My biggest objection to QI's plan is the time consumed. Even with sampling automation it will still be a lot of faff for one sound. I suppose once you've done it you can go back to this mega patch very quickly but as xanax has pointed out, it's a fairly static version of analogue. It's like going back to the Emu Vintage Keys, SG01V and the Roland Vintage board. Compromise era. All capable of good results but we are now in a golden age of real analogue. Just layer up a few real synths with good hands-on control and you'd be in heaven.

I'm not saying don't do it but I think it will be a huge time suck!

That's what I was thinking, this seems like a pretty massive undertaking... but at the same time I get it. Lord knows I've undertaken timesuck activities to scratch a certain itch heh.

And there would be a certain satisfaction knowing that your own personal sound and sample library is 100% homegrown and not off the shelf.

That's something that struck me as really cool when I watched a documentary on the creation of Peter Gabriel's fourth album: they went to great lengths to go to a junkyard and such to bang and blow on things to sample into Peter's Fairlight, to create something 100% unique. (Does anyone even do that anymore? Nowadays it's all too easy to plop down 40 bucks and download a sample library of someone banging on refrigerator parts.)

I'm sorry. But this is all unscientific, fairy dust bullshit.

I'm not denying that there are subtle variations in pitch and tone from one note to the next (both on a single note and the next note in a phrase) when playing a monosynth. What you are romantically referring to as "micro-instabilities." That's the entire point of sampling hardware synths vs. just using plugins.

Regardless, how would I not capture these subtle variations by sampling every whole note up the keyboard with four 15 second round robin samples per note (and four velocity layers, even for synths that are not velocity sensitive)?

Unless you think four 15-second round robin samples per note per layer are not enough to capture your "micro-instabilities" and "voice interactions"? (I could always sample each note for 30 seconds if I need to hold down a note in the sampled instrument for that long.)

Speaking of "voice interactions," what exactly are you referring to in the context of a monosynth? Last time I checked, a monosynth plays one note at a time, hence the name.

Is there some note in a parallel universe (assuming the Many Worlds theory of Quantum Mechanics is correct) that somehow defies the laws of space and time to interact with it?

It's just for fun. I have been doing something similar forever by borrowing keyboard synths that I don't have room for in my studio and sampling the shit out of them for a few days before giving them back to friends or colleagues. Is it the same as owning the synth? Of course not. But I use these sampled instruments all the time, even just to layer with plugins to beef up the sound.

Plus, it's not like I'm selling my car or remortgaging my house for a small mono setup. When it's all said and done, I will spend about $2,000 for a tidy 24" x 48" table of synths off to my left. The average Gearspace user with a modular rig has probably invested 2-to-5 times as much. And who knows, I might even start using the synths themselves in my tracks as I get faster and faster at programming each synth.

If nothing else, it will look cool, which would be reason enough to set this up. I could put a similarly-priced "designer" armchair in the same spot. That might actually be more inspiring and more practical as something to kick back in while listening to music. But the monosynth setup will hopefully be more fun.

Sorry, but analog synths are meant to be played live.

I own an Oberheim OB-X8, Moog Minimoog D, Sequential Trigon-6, Studio Electronics Omega 8, Moog One 16-voice, Analogue Solutions Colossus, UDO Audio Super 6, ARP 2500, 2600, Odyssey, Oberheim SEM, OB-Xa, Sequential Prophet-10, Wasp, VCS3, 4x Moog Muse, Pittsburgh Modular Taiga, TEO-5, and most importantly a Korg minilogue.

I know them inside out... let me tell you, the SECOND those sweet analog signals hit those ADC convertors, it's over. Lifeless, flat, why even bother? I don't even bother recording to the analog tape either, not like you can't change the sound once it's recorded too. I am an artiste. My music is live.... evolving, like the birds who come to your windows in the morning to chirp their sweet analog goodness. And the deer who lick my windows at night, ah such sweet analog horrors.

And that's totally why I haven't released a track yet. The tools for my creativity are far too limited. Maybe instead of people playing back MP3s, we could bring back General Midi so people always have that live playback feel? Every computer, tablet, laptop, and TV should contain a full analog synth with analog filters, analog LFOs, just analog everything, and a filter sweep knob so people will hear my magnum opus the way I designed it - A.L.I.V.E. A.N.D. A.N.A.L.O.G.

(fyi, this post is a joke )

Some of this is off the rhicter crazy.

Theses some things analogue do which can't... Well, they probably can if you spent long enough perfecting the recreation side by side... And that would be on a case by case basis recreating 'how it's played' over again. But i would just use the analogue and not bother myself. That's what it's there for. Save your energy. There's stuff sampling/digital can do which is impossible with analogue.

About that hitting the adc... I try and get it gelled "in life" before it hits the two track adc.
So it crunches the full thing.
It can do all its crosstalking/phasey shit.
I just find it a better way.. But each to their own.

I think using analogue, tracking it digitally then mixing it digitally is outright bizarre and defeats the purpose of it. Imo of course.

Multiple 441's or 15, 30k (which I think is fine for single channel) , bit of analogue thrown in bit of fm ect.. Sent to 2448.

Sometimes I sample my analog synths and then I mangle the recordings with a sampler. My goal is not to make a "sampled version" of the original synth, but to make something different, both from an analog synth and a VA/plugin.
For example, sometimes I filter/saturate/distort while recording, then I apply additional processing inside the sampler. These samples are different from the usual basic waveforms.

The downside is I don't do this often because it takes time (which I don't really have).


Of course that's not the only way to use a sampler, for example they can also be used in a more "conservative" way to "emulate" an instrument (with limitations / different results - I'm not keen on "replacing" analog synths with samplers)... but when used in a creative way, samplers can offer something different both from real analog and virtual analog synths...


Just my opinion, of course.

I was just trolling... edited my post to make it more clear.

Trolls are deckheads.

Be well.

Tbh, I’m not at all against sampling, especially as a creative tool, I went down that rabbit hole myself with the ASR-10, which was my favorite for this kind of thing. Its transwave capabilities were seriously ahead of their time and great for expressive textures. This isn’t about analog vs digital or purity vs practicality. It’s more about the context and intent.

If the goal is creative exploration, sure, sample whatever inspires you.. be it a synth, a pot lid, or your cat. But putting $2K into analog gear specifically to deeply multi-sample it with 10 velocity layers and 30s round robins just feels like a massive PITA way to get somewhere you might reach more directly with other tools, especially when there are so many forward-thinking options that offer more immediate flexibility for sound design. Not wrong, just personally not a route I’d go down.

To me, part of what makes analog exciting as hardware is its immediacy, interaction, and quirks in real-time (osc relationship, sync, FM, crossmod, filter behavior, etc). Once you flatten that into static samples, even with careful detail, you’re losing some of what makes those instruments worth the price in the first place. That’s why I’d lean toward modern hybrids, vintage samplers, granular stuff, or even great VSTs, depending on the goal.

Just adding my two cents.. not to dismiss anyone's approach, just sharing where I’m coming from.

Thank you for "getting it."

I agree that sampling synths (or sampling anything) can be a major time suck. That's why I had stopped doing it for the most part around the time Redmatica released Autosampler V2, which would have made my life SO much easier if I had used it during the preceding 10 years.

But it's so easy now to have Logic's Autosampler chew through a MIDI keyboard sampling session and output an EXS instrument containing multiple velocity layers with round robin samples per note that are all perfectly-looped.

Yes, if I am sampling every third half step for ten seconds and doing that four times per note with up to four layers per instrument, that can take quite a while:

4 layers/instrument x 5 octaves/layer x 4 notes/octave x 4 samples/note x 10 seconds/sample x 1 min/60 seconds = 53 minutes/instrument

That's something you want to get right the first time around.

Of course, not every patch will have four layers and I will most likely record only two round robin samples per note (which should be plenty to capture the subtle variations in pitch and tone).

A 2-layer patch of this sort would take 13 minutes, which is much more reasonable:

2 layers/patch x 5 octaves/layer x 4 notes/octave x 2 samples/note x 10 seconds/sample x 1 min/60 seconds = 13 minutes/instrument

But I don't have to babysit it. I can work on lyrics or anything else while Autosampler is doing its thing.

Also, I'm not a (complete) idiot. I plan to buy three Behringer synths to start with:

• Pro 800
• Proton
• Syncussion

I plan to keep the Pro 800 no matter what because it sounds good for the money and, most importantly, it has patch storage.

The Proton looks like a very versatile monosynth from which I should be able to coax some interesting sounds.

And I have always wanted a Syncussion because I think it sounds bitchin'. I should be able to get a lot of good drum loops and samples out it. The drum loops in particular will be fun to layer with my regular programmed drum parts.

So there is no great risk in what I am doing. Like I said, I have other analog synths that I can play in real time. But even here I usually overdub any knob movements into Cubase. I focus on my playing / touch response because that's where all the emotion is. It's not twiddling knobs (unless you're Billie Currie of Ultravox performing one of his amazing Arp Odessey solos).