the watmm GAS thread

  On 12/2/2024 at 8:00 PM, Bubba69 said:

Feel like I'm gassing over everything in Skee Mask's studio. He's got a lot of good shit, well thought out. I'm kind of a synth hardware + DAW effects person right now but the idea of having a bunch of effects I can patch-bay with sounds really fun. Not going to do that right now. I just got an audiofuse 16Rig interface which is almost a virtual patch bay with the amount of IO it has so I'm tempted to start hoarding rackmount effects all of a sudden

 

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this video was surprising. while great, i feel like his music sounds very in-the-box. definitely a nice setup. having everything in arms reach is crucial imo 

  On 12/2/2024 at 8:36 PM, exitonly said:

this video was surprising. while great, i feel like his music sounds very in-the-box. definitely a nice setup. having everything in arms reach is crucial imo 

I saw some earlier video where he was doing a lot of processing in ableton. Guessing the final producing/arranging is all still ITB.

  On 12/2/2024 at 8:00 PM, Bubba69 said:

I just got an audiofuse 16Rig interface which is almost a virtual patch bay with the amount of IO it has so I'm tempted to start hoarding rackmount effects all of a sudden

how are you liking it? i’ve been considering going that route (would need the 8in expansion i imagine if i want to record /everything/ at once separately…

  On 12/2/2024 at 9:07 PM, auxien said:

how are you liking it? i’ve been considering going that route (would need the 8in expansion i imagine if i want to record /everything/ at once separately…

it's been great so far. I haven't really taken the time to try using it in a standalone dawless setup, but I would like to get that going for when I want to quickly jam withut loading up bitwig, would like to midi-map the levels for that. The audiofuse software is good, easy to use the routing matrix, I don't think it's as powerful as something like totalmix, no DSP, and you can't certain types of things simultaneously, but you do get two different submixes you can use so it can help with some tricky setups. It's great for me since I wanted a lot of inputs and I don't need mic preamps. I like that it also acts as a USB hub, I have all my elektron overbridge usb going through it. High quality feel to it. It's class-compliant USB audio instead of custom drivers, so it's never going to have compatability issues, but this also has the downside that latency will never be quite as good as some of the higher end alternatives. I was going to go with RME + ADAT but that would add up to quite a bit more money and require me to string together multiple devices just to get the same number of inputs. I like having the little readout of levels on screen.

  On 12/2/2024 at 9:33 PM, Bubba69 said:

it's been great so far. I haven't really taken the time to try using it in a standalone dawless setup, but I would like to get that going for when I want to quickly jam withut loading up bitwig, would like to midi-map the levels for that. The audiofuse software is good, easy to use the routing matrix, I don't think it's as powerful as something like totalmix, no DSP, and you can't certain types of things simultaneously, but you do get two different submixes you can use so it can help with some tricky setups. It's great for me since I wanted a lot of inputs and I don't need mic preamps. I like that it also acts as a USB hub, I have all my elektron overbridge usb going through it. High quality feel to it. It's class-compliant USB audio instead of custom drivers, so it's never going to have compatability issues, but this also has the downside that latency will never be quite as good as some of the higher end alternatives. I was going to go with RME + ADAT but that would add up to quite a bit more money and require me to string together multiple devices just to get the same number of inputs. I like having the little readout of levels on screen.

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thanks for that! not much info online i've seen of anyone who's been using it, just lots of YT 'reviews' & stuff. class-compliant is great, don't think i'd noticed that in all the info online, tho i did see mention that the latency is good but not 'perfect' so, for the price it sounds more than useable. the submixes & complex routing all sound great for me, i was liking the cue option & all the quality look/feel (from what i can tell...) is a good sign.

i think going DAWless with it away from the computer would be great for sure, but then you've lost recording yeah? i looked into standalone recorders to go with this and yikes are they expensive. huge gulf in the market between my Zoom Livetrak (multitrack mixing & recording) to the next step up multitrack recorders. i guess 'DAWless' (while still using a DAW for recording) is technically okay lol it's jus the terminology that makes it feel weird

Some day I want a big flagship semi-modular. something like this "Cric" I keep seeing videos about.
 

OR

https://www.ericasynths.lv/shop/standalone-instruments-1/syntrx-ii/

https://intellijel.com/shop/desktop/cascadia/

https://www.korg.com/us/products/synthesizers/arp2600_fs/

OR I build my own skiff that does what I want.

Or maybe just a softpop 2. Those things make crazy noises.

https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=9029628&sid=9270413adc82ef2de4b6a8db4cc757a9#p9029628

  On 1/19/2025 at 12:10 PM, Nil said:

https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=9029628&sid=9270413adc82ef2de4b6a8db4cc757a9#p9029628

I think this has been out for a while, the Moog Muse (8 voice polysynth). Once this demo gets going, it has a lot of cool sounds, definitely moogy. Fairly pricey, though, at $3500. I wonder if a desktop version is planned?

  On 1/19/2025 at 12:10 PM, Nil said:

https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=9029628&sid=9270413adc82ef2de4b6a8db4cc757a9#p9029628

The last thing I need is a new synth and Bitwig kind of is one big synth now but Z3 is looking great.

  On 1/20/2025 at 1:20 AM, kuniklo said:

The last thing I need is a new synth and Bitwig kind of is one big synth now but Z3 is looking great.

Ooh another bitwig user here? That does look quite nice, I think the oscillator stuff it does sort of sets it apart from other synths, pretty innovative stuff.

  On 12/12/2024 at 10:05 PM, Bubba69 said:

OR

https://www.ericasynths.lv/shop/standalone-instruments-1/syntrx-ii/

hmm I'd advise against it. There's no way to export patches into midi/sysex (there's no midi out, only in and thru). The matrix is weird: if you work with patch A1 and press the right arrow key a few times it moves to pattern Ax, but then there's no way of telling which patch you're working with (is it A7 or A9?), so you can easily accidentally overwrite something.

The effects (delay or reverb) are digital, which obvs isn't a problem but you can hear digital bit reduction in the delay - almost as if the delay line memory isn't long enough and they had to downsample to make space.. Not necessarily a bad thing for "experimental music", but I'd expect the fx to be lush. (Last year the fx section sometimes wasn't working, and you had to reboot to make it work; eventually they fixed it with a firmware)

The built-in sequencer doesn't quite sync well to external clock. Set the clock divider to "/8", press play on your DAW, and Syntrax will start playback after 1/8th..

Somehow when you send MIDI notes to Syntrax, if you want to get short notes e.g., 1/16ths, you need to send 1/32nd or even 1/64th notes (and this is with decay at the shortest knob position).

Finally the oscillators aren't exactly super precise (unlike other analog synths). Even after calibrating, they are a few cents off from one octave to another.

If they addressed most of the above (except the midi backup I guess), I suppose my view would shift more towards the positives.

  On 1/20/2025 at 7:17 PM, Bubba69 said:

Ooh another bitwig user here? That does look quite nice, I think the oscillator stuff it does sort of sets it apart from other synths, pretty innovative stuff.

Yeah Bitwig really has turned into a brilliant piece of software. Like everything that was genius about the Nord modular wrapped up in a great sequencer.

Agree about the Zebra oscillators though. Most of my Z2 patches only use one oscillator.

Having access to that Z3 alpha, I'd humbly urge you guys to at least give a try to that marvelous bit of code once it's released. My expectations were high yet Urs and team have gone above and wayyyy beyond. I won't spill any beans, not my place to do so, but just imagine the convenience of having several Zebralette 3 oscillators with a bunch of enveloppes, LFOs and MSEGs in a single plugin instance.
Plus all the features and options they've added to that initial build (more are to come). 
Oh and it's a new whole new plugin, most has been rewritten.

  On 1/23/2025 at 10:05 PM, Nil said:

Having access to that Z3 alpha, I'd humbly urge you guys to at least give a try to that marvelous bit of code once it's released. My expectations were high yet Urs and team have gone above and wayyyy beyond. I won't spill any beans, not my place to do so, but just imagine the convenience of having several Zebralette 3 oscillators with a bunch of enveloppes, LFOs and MSEGs in a single plugin instance.
Plus all the features and options they've added to that initial build (more are to come). 
Oh and it's a new whole new plugin, most has been rewritten.

I've pretty much stopped buying music gear and software since I have way too much stuff already but I might have to make an exception for the Z3 upgrade.

the Squarp Hapax just got another stack of updates. i've owned this kit for about 2 years and its still getting better, i don't rave too much about gear, and it's not perfect, but damn is it very fucking good. would highly suggest for anyone with a hardware-focused setup.

  On 1/23/2025 at 10:05 PM, Nil said:

Having access to that Z3 alpha, I'd humbly urge you guys to at least give a try to that marvelous bit of code once it's released. My expectations were high yet Urs and team have gone above and wayyyy beyond. I won't spill any beans, not my place to do so, but just imagine the convenience of having several Zebralette 3 oscillators with a bunch of enveloppes, LFOs and MSEGs in a single plugin instance.
Plus all the features and options they've added to that initial build (more are to come). 
Oh and it's a new whole new plugin, most has been rewritten.

Waiting for the NAMM vids !

  On 1/24/2025 at 2:22 AM, auxien said:

the Squarp Hapax just got another stack of updates. i've owned this kit for about 2 years and its still getting better, i don't rave too much about gear, and it's not perfect, but damn is it very fucking good. would highly suggest for anyone with a hardware-focused setup.

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Still waiting for them to fix the bugs in the Pyramid.

  On 1/24/2025 at 10:19 AM, th555 said:

Still waiting for them to fix the bugs in the Pyramid.

Stop waiting. Pyramid was discontinued quite some time ago, it got a last firmware update then, but there won't be any more. I recently traded my Pyramid mk3 to a PGH Taiga, and I've been using OXI One as my main sequencer even before Pyramid became legacy tech. I would love to give Hapax a go, but OXI One is good enough for me ATM.

  On 1/24/2025 at 10:19 AM, th555 said:

Still waiting for them to fix the bugs in the Pyramid.

what dcom said....i didn't find the Pyramid terribly buggy when i had one but i sold it off about a year or two before it was discontinued. any bugs in piece of kit can be really frustrating, for sure, but it's not uncommon these days from literally any manufacturers. much more common from smaller teams, of course.

i've had a very buggy MegaFM since i got it, something is off in the kit, multiple firmware updates haven't fixed it...but i still haven't bothered to even email their support about it. i just work around it, it's whatever for now. maybe i'll get in touch with them this year before that piece gets too old lol. have made some great music with it anyway, it's whatever.

  On 1/24/2025 at 1:37 PM, auxien said:

.i didn't find the Pyramid terribly buggy when i had one but i sold it off about a year or two before it was discontinued.

Pyramid is a great sequencer, one of the only hardware ones capable of making true polyrhythms with ease.

  On 1/24/2025 at 2:22 AM, auxien said:

the Squarp Hapax just got another stack of updates. i've owned this kit for about 2 years and its still getting better, i don't rave too much about gear, and it's not perfect, but damn is it very fucking good. would highly suggest for anyone with a hardware-focused setup.

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Love my hapax, only getting better and better.

Here it is

  On 1/24/2025 at 11:37 PM, d-a-m-o said:

Here it is

 

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Sounds like every other VST plugin that already exist but also cpu heavy. Super boring presentation and nothing inspiring whatsoever. 

0/10 

  On 1/24/2025 at 11:37 PM, d-a-m-o said:

Here it is

 

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yeah this is....not ready for presentation. unless you're a hella fanboy for it i wouldn't waste your time watching this, just a heads up. no shade meant, i'm sure it'll be great in a year or two or three when it's finished (his '2025' ETA is quite ambitious i'm guessing...)