Share whatever you want here about synthesizers. Photos of your studio, music you make, patches, favourite synths, your questions about equipment
Nice to see a niche topic close to my heart! I managed to mostly resist hard synths but I still know all about them from using emulations and following the subreddits. I do have a little Pro-1 copy in my studio but otherwise I’m mostly making music with recordings, samples and VSTs. These days unfortunately not a lot of time for music as I’ve launched my own business in another creative field which takes up all my time and creative energy.
I will happily follow this community :D
Congrats on starting your own business! It took me a few years to go back to my passion for music after starting my business in 2016. I was playing the piano before that and had a very superficial knowledge of synths. But after 2021 I got completely hooked. I have a Yamaha MODX6, a Roland JD-08 and playing with Ardour (on Linux) with SurgeXT and Vital (similar to Serum but free). Enjoy growing your business and when you settle, music will always be here for you!
I have a Juno DS88 and it is heavenly. I love playing it - the keys feel like a real piano. It does everything I could possibly dream of on a keyboard. It also seems to have a decent set of standard patterns and drum sounds. I wish I were a better player but the Juno is so much fun that it doesn’t really matter. I wouldn’t want to lug it around too much if I were gigging, it’s quite hefty, but in the home/studio it keeps me amused for hours and I have absolutely no complaints after 5 years or so.
The timing of your comment couldn’t be better for me! I am about to sell my Korg Air G1 electric piano and replace it with an 88-key synth. If money was not an issue, I’d get a Fantom 08 (or 8 if it was really… not an issue). However, I will have to settle for something more affordable. I was even thinking of a midi keyboard like Arturia 88 essential that I could pair with my laptop and my Yamaha MODX6 (which has excellent piano sounds). Now you got me thinking… and dreaming!
I’m still getting used to lemmy - it’s a little clunky still, but I’m sure we’ll whip it into shape soon. I tried posting a long reply but it didn’t stick. Anyway about the Juno - the sequencer on the Juno is really just a toy - the Fantom has a better sequencer but otherwise they are not that different - they have exactly the same key bed. Another thing you might want to consider if you’re planning on driving stuff with MIDI (as it sounds like you are), is that the Juno was VERY noisy when I plugged it in directly to a PC using a usb cable. I solved that by using conventional old MIDI cables and running through a midisport 2X2 to USB and it’s quiet but it was unusable directly into the PC. If you are doing a lot of stuff on the PC then maybe the Arturia would be a good buy - especially the lower end model at under 400USD on Amazon. I can’t help but wonder if a dedicated controller would be better in terms of latency and noise, because nothing here is grounded. I have a little 25 key controller that I’ll plug in and check - I don’t remember it being noisy at all on the laptop I used it on, but I didn’t think to try it in place of the Juno on the PC with the mixer and speakers connected. But yeah, the Juno was horrible with direct midi connection over USB. Let me know what you decide to do, I will be interested to know. If you have any questions about the Juno feel free to ask.
Thank you very much for taking the time to write this response. Midi is indeed important. I want to connect it to both my computer and my Yamaha MODX6, which has good piano sounds but a normal synth keybed (61 non-weighted keys). I also love the idea of having a synth that can work as a midi controller rather than just a midi controller. The direct interaction with a well-designed intrument is important for me. I am still undecided about which way to go. If I could resolve the USB issue with the Juno, I’d probably prefer it to the arturia 88, despite the higher cost. After all, it is a full-featured synth.
Yes, the Juno is a lot of bang for your buck. My experience with the USB connection may be unique to my setup. When I plug the Juno in directly it’s horribly noisy - howeever I’m running cables about 10 feet long, which snake behind a monitor and laptop and because there’s no earth at all in my power system (the mains are only two wires), there’s no common ground between the PC and the instrument, the mixer or the powered speakers, so it’s not surprising that it’s noisy. The Juno allows you to plug pair of conventional IN-OUT MIDI cables in addition to a direct USB connection. The midisport unit was something I had lying around - I can’t believe how old it is - it’s NOT the anniversary edition: https://m-audio.com/products/view/midisport-2x2-anniversary-edition. When I use the midisport there’s no problem, so I guess it must electrically isolate the Juno from the PC - I say this because from memory, I think it was still noisy when I tried plugging in the USB cable directly when the midisport was also connected. I would not let this dissuade you from looking at the Juno though. I’m pretty sure the Juno would be quieter on an earthed circuit, because I think Roland would be flooded with complaints if everyone’s experience with the direct MIDI connection was like mine - I would check some online reviews to see if there’s any mention of this from others, because I have such an ancient electrical system. I really like having the sounds onboard the unit so that I can switch on the Juno and start playing without fiddling with setting up MIDI connections on the computer - if you’re driving the yamaha and can leave everything set up and connected, then you’re good - but in that case, you might want to just use regular midi cables between the keyboard and the yamaha instead of routing through the computer - I don’t know if that yamaha has conventional MIDI inputs but if it does, you’d probably want to bring in the signal on those and then record the audio from that. To my ear, the sounds on the Juno are pretty good out of the box - of course you need to run it through a decent mixer and speakers. For me, it’s important that the piano is super simple and quick to turn on and start playing immediately.
That feeling of turning the instrument on and playing without a computer is liberating to me. My yamaha has both connections. I use the USB to connect it to my laptop and use the midi-out to connect it to a Roland JD-08 which lacks a keybed. I also connect my Korg Air (which I want to sell) to the midi-in to my yamaha when I want to play piano with a fully-weighted keybed. Another thought that went through my mind is that for the same price (or a bit less) than the Juno, I could get the expensive arturia (or NI) 88-keyboard with aftertouch. I am not sure how important that would be. I still like the idea of the Juno better since it gives me both the fully wieghted keys and the Roland synth.
Yes, for me it’s important that it’s immediately accessible for playing - there’s nothing worse than having to fiddle around with a PC in order to play - if it’s a hassle to get into the playing mode then I find my motivation to play decreases - and it’s hard to keep stuff connected permanently through a PC unless you want to leave all the gear powered up all the time. To play the Juno I just hit the power switches on the instrument, mixer and speakers and I’m playing - even thought that only takes 30 seconds, I’ve thought about buying a power sequencer so I could do it with one button instantaneously :)
My experience with the USB noise from the JUNO USB probably isn’t representative. I did some searching and there are a couple of references to noisy USB for Roland Junos over the years, but not enough to make me think that it’s a widespread issue. They talk about grounding. Also I see that one of the people having problems is using an ASUS machine - so am I - and based on other issues (non audio) I don’t think I’ll be buying another ASUS board anytime soon.
https://forums.rolandclan.com/viewtopic.php?t=21006
https://www.forums.rolandclan.com/viewtopic.php?t=47753
firmware change might fix it: https://support.roland.com/hc/en-us/articles/207928066-Juno-DS61-Juno-DS76-Juno-DS88-USB-Driver-Mode
If I have a chance, I’ll try some experimentation to see if I can isolate the noise and let you know what I can figure out. I haven’t played the Arturia, but It sounds like an option as well, especially driving that jd08 or the Yamaha - that looks like a pretty nice unit - you already have great sounds - - the Juno is a great all-in-one tool - but it sounds like having 88 weighted keys is your main requirement. I like the Juno but I don’t drive anything with it because it does everything I need.
I also use Ardour on Linux - have been trying Bitwig because of the hype but it’s not free software and Ardour is so much easier to use. Bitwig has good drum sounds/utiltiy but there are cheaper ways to achieve that I could not get the Juno to integrate seamlessly with Ardour (or Bitwig) via the DAW menu on the Juno, for what it’s worth but I don’t see that as very important and I’m used to nothing working with Linux anyway. SurgeXT looks very interesting as well, thanks. I just listened to the demo and it sounds pretty great, so I’ll probably give that a shot as well.
I did some testing with the Juno vs a Nektar Impact LX25+ controller – by the way SurgeXT is amazing thank you for the reference. When SurgeXT starts, it disables audio by default. Using the Juno directly to the PC it was noisy as soon as I enabled the audio input. It might be coming from my wireless mouse, because it got louder as I moved it - anyway regardless, when I switched the USB cable from the Juno to the LX25, the noise wasn’t there. I had to restart SurgeXT when switching the instrument (I am using JACK on Ubuntu) - I didn’t have to restart Jack though - but there is definitely noise coming from the Juno that is nonexistent on the Nektar with exactly the same hardware and software setup. The noise is on the audio circuit from the Juno because I can turn down the volume or unplug the audio out cable and I don’t hear any noise while playing MIDI. Also, and I don’t know if this is my imagination or not, but the latency felt worse on the Juno. Maybe that’s something to do with the weighted keys, but I had a lot more fun playing stuff on SurgeXT through the Nektar - so maybe stay away from the Juno for a MIDI controller - it’s great as a live synth, but I prefer the little 25 key controller for MIDI - after looking at the Arturia I’m kinda tempted to buy a bigger controller now :)
I am happy to hear you are enjoying SurgeXT. It is very powerful but sometimes it feels a bit overwhelming to me. I find Vital a lot easier to work with, although I know that most music creators regard SurgeXT much higher than Vital.
Believe it or not, I don’t use Jack in my last installation (MX Linux). In the past, I had serious issues of latency without an RT kernel and Jack but after my last installation, I installed Ardour and have no latency issues without any changes from Alsa/Pulse. Not sure how this works but it does. I guess I will try pipewire after the next big update (MX follows Debian) which appears to be very promising but Paul (of Ardour) has said that he doesn’t plan to change his code for pipewire yet.
PS. I’ve added you as a mod here. Apologies, perhaps I should have asked first. If you don’t want to be, let me know
I guess this is closest we’ve got to modular & eurorack
Welcome! Did you intend to have a picture along with your comment or am I missing the point? I’m often guilty of the latter!
Nah, I meant that this synthesizers channel is prolly close enough to a modular / eurorack channel. I mean they’re still quite separate worlds.
