Gear Lust? Gear Lust!

[John Koch-Northrup]

As a musician it's hard not to occasionally get caught up in that lust for new gear... What's caught your eye lately? What's that piece of gear you can't live without!

If you splurged and bought it - fantastic! Or if you never plan to buy it, but want to share what you found...

[virtual]

i think less can be more alot of the time . Alots also defined by what your use to and what your making musically and some styles lend themselves to a minimal setup i think .A big part of the process for me is feeling i am in a lab or tweaking the gadget , i know a few people who just have the gear and love to mess around and get into that space of being ina room of weird machines - they never make any music but for them they just explore - nice to do that sometimes.Thanks for the synthesiser.com link - i hadnt consider them and they look cool and well made.

Reaktors a very different device from any hardware unit - it just does the strangest resynthesis - i find its sound a bit 2d or ' in the box ' for typical analogue emulation ( though still very good quality) but it has some beautifull processing ensembles and granulation stuff that hardware cant get near and put some nice samples , sections of sound and stuff through it and its very cool . . . space age sounds. I have to say if someone said - one bit of software to make sounds/ music / experiment it would be that , its also mad software for grooves and vst effects.Its power for me is in its contempary side and the weirdness factor and resynthesis of samples and audio.The Komplete bundle is i think one of the best buys out there , fm7 and 8 are superb also for spacious music.

[sympathetic | DIVISION]

I'm a HUGE fan of the NI gear. For me, being computer based they work perfectly for what I'm doing. I'm in the process of getting Reakor, which seems to be getting cheaper & cheaper down here in Australia. Hardware synths have for some reason always fascinated & frightened me, so I've always been more software driven. I feel safe in the computer world!!!!

I recently bought Komplete Synths which is just awesome! FM8 & Massive are truly astounding, but for me Absynth is still my favourite! I love the fact you can throw in your own samples & make some pretty outlandish sounds. I found Pro-53 to be nice piece of kit, though where I would use some of the sounds in my tracks...I dunno! Still a lot of fun making bleeps & bloops!

[Endoflogic]

Now you're speaking my language. If you're a fan of Absynth, spend the extra $60 (or whatever they're charging in Australia) and get the Absynth Twilights library add-on. There's some truly amazing voices in that collection. I agree FM8 is an excellent library, and while I enjoy Pro53, Akoustik Piano and the others I'm still not sure how they'll fit in with what I'm doing. For the most part, I'm switching back and forth between Absynth and FM8.

Massive scares the crap out of me. WAAAAAAY too many buttons and dials and doo-dads.

sympathetic | DIVISION said:

I'm a HUGE fan of the NI gear. For me, being computer based they work perfectly for what I'm doing. I'm in the process of getting Reakor, which seems to be getting cheaper & cheaper down here in Australia. Hardware synths have for some reason always fascinated & frightened me, so I've always been more software driven. I feel safe in the computer world!!!!

I recently bought Komplete Synths which is just awesome! FM8 & Massive are truly astounding, but for me Absynth is still my favourite! I love the fact you can throw in your own samples & make some pretty outlandish sounds. I found Pro-53 to be nice piece of kit, though where I would use some of the sounds in my tracks...I dunno! Still a lot of fun making bleeps & bloops!

[Disturbed Earth]

I use inexpensive binaural mics. from www.core-sound.com. They are around US$100.00 without the shipping. There are more expensive versions and some quite unique stuff on the site. It's out of New Jersey, USA . I've been using them for the past 10 years or so and they still sound as good as what you want to surround yourself with...remember these are true binaural and not stereo mics. so they are a pair of ears.
So there is quite a trick to mixing the sounds you get with these things into your song or whatever.

[sympathetic | DIVISION]

Yeah! I just read about that! I've heard it's a great add-on! I agree Massive is a beast of synth, very genre specific though! Still I love the sounds it makes so I keep playing around with it! The one thing I found with Pro53 which I thought was odd, it's very resource hungry on my Mac. Maybe it's just me, but it's a bit buggy in Garageband though in Cubase it runs fine! Weird!!

Endoflogic said:

Now you're speaking my language. If you're a fan of Absynth, spend the extra $60 (or whatever they're charging in Australia) and get the Absynth Twilights library add-on. There's some truly amazing voices in that collection. I agree FM8 is an excellent library, and while I enjoy Pro53, Akoustik Piano and the others I'm still not sure how they'll fit in with what I'm doing. For the most part, I'm switching back and forth between Absynth and FM8.

Massive scares the crap out of me. WAAAAAAY too many buttons and dials and doo-dads.

sympathetic | DIVISION said:

I'm a HUGE fan of the NI gear. For me, being computer based they work perfectly for what I'm doing. I'm in the process of getting Reakor, which seems to be getting cheaper & cheaper down here in Australia. Hardware synths have for some reason always fascinated & frightened me, so I've always been more software driven. I feel safe in the computer world!!!!

I recently bought Komplete Synths which is just awesome! FM8 & Massive are truly astounding, but for me Absynth is still my favourite! I love the fact you can throw in your own samples & make some pretty outlandish sounds. I found Pro-53 to be nice piece of kit, though where I would use some of the sounds in my tracks...I dunno! Still a lot of fun making bleeps & bloops!

[peter james]

i just treated myself to a tibetan singing bowl, in C, apparently. oh and an ancient yamaha effects processor, it's not very good, really, but it does some cool lo-fi effects and distortiion stuff.

[Seren]

Gear is one of those things that can often creep up on me....one moment I am happy and working away with what i have, then an idea occurs or i see something and think that would be useful......

First time I recorded was in late 70's and very early 80's. Portastudio 144, Roland System 100 (101,102 and sequencer) guitar and adapted reel to reel. Very enjoyable and analogue.

in 2003 I noticed a Korg D16 for sale in a second hand shop for £1000. A year later it was still there so i went in and said, how much for cash? Taking it home I borrowed a cheap yamaha keyboard from work and started recording. After a gap of over twenty years i was amazed at how powerful the modern technology was, no noise build up from bouncing, everything staying in time, wonderful. Of course i needed mics and cables and stands and a cassette recorder to record stuff for listening before burning to CD - but I was happy. Then an amp and speakers so i could use it without headphones, then a better keyboard, which needed cables and stand and carry bag, but I was happy.......

Well I try to keep it in check, especially as i have a home to keep now as well, but always, slowly things start to whisper "you need me, you really need me..."

I'm not computer orientated so software synths don't send me their siren songs, though i do use the computer as an addition to my hardware set up. I have sonar 5 and a couple of VST effects that does everything I want in the virtual realm.

I keep my eyes open in the second hand shops and try to explore what I already have in as much depth as possible.

Recently started thinking of performing live so got a 16 track mixer (which was on a special offer), and cables - but for the visuals i can already hear a camcorder and video editing software calling gently "you need me,you really need me"....

[Seren]

Seren said:

.....Recently started thinking of performing live so got a 16 track mixer (which was on a special offer), and cables - but for the visuals i can already hear a camcorder and video editing software calling gently "you need me,you really need me"....

But instead I got caught out by a couple of condenser microphones for the studio, better sound than the dynamics I've been using

[Modulator ESP]

I have terrible problems with Gear Lust as I just love playing hardware synths, I seem to have collected quite a few nice ones over the years and have reached the point where I have run out of space so when I want something new I have to sell something to make room, so my lovely old Mono/Poly is on it's way out to make room for a Voyager. I'm probably not going to get any more synths now unless I decided to sell my Prophet 5 and replace it with a Polyevolver, but that will be a hard decision. I don't feel too guilty though as I use pretty much everything I have, just not necessarily all at once.
The only other hardware I'm thinking about is a proper analogue modular, but I've been thinking about it for several years and not got round to it yet so who knows ;-)
I've never had a good enough computer to use any softsynths, but I've recently bought a fairly good laptop so might try out some softsynths, just to see what is availble that I haven't got as hardware.

[sympathetic | DIVISION]

I've been recently reading up on Omnisphere by Spectrasonics in the latest Sound on Sound (The latest issue in Australia that is). A pretty impressive sounding beast with some truly inspiring samples, but I wonder if it is worth the $599 US? Although using a sound derived from someone playing a guitar strapped to a clothes drying rack would be interesting!

[sympathetic | DIVISION]

Actually I just realized Omnisphere is $499! Stilll...is it worth it?

sympathetic | DIVISION said:

I've been recently reading up on Omnisphere by Spectrasonics in the latest Sound on Sound (The latest issue in Australia that is). A pretty impressive sounding beast with some truly inspiring samples, but I wonder if it is worth the $599 US? Although using a sound derived from someone playing a guitar strapped to a clothes drying rack would be interesting!

[Modulator ESP]

Not a Polyevolver, but I've just added my second desktop evolver, after spending some quality time getting to grips with the first one I figured that it would be great for live sequencing and that two sequences is always more interesting than one