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Comment by Juliate

5 months ago

Yes! But, huge but, very huge but, you lose the affordance of the switches and the buttons and the knobs and the patch cables. And that is a terrible loss for fiddling and discovery.

11 comments

Juliate

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lolive  5 months ago

My path has been to work a lot in the ODDYSEi app.

Now that I understand most of it, I am really considering buying a ARP 2600 replica.

So yes, the switch from software to hardware comes with time. But, at least for me, the first step is cheap apps on my already-owned tablet.

  • piltdownman  5 months ago

    As a BARP 2600 owner (standard, not grey or blue) I couldn't recommend it more. If nothing else its max €400 for one of the most incredibly routable FX modules of all time with a very serviceable digital spring-reverb and Ring Modulator in the mix. Pair with a Strymon Night Sky or Big Sky and you've an enviable ambient/soundscape setup.

lolive  5 months ago

True. But for going from zero to semi-hero, that’s definitely an option. [the huge amount of presets in software synths is really an BIG added value, so you can learn how each given sound is built]

  • Juliate  5 months ago

    Definitely agree too. Budget is definitely not the same.

    And something like VCVRack is heaven to learn, experiment and understand what one can do with synthesis, step by step.

xdfgh1112  5 months ago

You gain presets lol. And in the case of odyssei it has a ton of additional features including a sequencer and full effects bank!

Experiences vary but sliding a slider on a screen is worth the benefits.

  • lolive  5 months ago

    In the case of ODDYSEi, I am not sure whether the included 6-controls sequencer [i think that’s called P-lock] and/or the desunion on 8 « channels » [not sure of the wording] also exist somehow as hardware devices for the real ARP Oddysey

zokier  5 months ago

Midi controllers work plenty good with ipads

  • Juliate  5 months ago

    Totally agree, and it's an intermediary step, but it's still not the same.

    I mean, it's terrific to have an affordable replica, especially for discovery, I'm not debating the price-point advantage (for both acquisition and maintenance), but this is not an on-par replacement.

    In an analog (less so in digital, but still somehow) synth, the controls are the instrument itself: they are in a specific place, react in a specific way, and physically part of the device that outputs the sound, and they stay there: you cannot move one without the other. The instrument has its own character. It's still more abstract than a classical instrument like the violin or the piano where the physical action alone is done and felt in real time, of course. It's significantly more incarnated than software + generic (in a good way) controllers.

    The good side of this is that after having software replicas or original synthetisers, there's room to build new exciting embodiments/physical instruments.