I thought the Wavestation had 20 bit converters? Which, maybe substandard to today's specs, they're still good. I think the plugin version might be 'brighter' sounding, but sometimes we need a little mud. Plus the sound from the hardware is 'wider' or something than I could get out of the plugin.

I used a wavestation for years. For the things it is best at, it is amazing. I had a set of patches that I was really happy with and I didn't find it hard to program particularly, but it took a bit of getting used too. I wouldn't use it for everything but the set of sounds I used on it (mainly strings and pads I made) were exactly what I needed and nothing I used beat it for that. I made a great ambient style piano patch that pleased me and I overused ;-)
I have a TG500 and the WS is capable of MUCH better sounds imho but The TG is full of useable stuff and has a quality straight out the box, that makes it a bargain, but for me the WS is misunderstood. The TG77 covered completely different territory and I was so pleased when the WS came out to have something rich and warm and quiet.

In any case, these days as a Wavestation can be had for less than $200, it's hardly a major issue. I had the EX, AD and SR. All the same. AD is obviously better feature wise but I like having a keyboard.
If getting a keyboard, you want the EX which has extra samples.

From using both hardware and software versions (KORG M1REX and Wavestation SR), I'll add my opinion that the software emulations sound quite similar to the original hardware, actually a bit cleaner imho.

Sky

The number of bits in the converters are not especially important with respect to the sound character or clarity compared to the many other variables that affect sound character or quality. This seems to be a pretty common misconception.

For example, the op-amps and each of their components, the sample rate of the samples, number of bits available for internal processing, the bit depth and sample rate of the effects processor, the *quality* of the DACs (18 DACs can sound much better than 24 bit DACs), and so on and so forth can each--or collectively--have a far greater effect on what you hear than the number of bits available to the converters!

The engineers who designed the digital synths of this era, IMO, did some incredibly smart, creative things to circumvent the limitations (and high costs) of the available technology yet still manage to deliver a very musical sound character and quality.

An amazing response! thankyou all... 'busy on my 'dayjob' ...but have been giving this some thought.... will post soon. Rgds.

Maybe, but Korg did say that they made 16 bit ROM waves but downsampled them to 12 for the hardware but used the full bit depth for the software.

I’ve read through the ENTIRE thread – thanks for everyone who’s taken the time to share their opinions…. I’ve studied your comments intensively and there have been many very good points raised.

I’m fairly sure that I’ve made up my mind… my conclusion so far: I’ve just sat down for the hundredth time and convinced myself that I’m going to program some amazing sounds on the Wavestation SR. But i'm still struggling! :( ... I can create certain sounds that are very reminiscent of early 90's suspence movies soundtracks but cannot easily move away from there...I'm fairly sure that i would need to dig deeper... but it's the digging deeper which is causing me too much frustration at the moment.

I initially bought the WS SR because i enjoy abstract, atmospheric sounds which have a lot of depth, width and movement.... but essentially, that can be created VERY quickly.

If anyone could help me – this is what my ideal hardware sound module would provide:

• A very large selection of interesting waveforms many of which would have a lot of character/texture to begin with – not sounding over-compressed or over EQ’d at the raw waveform level – I have little need for PCM samples of ‘real’ instruments as I almost never want to incorporate these when creating ‘abstract’ sounding presets and I’m not a great fan of reams and reams of similar sounding sine/saw/square waves. – I find that when I’m programming my CS6R or the WS SR it’s the waveforms which have a certain atmosphere/character/textural/unusual quality which catch my attention or simpler sounds which are very ‘wide’ ‘large’ ‘lush’ but there only seems to be a small handful of these sounds which can cause most of my presets to have too similar/familiar a sound.
  
• An interface which allows you to combine a few of these waveforms VERY quickly with speedy and simple access to key parameters such a filter cutoff/type and ADSR of each individual sound as well as the global parameters of the ‘performance’
  
• A decent unfussy/un-complex effects section

If I had those three things I’d be more than happy… any suggestions would be very welcome.

I would reccomend the Roland JD-800. Is there a ROMpler that's easier to edit and make new sounds on?

My solution is Ensoniq TS10+Blofeld Wavetable Creator+http://www.adventurekid.se/akrt/wave...kid-waveforms/ +whatever I can sample

But its not to fast until youve built your library, and even then needs to be on scsi/floppy disk/floppy emulator.
So its probably not for you if youre frustrated by the wavestation ...
But it does have wonderfully long envelopes (50 sec) a sweet cross modulation matrix, lots of layering possibilities and great effects.

In any case the blofeld program is great for transforming waveforms to interesting moving wavetables.
So any HW synth you can load wavetables to and set length of cycle yourself should work?

I think the Blofeld is kinda cool, dunno which version you can upload custom wavetables to though.
But there is quite a few user ones around I think (havent searched for it as mine needs to be constructed with zero crossing between waves.)
Effects dont sound to hot, but theyre there.

Thanks Alex! - Will check on YouTube later! ... I thought the JD-800 was a keyboard?? ... not sound module? ... excuse my ignorance .... I'll have a look online anyway.

Sounds interesting... I dont mind putting the time in... and i dont really mind ' working inflexibility' --- i used SCSI and hardware samplers for years and years before PC/DAW/hardware... as long as i put the time in and get great results all is well... i just hate trying to create something for hours and getting hit&miss - sometimes 'questionable' results. -- will check it out. Thanks.

Ah, Didn't realize you're looking for a module. You should check it out anyway as that the parameter dedicated controls really make it one of a kind in the world of sample-playback synthesizers.

ok, thanks! will do.

Sounds like you may like the Roland V-synth. Not available in module form, but also potentially up your street would be the Ensoniq Fizmo. The Polyevolver rack is also hugely sonically interesting, but you need the keyboard version to meet your interface requirements. Also worth considering some of the later generations of HW samplers, though the interfaces tend to take a bit of learning before you can do the more creative stuff reasonably quickly.

To be honest, the software route has a huge amount to offer for this sort of thing, Alchemy and Omnisphere being the two obvious contenders.

adydub - This is one of the most useful threads i've had feedback from ...

I've had to take a serious look at the Wavestation SR and really ask myself if it's REALLY that useful to ME... i'd gladly sell it to an amazing programmer who will get the best out of it... and i've come to the place where i'm seriously looking at the more friendlier alternatives...

I'll check out your suggestions adydub

Many thanks.

This is exactly what I was going to say. I think the OP may be looking for something that doesn't quite exist in the hardware world. I think the main issue is that to do what the OP wants would mean a very large and costly to manufacture interface and everything I've come across has kind of a crappy interface... not much better than the Wavestation. I never liked the sound of the V-Station though, so I'm not sure about that one.

I will tell you that if you're looking for uncompressed "rich" sounding high quality wave forms, the Evolver isn't for you. I got rid of mine because I didn't like that aliased sound you'd end up with as you got farther away from the waveform's original pitch. Also, while Roland's ROMplers can sound pretty good, they're waveforms are compressed and can end up sounding a bit gritty too but it's a better type sound IMO. Interfaces on those are also pretty bad, but on my old SonicCell it came with a software editor that was pretty good. I think if I was going for a ROMpler style synth I might look to Yamaha as my brother had a Motif that sounded really good. I don't know what it's like to program though.

In the end, here's what I came up with. While software might still be struggling to compete with a Minimoog, it's pretty ready to best things like the Wavestation. Even the Wavestation software sounds significantly better and is far easier to program (though not that great). Synths like Omnisphere take that even further. Alchemy is also good, though I like the resynthesis engine of Virsyn's Posiden a bit more and I also find myself using Harmor a lot because it's super easy to work in and sounds fantastic. I considered a Blofeld at one point, but found that it's software cousin Largo to be actually better in many ways.

Oh yeah, and with their current sale I'm getting Diversion for sure. Sounds f'n amazing.

http://dmitrysches.com/diversion

Anyway, that was my experience. YMMV. When I was putting my "rig" together I systematically tried to get a good representation of each major type of synthesis in hardware form... and in the end I found that for some types software was just a clear winner in terms of both sound and ease of programming.

I like the Legacy Wavestation, but some things like not being able to copy oscillators, having to right click to delete and insert wave sequence steps and no blank init patch are pretty annoying. How are these handled in the hardware?

The octatrack does some cool if non-standard wave sequencing. You'll have to roll all your own sounds from scratch (sometimes I sample from the wavestation!) and there's a very steep learning curve, but once that's taken care of it's capable of creating some very interesting sounds quickly.

^^^

Excellent info above - many thanks.... So much great info and suggestions here!

I really am a hardware man... but hey! - whatever works and can save me time is good... I'm not getting any younger - long gone are the days when i could afford to spend half a day trying my best to make decent sounds.

I need to play & go ...

JD-800

However, if you want hands on, in a rack you are looking at Virtual analog stuff (KS-Rack, JP-8000 etc) these have the fast hands on in a rack you seem to want but I'm not convinced they are the sound you want. JD-800 is an ambient monster. It does all kind of weird textures and very easy to get to them as you just reach out and tweak - sounds fkin lovely too with one of THE best digital filters of all time, makes the wavestation's "filter" sound like a bontempi kid's organ - You can layer 4 sounds on this in one patch, each sounds has 2 LFOs, multi stage filter and amp ENVS, Multi mode Filters (hi/band/low selectable for each layer) and pitch envelopes. It doesn't have any cross modulation or advanced stuff like it's rack 'cousin' (JD-990) as obviously they had to make a few compromises to fit all those sliders or it would have been twice as big (and it's already quite large - front to back) but you can get some amazing sounds by programming cleverly and thinking about each layer - it's a lot of fun too as the entire control surface is given over to any or all of the layers as you see fit. It also can have very slow envelopes, good for evolving stuff and cross fading with other layers (the famous lead guitar preset does a bit of that with the distortion/feedback like sound coming through as you play - not that I'm one to use keyboards for guitar sounds as I'm a guitarist too)

Make no mistake it's a very standard kind of synth in theory, 4 simple synths in fact, but it's all in HOW you can and want to reach out and tweak that brings sounds you just wouldn't find on more advanced but impenetrable synths. SY77 is technically way more advanced but it takes a LOT longer to make decent sounds on it, though they are worth it

Failing that a JD-990 with a hardware midi knob box to tweak it - or you could apply that to many rack mount synths.

The problem with the wavestation (i had) was much like you, it just wasn't immediate enough nor, after digging in (like you also have to with the SY/TG77 a bit), the sounds weren't 'new' or 'interesting' enough (due to the underlying PCM and no filters to speak of) unless you are after a specific evolving sound.

I'm much happier with my SY77/JD-800 combo - far exceeds the sonic quality, as in the sheer sound, put out by a wavestation even without the fancy wave sequencing etc. SY77 can do pseudo stuff like that but not quite the same - doesn't matter at all - you can make anything from anything with a DAW, but the initial sound has to have a nice tone and JD and SY are beautiful and neither feel restricted to their original PCM parts (OR AFM esp in the case of SY). I just feel there's more to discover in those synths (esp the SY/TG77)

A TG77 rack for you + a midi knob box or soft editor, and/or JD-990. You could do a LOT of damage with those and I'm sure if you couldn't get good sound/songs out of them then no synth would help you. Shame you are against keyboards as the JD-800 sounds right up your street.

There has to be some compromise somewhere with your very exacting requirements! At some point the music has to be put first rather than worry too much about the tech, and as above poster says you may be asking for something that' doesn't actually exist, only in the software world (some combo'd layers - FM8 with some analog emus or the more advanced 'rompler' software + the software Wavestation). Any other advice is just going in circles from this point. Start playing!

Many thanks for the masses of info !!! I'm getting curious about the JD 990... how easy is it to program from the front panel - would you know ?? - I'm not anti-keyboard ... just don't have the room for one (I have a small control keyboard) ... and i suspect the JD 990 would be cheaper ?? ... not sure yet... still searching online.

Also is sometype of control surface (i only have a basic m-audio keyboard) a viable option to use with a Wavestation ?? - obvious, although i never thought of that !!

My preferred way to program the wavestation is to not even listen to the patches as I make them. I decided on the rhythm or pace of how I want the wavesequences to evolve, decide on the amplitude envelopes, and then just program in a bunch of numbers (wave 342 to 256 to ... looks good to me today) load up the parts and then jiggle the joystick. Repeat 20 times. Then go back and listen to the patches and tweak them. Stretch out compress, add effects etc etc. I get a lot of nice surprises that way.

Xphraze is a super WS, but sadly unsupported

Kronos can do WS things

Old thread but lots of info.
If anyone has any user sysex for the TG500, i,d appreciate it.
As a novice, it may help me to get to grips with some synthesis programming of the unit.

Cheers
M

Sound wise, you're looking for a Seqential Circuits Prophet VS. The subsequent Korg and Yamaha efforts just aren't the same. You will want to use editor software to avoid constantly having to use the data slider while programming.

You can upload your own waveforms via MIDI SDS, and the filters are analog. If you like ethereal pads that swirl around your head and morph between different sounds, this is your animal. The Poly Evolver and Prophet 12 are both awesome, but lack Vector Synthesis.

Edit: Just noticed the Lazarus effect. Resuscitator is looking for different info. Sorry, can't help you there.

I'm also too late for this thread, but whatever. When I sold my Wavestation SR, I replaced it with Wusikstation, which is much easier to use than the Wavestation editor I was using. Used Wusik for a couple years but ultimately I wasn't too happy with the sound. Eventually bought a WS A/D, which I sold quickly (stupid decision) in favor of the Legacy Wavestation VSTi, but I haven't used it much but I'm hoping to. The Wavestation is one of my favorite digital synths ever.