Here comes the freight train for all the US musicians on the tracks. This is an example of how a $399 drum machine will cost $977 in the US.

https://sonicware.jp/pages/cydrums

Important Notice for USA Customers
Due to new U.S. customs regulations, a 145% duty will apply to China-made products, including this item. This $399 item will incur over $578 in additional import charges starting next month.
We recommend ordering within this month to avoid the new duties.

lol thnx for the "Ludovico Technique"

had a fruit on the vine and thought to give it away here but then i read and see derogatory reference always skirting politics and realize i should just leave it on the tree to rot. it's no skin off my teeth lol

Arturia V11 should be out on Thursday.

Will be a while until the upgrades hit €99 (if they even do so again from V8 that I’m on)… I’m not paying more than that, even if 11 is spectacular.

I’m going to keep spending to an absolute minimum from now on. I can do it. Honest.

I'll call you Giò, so the anglospeaking friends will be fine calling you Joe

I'm thinking local used gear markets may come back a bit.

Also, there'll be a shift toward being ITB the longer this goes on and the worse the US/world economy gets. Especially for younger musicians.

I'm comfortable with the hardware I have and hope to have enough dollars in the future to replace something as needed. There's a couple things I want(ed) that may be priced out of range. TBD.

My dream is that the.... tariffs (so hard to stay neutral here)... will go away sooner rather than later and that prices won't have totally locked in at the new levels as tends to happen.

I have V8 and Arturia don't quite hit the mark when it comes to Gforce and UAD with their plugins IMO.

My eyes have been opened with what a software synth can be...Gforce sound analog...there I said it.

IK and Arturia have lost my interest.

One would be hard pressed to accuse you of partisanship here, or crossing agreed lines of behavior/site/thread rules, or reporting it etc.. in regards or terms to some particular 'alignment' with anything at all, as it is just simply what is going on.

And recognition of something that is really damn as$ stupid for what it is.... does not run against prevailing economic thought represented from most sides of all of it.

I just hope I can easily replace hw that breaks.
I don’t necessarily need anything else. Just one more compressor… then I will be whole.

That said, the used market will get flooded if things get rough enough. Especially the low to mid priced gear market.

Software just keeps getting better and better.
I’m not selling my hw comps anytime soon, but there’s a pretty good case for a large percentage of people to do so if things get tight.

Wait, I'm not sure I understand.. you are saying a mellotron mk1-2/m400 whatever didn't spring back to the original position or was able to adjust? I don't remember that... always did for me.. granted it's been a few... but the spring would always pull it back to the top...

Ah, but I think I am misunderstanding you, and my bad, in that you are saying that a new option is available on the Mtron Pro IV to ~not~ go back to the top of the tape..and set an (imaginably adjustable) parameter to vary playback within the tape loop(sample) etc correct?

I hadn't noticed that.. interesting.. I guess I'm used to the 'attack' portion on many sounds, (and you know which ones are there in certain banks that could be outliers in an interesting way and you knew when you would hit some f# or something, you were gonna get a slightly different sauce kinda thing....). so I could see how having the option to circumvent that would or could be absolutely helpful in some scenarios... and surprised I didn't notice that and have to go look.. (as I like the fact the newer versions allow for an elongated key range as I always f that up or want to go there, and would do bs crap to do so previously... )...

and they did have that kind of odd velocity response thing (explaining it poorly, but again, due to your user name I'm sure you know what I mean), and the snake dancing one would do sometimes on sustained notes thing and all of that.... good times..

When you press a key, the capstan pulls the tape forward. If you hold the key for, say 6 seconds and release the key, the return spring attempts to pull the tape back to the start. But if you interrupt the retraction by pressing the key again before the tape gets to the beginning, the sound picks up at that point. So if you press the key for 6 seconds, release it and quickly re-press the key so that only 2 seconds of sound (or 15 inches of tape) are retracted, that puts you 4 seconds past the beginning of the tape (or 30 inches past the beginning). M-Tron Pro IV has an option to simulate that.

Yeah, wait for the BF $99 deal. We'll see what else they add. Guessing one more and one or two updates with the new ones, Synthx V, MiniBrute V and Augmented YANGTZE. Not sold so far, although I do like the Arturia stuff. (May be in the minority, but works for me.)

My first thought is that if this 145% duty happens, they aren't going to be selling many units to the USA.

But my 2nd thought is that this is a marketing push to get potential users to buy now and not wait, just like a lot of other retailers outside the audio world. It will be interesting to see the actual price after the 145% duty. I doubt it will be anywhere close to $977 however I have no clue as to their target market other than EDM.

I do wonder how Behringer is going to manage this considering they are in China and their plants are undergoing robotic assembly lines.

It's relatively easy for me. How much blame can I put on my tools for not achieving the same quality as my favorite producers, tracking engineers, mix engineers, and mastering engineers?

I don't think it's the hardware other than conversion, when Serban mixes it.

What really is the barrier assuming one exists? The room? Mics? Experience? Isn't there enough good software to cover the room and mics these days? This isn't Antares Mic Modler from 25 years ago. What's my problem if I want to be "just as good..."

Other than tools with AI, I don't see a lot of real innovation, since many have gone to $29, and I'm not convinced AI is going to be the ticket. I see a lot of re-hashed technology. Improved GUI, resizable demands, bigger librarys, and anything to make life easier for $29.

As I said before, I think Dirk got out at the right time.

So for me, it is easy to keep the spending at a minimum because it's not the tools.

Considering all that Arturia have released from their beginnings, plus all the revisions over the years, I'm not sure it's a fair comparison, especially with UAD. Personally I wish UAD had stayed where they were 5 years ago charging "outrageous" money for a single plug, and Arturia had not released any effects at all focusing on synth instruments only. Do what you do best. Then Arturia might have had the budget to create a Yamaha GX1 emulation. But marketing 101 suggests you can't do that any longer which IMO is sad. We got a Cherry Audio GX-80 and a CR-78 that patch writer Dave Polich suggests is "close enough."

For the longest time, Gforce just had a coffee stained Melotron while Arturia had dozens of classic synths. Other than the Prophet5 and my OB8 I can't comment about quality of emulations. The Prophet 5 IMO is close. The OB-xa is pretty laughable even though it's not a direct comparison. Is there enough demand to improve either emulations? I don't think the money to get closer is there any longer.

I dumped IK over 20 years ago with no regrets, and no further comment.

The newer Arturia instrument releases have not been ones I desire. The last one I considered was the CP-70, but after comparing it to the Hollowsun CP-70 which was released long ago, I felt Arturia might be pursuing quantity over quality....sort of like NI.

Question for anyone: I googled "best CP-70 VST" and after 6 pages I gave up because there were no hits for the Hollowsun CP-70. Am I searching wrong? I get Sweetwater and Arturia advertisements on every page.

I like Arturia instruments, my most used being Analog Lab. And yeah, GForce is amazing and superior, but Arturia is still good IMHO

Yeah, I'm not "cork sniffing" synths. I can load up Analog Lab and just have fun. Might load up something else if I want to dig in. Arturia, Reason and UVI are my go-tos outside of Logic.

I definitely wait for their sales. Their upgrade pricing at release is always too high.

Not sure what else they could add that would appeal to me tbh.

I feel the same way.

Maybe it's not as good as Gforce but I use Arturia more.

The new Phono Loop library sounds fab.
It's another rhodes but done in a really fantastic way.

It's expensive, though. 112€ plus tax.

I demoed Klevgrand Elpiano and was not impressed. It's fine. Some really good presets. But...nah.