as long as it played sound and functioned. But the guy wasn't sure if it would work once I bought the OS disk, as he said he had no idea, but didn't have time to check and fix it up with his busy schedule, hence the very marked down price.. I got a little nervous thinking his lack of faith of the thing being operational. But sometimes gear risks are fun...

Came home, ordered an OS disk off ebay for $6.99 plus shipping, waited a few days, popped it in, powered it on, heard that cozy and nostalgic clicking/loading sound that happens when floppy disk drives are reading data, and... "loading data" on the display... aaand "Select instrument". Started playing with it.. Everything on it works like a GEM!

Boom, $140 + $20 (disk and shipping) = $160 total paid for a fully functionally legendary ASR 10 sampler/keyboard.

Absolutely agreed w what you said.. There's so much character to the sound. I made a pretty straightforward 1-2 beat with modern house-ish drum sounds using kicks on the 1's and 3's and the snares on the 2's and 4's and hh's on every 8th, and ran it out of my DAW through my RME Babyface converters with the pre's disabled, through my ISA 110 Le Mono pre-amp, to give it some transformer love, into the ASR and back into the computer after messing with all the different settings/filtering on the sampler, and gain staging on the chain and man, some really great color... I drove my preamps gain a bit to give the beat some grit, and then pitched it down on the sampler and cutoff some of the highs with the stellar filter, and it turned from a loop I made in my DAW to something off of a RZA or Wutang record on vinyl. It had that much character. Unreal.

I also drove the fuck out of my input on my mic pre and used one of the samples that came on the disc (Fender bass)... played a funky bassline over another house beat I made, using the ASR's tasty DACs, and with the pre-amp gain driven to shreds with beautiful analog fuzz, recording back into my comp, it sounded straight up like the bassline on Cassius's Sound of Violence. NASTY

*mouth waters*

Bah shit I'm jealous

Congrats

Sent from my pee-pee using poo-poo

haha, thanks man.. im up for a collab sometime if youre down (: