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I'm gonna throw out a somewhat out-there suggestion based on your list of influences. I might NOT get another synth. If I wanted to make music like TD, Jarre, Enya, Enigma, and I was already using an iPad for synths, drums, sequencers, and I had to add one thing, I'd get an Eventide H9.
You'd have a powerful secondary processor with so much modulated delay and reverb, frankly, with better quality sounds than iOS can currently do on its own without eating up most of your CPU.
And with the H9 iOS control app and midi, you could control it all from the iPad (I should say I assume... I control the h9 via midi from another pedal, I haven't tested it with the iPad, but they have a dern app for it, it must work, it seems to be pretty plug n play as far as midi ).
No apologies needed. Quite frankly, I would use my Korg M3 for pianos, basic drumkit drums, and ethnic percussion - but then again it's a workstation, and you don't want one - which is fine by me, btw. As an alternative for piano duties, I'm partial to Yamaha's sampled pianos - which is one of several reasons I'd go for the MODX if the M3 were to suddenly croak. Note that the MODX is not a workstation - it's "just" a synth.
As a pad machine, I really like what I've heard from the Dreadbox Abyss. Only 4 voice polyphonic, but the combination of its analog oscillators, analog chorus/flanger, analog phaser, and hybrid delay section delivers such an immersive sound for pad work. It can do the other things you'd expect of analog synths of course. This is more type of synth you'd get for the "live tweaking" experience, with preset changing duties taken by something else.
Anyway, if I lost all my current gear - except iPad - and started over, my synth setup:
Yamaha MODX - iPad controller keyboard, piano sounds, FM bass, FM leads, FM pads, rompler stuff, percussion
Dreadbox Abyss (assuming still in production) - Analog pads, other analog sounds
Bassbot TT-303 - Clone of the iconic acid house synth - was sold on using it for more ambient stuff by TM404 and Richie Hawtin (under one of his aliases).
iPad - Sequencing, generative stuff, granular apps
Radial Key Largo - Handy little mixer for hardware synths, other nice features.
Seems like a small collection of gear, but just the MODX and iPad alone would cover a tremendous amount of sonic territory. The Abyss and Lyra-8 would just be luxury add-ons.
Style of music: I'm a fan of Boards of Canada, Sigur Ros, Robert Rich, Morton Subotnick, Weather Report (yes, the more textural,borderline ambient stuff as well as the driving fusion), Lyle Mays... I''m into ambient, sort of minimalist stuff, but I also like experimenting with sounds.
Noooooo! I’ve had 2 of these and a friend had another. They are quite prone to serious problems being so old. I used to gig with one in 2012. One completely fried one gig. Then I got another only to pray it would turn on every gig. My friend’s K2000 had some problem where any patch with aftertouch caused severe noise. Not bad at synths and 90’s sounding multi-samples but man VAST is convoluted! I considered the Pianos to be very poor quality by todays standard. Also be warned that you will need to find some kind of hard drive, compact flash storage, or similar to get any proper use from it.
Holy terrible! I've had a K2VX for 10 years or so. The backlight died but no problems otherwise. I don't gig with it though.
+1. I suggested a strymon but same idea: if you really want to make ambient music, spending the entire budget on the best reverb unit you can afford ain't a bad way to go about it.
Jump to 2:10:
Long demo of the BigSky with various synths. The shimmer reverb + piano at 9:50 is amazing.
Please someone port the real Strymon DSP algo's to iOS asap
Micron-Miniak is cool, but the Blofeld can cover a lot of ground.
The Meris reverb and delay pedals may also be worth a look. Meris is a newer name than Eventide, Strymon, etc. but the founder worked for Line 6, then founded Strymon, before moving on to Meris.
If money was no object:
Minimoog
ARP 2600
Prophet 5
DX7
Buchla 200
Instead I have:
Moog Minitaur
ARP Odyssey
Roland SH-2
Make Noise 0 Coast
Moog Grandmother
DX7
I make music like TD, JMJ, Kraftwerk, Manuel Gottsching, Suzanne Ciani etc.
I would focus on getting the best hardware & using the iPad FX. I would also recommend starting with just one hardware synth combined with the iPad. I use Model D & 15 a ton and find them to be as good as my hardware.
If money was no object:
Instead I have:
I should sell the lot really.
Check out the reverb in Sunvox. It meets all my ambient needs. Eos will do that sound too. There's nothing special about Strymon.
Sunvox has the 'Apple stock' clear reverb, as SamplR and EchoPad (at least imh ears)
EOS is nice if a slightly metallic undertone is wanted - but it's lightyears from Valhalla Plate. (the Algorithms are both by Sean Costello, just a couple of years between them)
Afaik the Strymon pedals use Sharc DSPs, that code isn't easy to transfer... if at all.
ps: regarding EOS undertone statement above... it's less about 'ringing' but about a highly specific sound character. It's very smooth, so will work well with saw synth basses like some of the Strymon clips show... but: it steals a lot of detail.
(just added an EOS channel to my standard AUM guitar setup to switch between AD480 and EOS)
The Strymons (according to the clips) feature more pronounced highs, which may partly be compensated by a bit of eq after the AD480.
But otherwise it doesn't have to hide behind the Strymon - after some tweaking around it revealed a lot (!) of variance in sound.
@StMichaels with a multichannel interface and AUM on iPad you can get pretty deep into ambiences which are easily to control.
It works internally (with local apps) just as well, but then it's not as convenient to control (obvious reason: screen switching).
Adding some apps by Amazing Noises / Apesoft (Sparkle, Apefilter, iPulsaret, Daedalus etc) to the effects toolkit you get a serious soundprocessor out of a single iPad.
Not to forget the AuFX stuff and Holderness.
oups, wrong post...
Outside of GAS, which is dangerous for creativity, I do think that a hardware synth does go nicely with the iOS stuff, and is worthwhile to get together. The audio quality with soft synths is so good now, I think the advantage of hardware is the hands on experience, of having dedicated controls, that are fun and reliable to mess with. I would avoid hardware synths with minimal external controls, that is the worst of both worlds- hard to integrate and connect to your ios stuff, midi headaches, while still having the same headaches of software: menu diving and important, but hidden settings, often viewed through miserable little lcd screens. You want something that sounds good, and has a bunch of knobs.
There is an artistic advantage to knowing a synth really well, that is often glossed over- always playing with the flavor of the week, on ios, slows me down.
One last thing I would look at, with a hardware synth, to use with ios, is how easy it is to use the keyboard, as your midi controller, for your apps. Can you go back and forth between playing the synth, and playing an app, with MIDI, with minimal button presses? Can you use both, layered together? I like the Nord Leads because they have four "slots" for sounds, that you can switch between, and you could have one slot, with the volume turned down, so it just sends midi to your ipad. One button press is all it takes to switch between internal synth and ios app.
The lower tech way to switch between synth and ios, is to use a mixer, and mute the channel of the one you don't want to hear. Or to turn the volume down on the synth.
I was going to suggest a h9 also. Since getting my hands on the eventide vst stuff so many "How did they get that sound?" mysteries have been solved.
Story on > @Telefunky said:
Strymons pedals run at 96khz also.
Maybe this does not go with the coolness of the gear mentioned here, but Casio gives tremendous value for the money, especially used. It's keybeds can be excellent and the piano sounds decent. Plenty of YouTube videos of Casio products, PianoManChuck in particular. Just a march to a different drummer.
I improvise jazz and pseudo classical concoctions. I own a Casio AT5 and it performed admirably for my initial iPad projects. I have a Roland FA07, but ios has eliminated my need for a workstation ( thank goodness!) Probably will trade it in for a Kawai MP11 as I am primarily a pianist looking for some great action 😄😈,
This weekend I unfortunately read a bit about the Behringer Neutron, including looking at the manual. It’s not too late – don’t look at any information about it. Stop! You can save yourselves.
This is exactly how I feel and why I chose my current setup - small, simple to program synths and drum machines that sound good and are easy to play live. I always start from scratch, program all my own sounds and never save anything. I just record my performance in one take and upload straight to YouTube. I never had so much fun making music in all my life. I just don't get the same joy from multi tracking.
I should point out that all the gear is connected to my iPad through a UMC1820 audio interface. I use twin Launch Control XLs to control AUM and fx plugins.
@StMichaels I thought really hard about it, (almost 25 years
)and personally, I've made the choice of not buying anymore synths. (but I still have some that I won't sell !)
But it's after a long road of buying lots of gears, learning midi, waiting for IOS apps to be mature, and IOS to be stable...And also because I want to drastically reduce the space of my home studio !
Now I can say apps and IOS with IOS 12 are ready for this. Once again, it's a total personal choice based on my previous knowledge.
I could compare this a bit to the problem of learning writing for kids : learn on a tablet opens lots of possibility, but studies shows also that even with these powerful tools, nothing can replace the action of a pen connected to a hand, that is connected to your brain, and properly fix the skill into it because you actually did it with your hand.
Then, once you know how to write, based on your practicing, you'll improve and then, learn how to draw, then add colors, then think about colors, practicing, send it back in your brain, then find new way to create colors...and so on...
So what's your actual knowledge of midi ? What do you want to achieve ? A live performance ? Recording quitely in Cubasis or Xequence all your midi ? What physical space do you want to give to your home studio ? Think about the future, 1, 2 or ...25 years from now
Also what money do you want to invest within the next years ?
As you want to make some ambiant music, there's a lot of IOS apps that could suit your needs...
Getting hardware gears is great because you concentrate on one device at a time, and take the proper time to dig into it. No doubts.
On the opposite IOS (as on a PC or a Mac) will open a 360° world on everything, synths, effects, virtually interconnecting midi without a single wire, but you won't practice the physical actions, and if you've never done that physically, you'll miss some points, or you'll get the feeling to be submerged by all these possibilities and freeze in panic mode in front of your ipad
The alternative could be a mix of both world ? That's what I've chosen.
But based on what you said, as you own already an iPad,(which model ?) I assume you like the portability, and the first limitation I see is the lack of proper knobs.
First step would be to get a midi controller and a way to connect it.
So a very cheap (so 0 risk) would be to get this:
https://www.thomann.de/fr/m_audio_m_track_hub.htm
Here you have a sound card, and a usb hub to connect 3 midi controllers. (so no usb hub at the moment, so less problems, less gears to handle...)
Then get a knob panel. I'd recommend this one:
https://www.thomann.de/fr/arturia_beatstep.htm?ref=search_prv_7
It's robust, it's cheap, not the best, but quite good with a very simple editor (on PC or Mac) to help you configure and understand midi.
Then connect your irig keyboard with USB.
Then, buy some apps, here's the perfect place to discuss that...
Based on what you've said I'd get what @syrupcore said...
-AUM : mixtable
-Module Korg : Piano
-Zeeon / Model D / Model 15 / Phasemaker / Nave/ StepPolyArp AUv3 : synths
-AUFX / Turnado : Effects
- Elastic Drums / Ruismaker / Ruismaker FM /Patterning 2 : Drums
For the DAW, really depends...Cubasis, Xequence, Modstep (hard but powerful) Rozeta...?...
Approximatively less than 200 € of apps...
Based on that, you'll be able to see what you can achieve and if you want to get more in a year, or 2...
If you enjoyed it, we will talk about a proper sound card to connect hardware synths !
PS : be careful not to become an "appocohlic"
If i win the lottery i might get the 16 voice version of this....
https://www.sweetwater.com/insync/first-look-moog-one/
Looks like a real monsta
I don't know why but my gut tells me some kind of new app from Moog will soon drop...
This as app would be wonderful. I doubt CPU‘s are ready for such a beast
A 4 voice polyphonic version of the Grand Mother would do nicely for starters or maybe AUv3 versions of AniMoog and Filtatron
Holy wow. This synth or a new car? Lol at the use of "just" on the payment plan option:
I have an H9 - took some effort, but it was worth it; to figure out how to use an IOS sequencer to sequence the pitch shift interval in a Pitchfactor algorithm - so you could, say, run an analog synth playing a C note into the H9, and the pitch shifter could play a scale against the C note. Lots of fun.
No idea how long it took Eventide to port their code from whatever DSP or other processor runs on the Space, H9, etc. into the VST format. I can only assume it would take similar work to port Strymon code over, though I think maybe Meris's pedals might be the ones you want to port over, because the Strymon founder is now at Meris, and he apparently took the Strymon magic with him to the new company.
IOS has some good reverb apps for sure, but it's handy to have a pedal or other outboard device if the app gobbles too much CPU for your iPad to do anything else.
Thanks guy, just rediscovering the H9...Really cool...But quite expensive...
I’ve had my eye on it for a little while and ended up ordering it yesterday. It should arrive on Wednesday. Can’t wait.
Just $11 a day!
Synth beats car for me. But I've always wanted to try the freegan/dumpster diver lifestyle so I can possibly have both.