the watmm GAS thread

OTO BAM GAS

  On 9/1/2018 at 6:25 AM, frankbooth said:

Volca FM will arrive on Sunday. Was considering digitone but just liked the sounds of the volca more in YouTube vids, and figured it was time to get a rudimentary understanding of FM (from the couch).

Heck yes. I can vouch for it being a great couch FM machine and it sounds very good - I think it sounds better than the TX81Z for most things. Also if you spill your coffee/beer on it, it's cheap and replaceable.

  On 9/1/2018 at 10:01 AM, psn said:

OTO BAM GAS

Do it. It's The Lushmaker.

P.S. Those two are a nice combo.

  On 9/1/2018 at 6:19 AM, yek said:

 

  On 9/1/2018 at 4:55 AM, RSP said:

 

  On 9/1/2018 at 12:48 AM, yek said:

I want to pick up an akai rack sampler to go with my rs7000 for my computerless setup. Is that a silly idea?

 

I got an S5000 this spring and was absolutely worth it.

That's funny because I was thinking about the same one. Or the s6000 but that might be overkill. I like the idea of the detachable screen.

 

Depending on what you want it might be the best choice of the Akais.  The older ones have more "character" or whatever, but the 6000 or a maxed out 5000 with the final OS installed bury them in terms of features and sound very good, just in a clean, transparent way rather than a more distinctive way.  I'm very happy with it.  The UI is fantastic, I barely needed to open the manual at all (although I did end up reading the whole thing during downtime at work eventually, but 90% of it I figured out in the first few days because it's that intuitive).

5000 vs 6000 is a tough call really.  When I got mine I was down to a nearly maxed out (16 outs, 128 voice upgrade, maximum RAM, but no effects board, ADAT board or USB board) or a 6000 (basically the same feature set as the 5000 I was looking at, but with the effects board and the 6000-only hardware features of course).  As much as I'd like to have the effects board (but not enough to pay $200+ to buy one loose) and appreciated the extra features of the 6000 I ended up going for the loaded 5000 because of two things: size (the 6000 is 4u, which is pretty large) and more importantly, the 6000 has a fan.  That alone was enough for me, since it would make it really hard to sample anything acoustic in a home studio setting. plus it's just one more noise source making it harder to hear when I'm tracking or programming sounds.

Actually, of all the things that are unique to the 6000 (balanced stereo I/O on the back, bay for a second floppy drive, three assignable soft keys, removable panel) it turns out the one I'm actually missing is the second drive bay.  I installed a scsi2sd board in place of the floppy drive in mine, but there are so many older Aka sample libraries floating around on floppy that it would be nice to still have a drive for converting them. There's software that will do it but I've found it kind of unreliable.  I've mostly used Chickensys Translator and it works maybe 80% of the time but it has trouble reading Akai CD-ROMs reliably and is pretty clumsy.

I'd love to have the effects (I know people don't like them but I can see how they would be really useful and I like "bad" 90s digital effects more often than not) but that's something that can be added if I ever have extra money kicking around.  I absolutely don't miss the USB board and wouldn't consider it at half the price they sell for.  Saving, powering down and taking out the SD card is nearly as easy and much faster than transferring data over at USB 1.0 speeds and the software and drivers are notoriously buggy (but even if they weren't, getting a hardware sampler and editing from a computer in 2018 seems totally backward to me - half the reason to get a hardware sampler these days is to get AWAY from the computer.

The detachable panel is pretty cool, but remember the cable it comes with is something like 18" long and AFAIK if you use a longer cable there isn't actually anywhere to stow it if you reattach the panel, so you can't keep it on the front of the rack case and just pull it down when you want to use it unless you work right in front of or next to the rack it's in, you have to actually detach the longer cable any time you put the panel onto the rack case.  Not a huge deal but it does make it a bit less convenient than it looks.

I just stuck the 5000 under my monitor where it's easy to reach, and it's fine:

If this was 2015 I'd say get both a vanilla S5000 with full RAM and a Roland S760 with the monitor/mouse/keyboard upgrade for the same price as an s6000 but the Roland sampler prices seem to be a lot higher lately.

Hope that was helpful somehow!

Oh, and it's completely straightforward to sample and play sound at the same time, so you can easily resample your sounds through outboard gear, and that makes the lack off effects in the 5000 less of an issue.

  On 9/1/2018 at 2:16 PM, sweepstakes said:

  On 9/1/2018 at 10:01 AM, psn said:

OTO BAM GAS

 

Do it. It's The Lushmaker.

 

Do it.  I got one a couple years ago, one of the few pieces of expensive gear I've ever bought new.  Absolutely worth it, sounds amazing.  These days as often as not if I'm doing a multitrack project in the DAW I'll track at least half of the stuff through a little mixer with the BAM on the aux send, patched into a second pair of inputs, s I can adjust the wet/dry mix later.  It sounds even better used in-line with its own wet/dry control, though.

  On 9/1/2018 at 9:48 PM, RSP said:

 

  On 9/1/2018 at 2:16 PM, sweepstakes said:

  On 9/1/2018 at 10:01 AM, psn said:

OTO BAM GAS

Do it. It's The Lushmaker.

Do it.  I got one a couple years ago, one of the few pieces of expensive gear I've ever bought new.  Absolutely worth it, sounds amazing.  These days as often as not if I'm doing a multitrack project in the DAW I'll track at least half of the stuff through a little mixer with the BAM on the aux send, patched into a second pair of inputs, s I can adjust the wet/dry mix later.  It sounds even better used in-line with its own wet/dry control, though.

Totally agree, there's definite mojo in it - not just the reverb but the speed/size control, the filters, the DACs, the chorus. The sound generally has a timeless, physical quality to it and it's a pleasure to play like an instrument more than other reverbs I've used.

  On 9/1/2018 at 10:55 PM, Stickfigger said:

 

  On 9/1/2018 at 2:16 PM, sweepstakes said:

 

  On 9/1/2018 at 6:25 AM, frankbooth said:

Volca FM will arrive on Sunday. Was considering digitone but just liked the sounds of the volca more in YouTube vids, and figured it was time to get a rudimentary understanding of FM (from the couch).

Heck yes. I can vouch for it being a great couch FM machine and it sounds very good - I think it sounds better than the TX81Z for most things. Also if you spill your coffee/beer on it, it's cheap and replaceable.

  On 9/1/2018 at 10:01 AM, psn said:

OTO BAM GAS

Do it. It's The Lushmaker.

 

P.S. Those two are a nice combo.

Re: Volca - I 100% recommend getting the iPad editor

 

Or load Solid Bass into every single patch location and don't look back.

  On 9/1/2018 at 9:43 PM, RSP said:

 

  On 9/1/2018 at 6:19 AM, yek said:

 

  On 9/1/2018 at 4:55 AM, RSP said:

 

  On 9/1/2018 at 12:48 AM, yek said:

I want to pick up an akai rack sampler to go with my rs7000 for my computerless setup. Is that a silly idea?

I got an S5000 this spring and was absolutely worth it.

That's funny because I was thinking about the same one. Or the s6000 but that might be overkill. I like the idea of the detachable screen.

 

Depending on what you want it might be the best choice of the Akais. The older ones have more "character" or whatever, but the 6000 or a maxed out 5000 with the final OS installed bury them in terms of features and sound very good, just in a clean, transparent way rather than a more distinctive way. I'm very happy with it. The UI is fantastic, I barely needed to open the manual at all (although I did end up reading the whole thing during downtime at work eventually, but 90% of it I figured out in the first few days because it's that intuitive).

 

 

5000 vs 6000 is a tough call really. When I got mine I was down to a nearly maxed out (16 outs, 128 voice upgrade, maximum RAM, but no effects board, ADAT board or USB board) or a 6000 (basically the same feature set as the 5000 I was looking at, but with the effects board and the 6000-only hardware features of course). As much as I'd like to have the effects board (but not enough to pay $200+ to buy one loose) and appreciated the extra features of the 6000 I ended up going for the loaded 5000 because of two things: size (the 6000 is 4u, which is pretty large) and more importantly, the 6000 has a fan. That alone was enough for me, since it would make it really hard to sample anything acoustic in a home studio setting. plus it's just one more noise source making it harder to hear when I'm tracking or programming sounds.

 

Actually, of all the things that are unique to the 6000 (balanced stereo I/O on the back, bay for a second floppy drive, three assignable soft keys, removable panel) it turns out the one I'm actually missing is the second drive bay. I installed a scsi2sd board in place of the floppy drive in mine, but there are so many older Aka sample libraries floating around on floppy that it would be nice to still have a drive for converting them. There's software that will do it but I've found it kind of unreliable. I've mostly used Chickensys Translator and it works maybe 80% of the time but it has trouble reading Akai CD-ROMs reliably and is pretty clumsy.

 

I'd love to have the effects (I know people don't like them but I can see how they would be really useful and I like "bad" 90s digital effects more often than not) but that's something that can be added if I ever have extra money kicking around. I absolutely don't miss the USB board and wouldn't consider it at half the price they sell for. Saving, powering down and taking out the SD card is nearly as easy and much faster than transferring data over at USB 1.0 speeds and the software and drivers are notoriously buggy (but even if they weren't, getting a hardware sampler and editing from a computer in 2018 seems totally backward to me - half the reason to get a hardware sampler these days is to get AWAY from the computer.

 

The detachable panel is pretty cool, but remember the cable it comes with is something like 18" long and AFAIK if you use a longer cable there isn't actually anywhere to stow it if you reattach the panel, so you can't keep it on the front of the rack case and just pull it down when you want to use it unless you work right in front of or next to the rack it's in, you have to actually detach the longer cable any time you put the panel onto the rack case. Not a huge deal but it does make it a bit less convenient than it looks.

 

I just stuck the 5000 under my monitor where it's easy to reach, and it's fine:

 

s5000.jpg

 

 

If this was 2015 I'd say get both a vanilla S5000 with full RAM and a Roland S760 with the monitor/mouse/keyboard upgrade for the same price as an s6000 but the Roland sampler prices seem to be a lot higher lately.

 

Hope that was helpful somehow!

 

 

Oh, and it's completely straightforward to sample and play sound at the same time, so you can easily resample your sounds through outboard gear, and that makes the lack off effects in the 5000 less of an issue.

Great read thanks for that !

I've actually been thinking of hardware samplers again recently. Even though the Octatrack does 90% of what I want, I'd still love a polyphonic hardware sampler with filters/effects. Probably something with a keyboard. I've been considering looking out for a cheap Ensoniq EPS or ASR-10, but maybe I should try to build some super custom arduino based thing and build it into a nice MIDI keyboard.. for some reason the idea of having an all-in-one sampler keyboard still appeals to me, even though it wouldn't be any different to using my Nord Lead as a controller for some nice Renoise instruments.

  On 9/2/2018 at 4:04 AM, modey said:

I've actually been thinking of hardware samplers again recently. Even though the Octatrack does 90% of what I want, I'd still love a polyphonic hardware sampler with filters/effects. Probably something with a keyboard. I've been considering looking out for a cheap Ensoniq EPS or ASR-10, but maybe I should try to build some super custom arduino based thing and build it into a nice MIDI keyboard.. for some reason the idea of having an all-in-one sampler keyboard still appeals to me, even though it wouldn't be any different to using my Nord Lead as a controller for some nice Renoise instruments.

I feel this... it's nice having one around. That said, I never use my Mirage even though it sounds amazing because the interface is dismal. I need to get off my terminally lazy ass and turn that sysex spec into executable code so that I can enable myself to be lazy but still use my Mirage.

  On 9/1/2018 at 9:48 PM, RSP said:

 

  On 9/1/2018 at 2:16 PM, sweepstakes said:

  On 9/1/2018 at 10:01 AM, psn said:

OTO BAM GAS

 

Do it. It's The Lushmaker.

 

Do it.  I got one a couple years ago, one of the few pieces of expensive gear I've ever bought new.  Absolutely worth it, sounds amazing.  

Oh dear... Might have to do it now.

  On 9/2/2018 at 4:04 AM, modey said:

I've actually been thinking of hardware samplers again recently. Even though the Octatrack does 90% of what I want, I'd still love a polyphonic hardware sampler with filters/effects. Probably something with a keyboard. I've been considering looking out for a cheap Ensoniq EPS or ASR-10, but maybe I should try to build some super custom arduino based thing and build it into a nice MIDI keyboard.. for some reason the idea of having an all-in-one sampler keyboard still appeals to me, even though it wouldn't be any different to using my Nord Lead as a controller for some nice Renoise instruments.

I've got an Octatrack, an MPC2000xl and now an Akai s6000 and there's very little overlap in terms of function or sound.  Even the S5000, which is one of the most transparent sounding samplers I've heard, has its own character and is definitely different from working in software.

90s samplers are still pretty cheap compared to a lot of old gear but not as cheap as they were a year or two ago, I'd try to get one sooner rather than later if I were you.

I saw a Roland S760 sell for over $300 a couple months ago.

You could produce an entire alum inside of an s6000 or k2500 (with the sampling board installed), and probably a lot of the others of that era.

The reverbs sound REALLY good on this and are obviously the main focus, but skip to around 8:45 for the delays.

DIN MIDI, pedal control and an insert point in the feedback path (that last one is big), too.

If I were in a position to get an OTO BIM I would seriously consider getting this instead, for about half the price it would give a totally but also really cool array of delays compared to the BIM, plus a bunch of great reverbs.

I'm getting no gear of any kind (other than the occasional cable) until after sometime next year when I've been able to save up and get a Linnstrument and even disregarding that I don't have anywhere near $350 to spend on a pedal right now, but otherwise this thing would be pretty tempting.

There's some guy selling Ableton Live Suite 10 for $80on local CL. Apparently it's possible to transfer a Live license as well so if the guy is up for doing the process the legal way I am more than ready to save $$$ on the upgrade. 

  On 9/3/2018 at 7:53 PM, RSP said:

 

The reverbs sound REALLY good on this and are obviously the main focus, but skip to around 8:45 for the delays.

 

DIN MIDI, pedal control and an insert point in the feedback path (that last one is big), too.

 

If I were in a position to get an OTO BIM I would seriously consider getting this instead, for about half the price it would give a totally but also really cool array of delays compared to the BIM, plus a bunch of great reverbs.

 

I'm getting no gear of any kind (other than the occasional cable) until after sometime next year when I've been able to save up and get a Linnstrument and even disregarding that I don't have anywhere near $350 to spend on a pedal right now, but otherwise this thing would be pretty tempting.

Holy fuck that sounds excellent. It has a midi input, but are all the preset changes and parameters controllable from midi?

I just saw this and now I want this mixer, I feel like it would be a great live mixer for electronic music with a simple setup and really great effects:

im gassing over an OTO BAUM now. 

  On 9/6/2018 at 8:42 PM, Bubba69 said:

 

 

I just saw this and now I want this mixer, I feel like it would be a great live mixer for electronic music with a simple setup and really great effects:

 

 

There used to be an A&H mixer a few years ago kind of aimed at live electronics that looked cool, but I can't find it now.  It was sort a hybrid between a standard  compact mixer and a DJ battle mixer, with maybe 6 stereo mixer channels on one side for synths and a 2 input DJ style mixer on the right, with some interesting routing options.

I kind of want to have one of these on a stand next time I play out in a few weeks, but not for $10 (or even $5 for that matter).

That's just a sheet music notebook thing right? 

  On 9/10/2018 at 2:45 AM, thawkins said:

That's just a sheet music notebook thing right? 

Yeah.

damn I'm still thinking about the flashbulb and his specular tempus. ...... after selling my H9 max I kinda want that 

  On 9/12/2018 at 11:00 AM, Nil said:

http://afmodular.com

I really dislike how they don't just tell you what this is. There's three posts in the devlog, first one saying they added polyphony, and the other 2 are super specific about the oscs and a clipboard. Going by the slick slightly soft focus photo's I guess it's a m4l based virtual modular? (disregard, didn't read the sys reqs)

The supercharged name Alpha Forever conjures up images of vaporware and it also reminds me of Dubturbo.

This kind of promotion makes me wary, like if this is how they launch their shit how reliable is this going to be in terms of documentation, future compatibility, updates, etc?

Oh, they posted a video on twitter.

Ah, it's very slick and has about the same amount of info as their website. And it's really fucking loud.

Sorry to bring this negativity. Ugh.

  On 9/12/2018 at 11:00 AM, Nil said:

http://afmodular.com

"Turning your patch into a polyphonic instrument is as much as a click in the menu.", also good for saving money on heating in the winter!

It requires a DirectX GPU, I hope they are using the GPU to as a DSP then? If not, then god damn I can not stand audio software that spends most of it's processing cycles on rendering the GUI.

As usual with softwares, you buy what a dev offers at the moment of your purchase, not what it could be after a possible future update... so I guess we'll see when it's released if it's really worth it.

I talked a bit with one of the 2 devs yesterday (about UX, implementing AM/FM synthesis the right way and oversampling), he seems like an honest guy & the synth is most likely a labor of love. The lack of info might simply be rookie mistake, I don't know.

Anyway, best case scenario it's an excellent sounding modular softsynth with a fast and intuitive workflow to it. Worst case scenario I'll simply stick to Zebra and Bazille.

I'm about to buy a Win laptop for work (teaching computer music composition and production, starting next Monday). MacBooks are just too stupidly expensive, even though I've been a die hard OS X fan for 17 years. Win10 can't be that bad, right? 

I am on my 6th month of using win10 at work, and it's a pain sometimes. Of course many of my problems are related to trying to program cutting edge stuff and run a professional development environment, so probably if you are using professional ready made software it seems to be more or less OK.

OSX is much better of course, but recently the thinness obsession is turning the hardware really fragile, seems that they need to get their act together sorely.