Best Synth for a 'one-man-rock-band' type set up

Hey! Welcome!

Minilogue was the synth on the tip of my tongue, before I even finished reading your post... though I know people are very fond of the JD-Xi too. I don't think you can go wrong with either... I think it will come down to your subjective opinions on the timbral diffs between the two, and whether or not the extras on the JD like the built in drum sounds, 4-part multitimbrality, 4-track sequencer, etc are things you want and need. I do think the Minilogue is further along the path towards being a future classic, as it is a true analog polysynth and has proven more popular with pros (as evidenced here)... but that doesn't mean it's a better fit for your needs.

Definitely, if I was going to perform live with just one of those 2 synths and nothing else, I could do more with the JD... but that would require some menu diving and pre-planned projects, etc... the simpler, more immediate nature of the Minilogue may be more what you are after if you're going to manage layered song parts via live looping anyway.

the jdxi is so mediocre.... the korg won't do basic piano or organ sounds, that's sampler turf although in my twiddling with the jdxi in stores I realized it has some bread and butter pcm rompler sounds hiding in the digital side (bad string samples, organ, I forget exactly).... but this style of synth doesn't have a libarary like that, its not a library thing, there are presets but you're really supposed to design your patches with the front panel controls, its fun!

frankly I would be looking at minilogue for analog synth, its an analogue synth though the voice count is low and in the 4 voice camp I prefer the DSI mopho x4 (discontinued) or the miniXD and use the analogue synth's keybed as a midi controller for a module running other sounds, lots of good options there on the cheap from the 90s and 2000s. I'm pretty sure you can get an emu proteus 2k series rack for nothing. The organs are above average and great for the era, the pianos are fine to good and the electric pianos are good to great. To do this you may want to spring a few bucks for a little line mixer to send a straight stereo feed to FOH.... in fact, you might as well buy a budget lexicon or spx90 for the rack mixer/rompler rack setup so you can have some classy FX.... the lexicon mx series is a good call here and I straight up use my units in my full blown home studio... soemtimes I prefer them to older more desirable PCM series units due to the ability to chain modulation into reverb on one machine using just one aux send but that's big buy analog post room stuff. They sound pretty darn good....

so get a minilogue XD or mopho x4 or maybe a cheap prophet '08 (they keep going down) and a rack rompler with organ, piano etc sounds that you feel ok with.... ashly line mixer in 1u if possible, otherwise whatever's cheap.... lexicon unit if possible, maybe an mx200, small gator or skb rack, done

that's me.... I eman, the ebatles only used synth on a few songs on abbey road, the moog modular was pretty recent and george had one.... his patches always were pretty bread and butter minimoog sounds so a modular or polysyth are not needed

wait, are you playing live? disregard some of that line mixer stuff, I'm not getting the application

okay, I did follow, so yeah to do that you'll need to mix them down.... it might be easier live to layer into a loop station. It seems a bit weird to loop a midi device whe you could just sequence it, but its probably cheaper than getting a sequencer.

that's a rabbit hole of suggestions; discussions about cost, sound quality and programming interface.... what's your hard price limit? how good does the synth engine's sound and editability need to be? nothing but analog will touch analog for synth sounds, but you want piano and organ? well, its digital or an actual piano and organ, dude. You can collect gear your whole life and never be happy with all of it, what are your must have features and how good does it need to sound?

your looper idea is already going to compromise the sound quality of anything with wider bandwidth than a guitar amp reproduces, namely piano, organ, synth.... and the conversion will be pretty sketchy, you're not exactly getting sabre converters in a stomp box

maybe go hella cheap on an all in 1 solution, not sure what that would be, that's not my thing, maybe a used korg triton, kronos or oasys from 10 /20 years ago? new workstations like the motif and fantom lines are expensive and hold their resale for some time.

wait wait, do you actually play the piano? do you prefer hammer action, organ or something inbetween? You get organ action or at best a semi weighted feel in a synth, workstations might offer a more realistic feel but tis generally a digital piano (home level or stage) that offers actal hammer construction but the sound pallette will be limited until you drop thousands

the looper may not have that much fidelity even through a full range speaker but I'm picky

2k is just enough to get you into trouble but not enough to get you the best of everything you want, good luck.... hit up reverb for a used fantom or motif maybe, god it pains me to say that but you need too many things, the workstation is just the ticket and if you get it cheap enough you can swing a used minilogue too, they're cheap used if you don't want the XD version... seems like the lower end motifs are trading for under a grand in this screwy economy and the fantoms are allover the place.... giant preset sound libraries on either including tolerable B3, great pianos etc and also there's built in sequencing

you'll figure it out, I assume... remember, impedance

This thread has kinda been put to bed for now, but I have some thoughts from last week I didn't have the bandwidth to indulge until now.

So, based on needs as described thus-far:

1. If money were no object, and you didn't want to bring a computer on stage, I think a Nord Stage 3 would be your ultimate solution. It's got enough sample memory to house an outstanding piano/keys library, as well as classic Melotron sounds, strings, etc, all user-swappable, with free high-quality downloadable libraries hosted by the manufacturer. Stage 3 also has a complete virtual analog synth engine built-in, so you can handle "On the Run" with the best of 'em. Also it's sexy, red, and vibe-y AF... which is one of the many reasons they hold their value incredibly well. Yamaha, Roland and Korg surely offer deluxe stage piano/workstations that can claim some similar features, minus the style, but check the used values of a 15 year old Nord Stage vs. any similar Roland or Yamaha product...

2. If you can live with brining a laptop onstage, THIS will ultimately yield sonic results better than any hardware product that's trying to emulate a piano, Rhodes, etc, for way less money. You'll also have a ton more options for continuing to explore what it is you want from synths and keys without a big cash outlay up front. If you're on Mac (you mentioned graphic design) the sounds packaged with Logic Pro X, for only $200, could very well be all you need, ever. Heck start with Garageband even. If you want to spend a little on boutique virtual analog synth sounds, U-he DIVA is pretty fantastic, and more flexible than any single analog synth under $4000 could hope to be.

Ground rules for MIDI controllers:

1. DO NOT buy a controller that requires drivers to be fully operational on Mac or Windows. Driverless (aka class-compliant, aka plug-n-play) has been the industry standard since at least the late 00's, but there are still used products out there that aren't, so just be 100% sure whatever you buy doesn't require drivers, because if drivers are non-optional, it will become a doorstop once the manufacturer stops issuing updates. Don't buy a keyboard/synth with only a traditional 5-pin DIN midi out socket and tell yourself that will be your midi controller, as you'll still have to buy a MIDI to USB converter to get it to your computer, or use the MIDI i/o built into your sound card... doable, but non-optimal if you're new to all this stuff.

2. Unless you're buying a controller from a company that also makes wood-frame digital pianos, the kind sold in piano showrooms, then you're buying from a company that doesn't make their own controller keybeds. Unless there's been a major manufacturing shake up in the last decade that I'm unaware of, a company called Fatar supplies key beds for most products out there, and if it's not Fatar, it's sometimes the lesser-known Medeli. Fatar makes a whole range of different keybeds with different feels, but don't expect lightyears of difference in key feel between different brands for this reason. From my personal experience, Novation, Arturia, and AKAI* offer the best low to mid-range midi controllers right now. I can personally vouch for the quality of Arturia's preset editor software... it actually works, which is more than I can say for some. If you want something with fully weighted hammer-action keys that feels like a real piano, don't cheap-out, buy one from a company that makes the aforementioned piano-showroom digital pianos, something like the Roland A-88.

*AKAI is now owned by same parent corp that owns the Alesis and M-Audio brand names, but I don't personally have enough info to recommend recent Alesis or M-Audio branded stuff. I'm not yet sure how much overlap there is between the 3 brands under-the-hood.

I'm in no rush, so my thoughts may change a hundred times before I actually purchase but, right now I'm settled on:

• Alesis Vi49
• Logic Pro X
• Some semi-affordable portable loudspeaker

I think you'll be more than happy with this setup, and I'm relieved to hear this is how you're leaning.

Eventually, you may want to add an audio interface in the mix to further improve latency (time between when you press a key and when you hear a sound from the computer) and overall sound quality of the output, but in my personal experience, the latency performance and audio quality of the built-in sound hardware on MacBooks is totally usable... don't add further complication unless you have a good reason.