Share whatever you want here about synthesizers. Photos of your studio, music you make, patches, favourite synths, your questions about equipment
Share whatever you want here about synthesizers. Photos of your studio, music you make, patches, favourite synths, your questions about equipment
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
Hi again - I’m pretty hooked on SurgeXT so far :) I haven’t messed around with MIDI for a few years - I usually just plonk around a bit on the Juno piano - (I was a guitarist in what feels like a past life these days). The free software synths have sure come a long way since Yoshimi! I’m finding SurgeXT kinda amazing because it’s just so much better than I was expecting from a software synth. I got hold of this little Nektar controller a couple of years back but I’ve never really done anything with it, so thanks again for the inspiration - it’s really great coupled with SurgeXT - I’m blown away by the sounds in SurgeXT - the presets are really cool and there are so many of them.
I actually appreciate the chance to mod because I just set up a Lemmy instance, so having a chance to mod on a reasonably large server is welcome experience.
So yeah, in summary, I think the Juno probably isn’t a great bet for MIDI, although to be fair, there’s no audio line on the Nektar, so of course it’s quiet - the Juno is quiet too if I turn down the volume or unplug the audio - not really a deal breaker for playing MIDI into a software synth but would be unusable trying to send MIDI from the PC to the Juno - of course it’s fine if I use the midisport for the USB connection and conventional MIDI cables to the MIDI ports on the Juno, but that’s not ideal. I was more surprised by the fact that the Nektar controller seemed to have less latency - I didn’t expect that - I thought MIDI signals would be sent about the same speed but it didn’t feel that way. Playing live MIDI to the PC on the Juno has a tiny bit of latency between key press and sound but I didn’t get that sensation on the Nektar at all.
Now that I’ve outed myself as a guitarist it should be abundantly obvious that I don’t know much about synths - but I sure do like playing with them. :)
I am happy you can mod the place. It may get more crowded as Lemmy gets popular after reddit messed up with the API. I have always been a piano player for fun. The last few years I discovered my passion for synths. Perhaps it’s a mid life thing!
Yeah, I hardly ever pick up a guitar these days so the Juno is practically all I play. I figure as long as I’m making some noise with a tempo it counts as music. I’m probably a little older than you because my own midlife crisis is hopefully behind me at this point. One of the few positive aspects of that phase was that I talked the local dive bar owner into letting me play there once a week - it was fun while it lasted, but I guess I grew out of it. I haven’t done much for the last few years but I gotta tell you that the SurgeXT / midi experience has piqued my interest and I’ve busted out Bitwig.