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This. The Volcas are the first actual hardware "synths" or "drum machines" I ever bought. I did subsequently get a Minilogue, but it doesn't even occur to me to try and compare them. My Minilogue never comes in my car with me, nor does it get thrown in a work bag to take along if I'm traveling somewhere. And yes, you could have the option to buy an entire tier of synths for the price of 3 or 4 Volcas, but that's a very different thing to have to store and work with. The Volcas have shortcomings, obviously, but they crammed just enough functionality in there to make them like fully-portable, MIDI-capable little sound modules. It's the same reason I end up with handfuls of guitar pedals instead of owning a dozen different amps, it's a cheaper and more practical way for a casual musician/hobbyist to get a bunch of different sounds.
I have 4 of the Pocket Operators, but refuse to buy anymore. I actually regret purchasing pretty much all of them except for the Rhythm and maybe the Arcade. I was aware of the lack of MIDI, which is a huge _limitation, but didn't appreciate the pitched ones are, for all intents and purposes, locked to the key of C Major. I'm not saying you can't do _anything musical with them...of course you can. The same way I could fart into a SM-57, and sample/mangle/arrange it in a DAW. There is a gray line between instrument and toy that has to fall somewhere, and for me, it divides the Volca series and the Pocket Operators.
With the genius behind them moving on to other things, though, I assume we've already seen the end of the lineup. I'm not sure we necessarily need a bunch more - I hear some things proposed like a wavetable synth, effects unit, or mixer. But in order to get the Volcas to work like devices you could actually play and record, you usually need to add other hardware or an iPad anyway, so I don't find the need for a standalone Volca effects unit or mixer to be interesting - there's already cheap examples of those items on the market.
Ha! My little travel board is almost exactly this plus the Volca Keys, a Hall of Fame reverb pedal and the Keystep. It's very fun to play.
Talk me out of it but after I got the UNOSynth to 'play with' I got an urge to get a Volca Bass due to it's beefier filter and snappier envelopes and way faster LFO.
The envelopes on the UNO are quite 'sloppy' but since they are pure software I think they could be made snappier depending on how fast the CPU inside the UNO is...
The UNO's LFO is also software and 'capped' at 30Hz from the knobs but it can go faster once synced to an external clock and reach a lot higher when feeding it with a fast clock (>600BPM) to with tempo-sync set to 2x).
For 'sample creation' I'm still curious as to which apps come closest to the Volca Bass?
Model D has 3 VCO's but the filter is 'different' model. iMS-20 has a screaming filter that may come close?
Zeeon is a 'beast' in it's own way. Kauldron and Kaspar offer 3 VCO's with more filter options in Kaspar.
VirSyn's Tera is also quite capable...
Even if I would eventually end up getting a Volca Bass at some point I'm still curious about the iOS options?
What's wrong with Gadget's built-in Chicago?
Edit: Forget about it, it's not even close
Dublins might be more up to the task...
I own the bass keys and sample. To be honest I don't see the need to buy the others. I'd never ever get rid of my sample though. That box is probably my fav purchase ever.
Yeah, but it's just a 'filter' and the 'rest' is missing
@rs2000 Dublin is quite 'beefy' but it's LFO is on the slow-side for 'creative' LFO usage.
What struck me is that even though IK only made the 'Editor' for the UNOSynth the GUI is something that many iOS synth-apps could adopt with big easy to touch & tweak knobs.
While Zeeon sounds amazing the UI is just (my highly personal opinion) a real mess with miniature knobs and super tiny labels. Sure it was designed when full-screen AUv3's were just starting to pop up but If I was in charge I'd magnify the UI and take advantage of fullscreen AUv3 asap.
The 'accessibility zoom' in iOS breaks too many synth apps to be useable (for example the matrix in 'Infinite' stops working when using 'zoom', it's no longer possible to set the horizontal zoom slot, need to quit the app and loose the patch etc. etc.).
I'll let the idea of getting a Volca Bass settle for a while and see what can be done in 'iOS World' but too many apps lack audio-rate lfo's (for ring-mod/fm type sounds) and ability to use oscillators as modulation sources as well as simple 'key-triggered modulation/value sequencers' (see these as 'performance macros' that tweak the synth parameters live while the sound is playing).
Then again I might resort to using Alchemy in Logic Pro X. At least it's got the parameter modulation department in order
Yeah, but part of the sound-creation is also being able to play & tweak them live
So even if say the AudioDamage filter would 'sound right' how do I add keyboard-scaling and other automation to it?
I do try to 'automate' stuff in Cubasis and Render/Freeze the results so it's kinda doable but less than ideal...
A year from some messages makes me share/remember this:
https://www.korg.com/es/products/dj/volca_mix/
And also just yesterday I shared this on other topic:
http://fabriziopoce.com/volcacontrol.html
http://fabriziopoce.com/MTribe.html
For the Ableton expand lovers
http://fabriziopoce.com/download.html
That never was an issue for me, but I hear many complain about it...
I'm shocked to hear that. Thought that the old trick would work for Infinite too - although I'd be curious to know if this is still the case with iOS12.
Then Odyssei must be perfect for you!
Desktop is another world, there's no shortage of great synths at all.
But isn't that the excitement in iOS apps? Things still evolve, features are missing, we're trying to find workarounds and solutions to problems that wouldn't exist on the desktop machines we (almost) all have.
I really dig my Volcas.
@Samu
Like usual, I have great plans to chain them together and get into that fun but I always end up grabbing one and getting lost. Something to be said for the twisting of knobs (even if they are insanely teensy). I have keys, beats, Bass and kick. I will never part with those. Too many plans ...
I actually prefer the iMono/Poly
And yeah, I got myself a Volca Bass just a few moments ago LOL.
Has anyone adopted the Volca Mix for their Volca rig? If so what's the experience been?
Fun! They are addictive.
I don’t know, the Volca Bass isn’t that great to me. I have the original 3 Volcas and the only thing that has stopped me from selling all but the Keys is the fact that the Bass was a gift though I would sell it straight away if it weren’t. I think in most cases you’d be better off buying something else spending a small amount more. It’s okay, it has a funky sound. I don’t remember the LFOs being that fast and I surely cranked them all the way more than once. The envelopes are snappy enough I suppose. As for iOS options, maybe look at this Argon synth like DjPuzzle used here. This obviously doesn’t show how snappy the envelopes are or fast the LFO is, but the crude sound is practically all there.
On buying all 6 Volcas I’m not sure you have enough hands to manage them all at once really
. Which means you’ll probably have them all hooked up to your Computer or iPad to keep up with it all and then you’ll have like 30 cables all over the place. It’s very likely not going to be “battery portable” anymore by the time you are done.
I’m going to get my Original 3 Volcas back out and use them though. They are just sitting in a case in a closet. I’m thinking I’ll sequence them with my old iPad 2 and I’m currently looking through sequencer options. GrooveRider almost would work for it, but I can’t chain patterns all the time currently so it’s kind of a no go. Leaving me with Sequencism, SunVox, or Modstep as likely possibilities.
I really like the volca line.
Except the sample because I hate that it's not a sampler and it's a Bitch to actually put samples on and... You have to make the samples so small, or else the tiny memory is full after like 6 samples haha.
But the sample is sweet once you get it moving.... It can do a lot...Just the process to get there was just to annoying for me..
FM is the best imo... You can make crazy drones and if you midi in from something else you can drop the bpm to something like 10 bpm and get some nasty drones!!
Plus you can upload dx7 patches and many other patches to it, and there's a website you can go to and create patches all day it's so fun!
And save them... The automation is dope and so is the sequencer... Once you dig in its addictive..
My label mate has dropped like two or three tapes that are nothing but the FM and a kaospad and tape deck....
The keys is narly but as far as I can tell you can't save any presets so if you want to recall a patch you made you better get the template and mark the parameters or is gone forever...
The bass .. You can crush som bass"leads" on there..
A word of advice... The volca stuff needs effects to really shine, the dry signal is meh but with verbs and delays.. You'll be set...
All that said, I prefer iOS 😁
For me it's close to perfect. Love the 3 separate sequences for crazy stuff and the BPM can be bumped to 600 for some sound effect experimentation like crazy fast arpeggios and the LFO is fast enough when a square wave is applied to the amp for stuttering/cutting up the sound.
I now have two analog boxes (UNOSynth and Volca Bass) as 'sampler fodder' which is always nice considering there's a ton of effect apps available on the iOS for processing
Thanks for the video-link!
I had a Volca Bass, but sold it after I got the Monologue. I'm pretty satisfied with the Monologue's bass and it doubles as my primary IOS keyboard controller. I have bigger keyboards but the Monologue is more portable/"mobile".
I wasn't interested in the Volca Sample at first, but I was slowly convinced over time that it could be a useful addition. It has some features lacking in other Volcas like onboard reverb and pattern-chaining/song mode. It can also loop samples.
Retrokits makes a cable that has, understandably, quite a following in the Volca community - has firmware that adds MIDI velocity to Volca FM, chromatic play and other stuff to Volca Sample, etc.
https://www.retrokits.com/rk-002/
Yeah the 3 separate sequences would be one of the best reasons to get the VBass as compared to some other synth. You can run each Osc with it’s own step length in that way too. I’ve never thought of putting it at 600BPM that might be neat though likely noisy. I usually try to get it as slow as possible as 16 steps is mostly blip beep repeat kind of stuff. I think my biggest reason for disliking it is all the times I had to fiddle with constant memory switching just for the most basic bassline... If they put a clock divide on it it would have been so much more usable.
Would like to hear that. On Bandcamp or something?
Everything but the resonance and the voice knob can be controlled via CCs (if I recall correctly).
A dedicated Volca sequencer app would be pretty fun. Something that had all of the MIDI hacks built in to it so that you can, for instance, send velocity to the FM or play the Sample chromatically, etc. And each track type/Volca type could have a mini control surface so that you could a) store presets for the keys, sample, bass... and b) automate it all easily. IAPs for sending sysex to the FM and samples to sample...
Or maybe these would be better is MIDI AUs that you could load into tracks on your sequencer/host of choice.
Yes. And if the melodic units all the Keys' Flux Mode as well.
Main thing that would make them all more usable for me (when not sequencing them via MIDI anyway) is remote transpose via MIDI. Could get a lot more mileage out of 16 steps that way. Especially with clock divisions. And maybe a way to remotely set active steps and/or trigger pattern changes.
Did you see my links?
you do realise these hacks have apps that exist already on ios right ?
http://artkerns.com/midifiltrvs.html
http://artkerns.com/midifiltrvf.html
midifiltrvs is a godsend for my volca sample
Yessir. Own them both. Was more thinking about an integrated volca-centric environment, particularly with the mini control surfaces for 'preset' storage/instant recall.
Missed those the first time but I'd seen them on Synthtopia before. Something like http://fabriziopoce.com/volcacontrol.html would be a step in the direction I was yammering about but I'd need it to be on iOS for me to ever actually use it! Plus, chromatic volca sample support... /wanty
Yeah, I’m 90% sure Korg is done with it, at least the original 3. It is what it is and there will be no firmware upgrade. So, we’ll just have to use other means to make the VBass usable in a setup. It’s not that bad though, I have fond memories of juggling the 3 Volcas. Might as well get them back out. I have a couple other things I could use and likely won’t need to spend any money, just have to sacrifice my MIDI Thru box and cables temporarily . And the hardest task of all find a decent sequencer I can feel comfortable using, works well live, does various time signatures, and that also works on a 2nd gen iPad. I have bad memories of trying Modstep so I’ll try Sequencism next which can load .SF2 as an added bonus.