jimmarchi1's Electronic Studio Setup

Scored at a guitar center for very, very cheap. These are overshadowed by the more capable DW8000 but overall have THAT korg hybrid sound. If you don't need more LFOs and waveshapes this will cover a lot of stuff. Not a good FIRST poly, but a great adjunct to a big rig that's mostly analog and pure digital because it splits the difference beautifully. Not wavetables, but just wave memory. Like a less evolved ESQ1 (right down to the extra envelope stages), but also simpler to dial up a nice pad. This has more aliasing on the waveshapes but is at the same time warmer sounding for some reason. I want to think both synths feature Curtis chip filters, but maybe not as the filters sound quite different to me. Both are bright but the korg is less aggressive and SCI-ish making it capable of some very Japanese pad and key sounds that can get downright juno-ey, but that's not its main thing in my opinion. Mine needs a power cable repair. Time to warm up the soldering iron.

this synth was fun right out of the box, but with some extra patch cables and some hardware sequencers? damn. It came with enough peripherals to enjoy right in the box, but more is always better, right? It feels like if roland decided to make an ARP2600 clone in the 80s. Its both an instrument and an intimidating sound fx generator... both musical and alien and it bridges the gap between 70s and 80s subtractive sounds perfectly having the cutting power of an Odyssey, a filter that can go from roland to oberheim and a lushness that makes me think mono Jupiter. I'm absolutely in love with this thing and I own a lot of synths. It feels awfully sturdy for a Behringer product. The value for dollar is insane. Expect an extended review with demos published on Equipboard soon.

Setup was a bit of a hassle and having to update firmware via ethernet is a pain having gone laptop now but overall a great interface. This has a little bit of everything as the centerpiece of your home studio. Lightning fast thunderbolt, decently fast USB, a couple really transparent mic/instrument preamps, 8 line ins and outs for synths.... stereo FX send (you have to use line ins to record and monitor the return though)... dual headphone amps. MIDI. Onboard DSP which I haven't fiddled with too much yet. Expandable with other motu products over AVB or with anybody's preamps and converters over spdif, ADAT/smux or AES/EBU. Paired with a good rack of focusrites over SMUX this thing can do a lot... I'll probably be getting a new one to use as my gateway to the computer with this slaved over AVB when MOTU gets around to making a thudnerbolt3 version. I highly recommend this interface to anyone who doesn't want to get caught up in the apollo plugin racket. If your PC is fast enough to run all your plugins native in real time and you're using a lot of hardware synths like I am at home? Get a MOTU.

these monitors have fantastic low end, the best of any 6.5" monitor I've ever used. They're clear and detailed when driven by high end converters. They're powerful but sound good at low volumes. Lots of thoughtful fine tuning on the back which coupled with price point makes them a perfect home studio option. Top end? Whoa, its detailed. They seem to have a slight midrange dip which is not a problem but I don't personally like it. They also throw a really wide and diffuse stereo image so I wouldn't mix on them without another playback system. I actually am using them mostly for tracking ebcause the sound off axis sitting at a keyboard is so sweet versus my preferred passive tannoy and yamaha mix monitors that have a small sweet spot because of their accurate stereo imaging. Coupled with an NS10 or PBM6.5 and amp setup I'm really happy with these. I have the big sound for tracking and checking a mix and I can also use my midrangey, directional passives to really get the balance right. Its great to switch to these when soloing in place to get a really detailed and defined representation of a sound that's not sitting, make some tweaks, then go back to the B setup and listen, then un-solo. I highly recommend these for a small room. These replaced my trusty Events that have served me since time out of mind. Never looking back.

I was an early adopter of Fruity Loops. I tried version 1 as a highschool senior and fell in love with its ability to load up and edit an unlimited number of my homemade samples and then sequence them with an easy to understand TR808/909 type grid layout. I've been with Image Line ever since. This gets five stars because of how innovative it was at the time. Compared to rebirth it was harder to get useable stuff out of, but it was way more versatile and it sounded as good as what you put in. THis was such a chameleon and combined with hardware synths and something like acid for loop manipulation you really were at the cutting edge of computer music. The toughest thing was syncing it all up back then. Everything had to be done in little bite sized pieces and the workflow was tedious at best!

imagine a a sophisticated softsynth like serum that has hands on control and better sound quality.... and then some. Big learning curve but worth it.

Update.... I've had it for a week as of tomorrow and every day I like it more.

I have an i9 10th gen, 64g ram, 1tb SSD, Intel optane enabled.... yada yada

this PC is a nightmare to optimize for audio. Plus Win10 loves to fuck with you, even when you do manual updates... I almost regret not going mac. If I had it to do over again I would either get the equivalent macbook pro or try a customized precision workstation, although this was quite a savings compared to those 2 options, particularly the dell precision. I really saved less than a grand versus the apple when both companies were running promotions, but I really don't like the way apple wants to make me their bitch.... Its my machine, damnit. Plug n play when new, but next thing you know you have to trade her in for a loss to run the new OS properly so your interface will work and and and.... this is also annoying. I dunno.

I miss the Atari ST and tape machines sometimes.