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Hey! Over the weekend I finally caved and bought the Arturia Microfreak. I've had a few hardware synths before (like the all-digital Boutique re-issues of the JP8, JX and JU, the Bass Station II, and all the Volcas which are the only ones I kept) but always found the hassle worth more than the payoff, especially as I have plenty of great sounding subtractive synths in software. Microfreak on the other hand is fantastic. Capable of some super inspiring weirdness, which is exactly what I wanted. While I do intend to get a good analogue workhorse synth, mostly I'm looking to expand my collection with unique or interesting synths first. Anyone got any good recommendations along the lines of the Microfreak?

Soma Lyra 8 ? That's pretty weird.

Jackjackdaw wrote: ↑

04 Oct 2021

Soma Lyra 8 ? That's pretty weird.

That sounds like hard/aggressive sound design heaven. Nice recommendation!

I love the Microfreak. Especially since they added the Noise Engineering voices. It’s a lot of synth in a nice small package. Maybe a semi modular to compliment it? Moog Mother 32 would be nice. And you would have basic connectivity from the Microfreak’s CV/gate outputs and clock outputs

The Waldorf Blofield. It is very menu divey but with 16 part multi-timbral and 25 voices it's extremely capable. And very well priced 2nd hand.

However if you don't want a other digital synth, the Dreadbox Typhon is great for sound design. Modulation and FXup the wazoo.

Faastwalker wrote: ↑

04 Oct 2021

I love the Microfreak. Especially since they added the Noise Engineering voices. It’s a lot of synth in a nice small package. Maybe a semi modular to compliment it? Moog Mother 32 would be nice. And you would have basic connectivity from the Microfreak’s CV/gate outputs and clock outputs

**Edit: just looked up with that Mother 32 *actually* is. I was thinking of a totally different synth. Looks very cool! I was looking at the Neutron just now and that looks like it might be super interesting as well. Sounds great in videos anyway.

Korg Arp Odyssey.
I don't know why, but it makes me want to experiment and create sounds.

There's an Instagram account called Strange World of Synths.

https://www.instagram.com/strangeworldofsynths/

It showcases lots of unique and off-beat devices, some of which you can actually buy.

Sadly or happily, depending on your bent, Facebook properties are all offline today.

chimp_spanner wrote: ↑

04 Oct 2021

Faastwalker wrote: ↑

04 Oct 2021

I love the Microfreak. Especially since they added the Noise Engineering voices. It’s a lot of synth in a nice small package. Maybe a semi modular to compliment it? Moog Mother 32 would be nice. And you would have basic connectivity from the Microfreak’s CV/gate outputs and clock outputs

**Edit: just looked up with that Mother 32 *actually* is. I was thinking of a totally different synth. Looks very cool! I was looking at the Neutron just now and that looks like it might be super interesting as well. Sounds great in videos anyway.

Behringer Neutron would be another cool option and more affordable than the Mother 32 …….… or you could come over to the dark side, ‘Alice in a rabbit hole’ and go full modular for the ultimate hardware sound design experience

chimp_spanner wrote: ↑

04 Oct 2021

Hey! Over the weekend I finally caved and bought the Arturia Microfreak. I've had a few hardware synths before (like the all-digital Boutique re-issues of the JP8, JX and JU, the Bass Station II, and all the Volcas which are the only ones I kept) but always found the hassle worth more than the payoff, especially as I have plenty of great sounding subtractive synths in software. Microfreak on the other hand is fantastic. Capable of some super inspiring weirdness, which is exactly what I wanted. While I do intend to get a good analogue workhorse synth, mostly I'm looking to expand my collection with unique or interesting synths first. Anyone got any good recommendations along the lines of the Microfreak?

The Microfreak is a great choice. It's a great price and I don't think you'll find anything else like it at any price. In addition to the huge variety of oscillators you also get a "weird" keyboard that you can perform on in unusual ways, not just with the spice and dice but with the way you can, for example, "trill" on a single key like it's a guitar string.

The Lyra-8 has always interested me but it's a bit of a one trick pony and that makes it quite pricy for me.

Some are suggesting the Moog Mother-32. That's pretty much a standard single oscillator analogue monosynth so is not particularly unique or unusual but would compliment the 'Freak quite nicely. If you are not anti-Behringer then you can have almost the same for crazy little money with the Behringer Crave. You can even use the patches from the Mother-32 on the Crave. The Neutron gives you more oscillators and more patch points. There is a great resource for patches for these types of synths here: https://patch-library.net/

I just took delivery of (and haven't yet unboxed) an Elektron Model:Cycles. What drew me to it is that it's an FM synth that doesn't act like an FM synth: instead, it has six "machines" that are basically synth engines built out of FM routing, almost like if a sound designer wired up six unique Combinators out of some simple FM devices.

It's a groovebox, and thus a little more percussion-oriented, but I've seen plenty of melodic and even ambient jams with it. It might be a great companion for the MicroFreak!

There are a lot of ideas in here that give you options for taking the usual suspect synth and making it seem very different.

Variants of these things are essentially the difference between any two synths: Prophet/Jupiter etc

Make Noise 0-Coast. Quiet a funky little synth. Neither West- nor East-coast style but sort of a combination of both.
I got a modular, so a 0-coast isn´t really necessary for now, especially without resources to fund one
Then, even though I don´t own any of Make Noise´ modular modules for personal taste reasons I was always attracted to 0-Coast because it puts quite some interesting features along an intense sound into a small, easy to handle, easy to carry along device.

Zac wrote: ↑

04 Oct 2021

The Waldorf Blofield. It is very menu divey but with 16 part multi-timbral and 25 voices it's extremely capable. And very well priced 2nd hand.

However if you don't want a other digital synth, the Dreadbox Typhon is great for sound design. Modulation and FXup the wazoo.

Blofeld can get pretty wild if you push the limits with FM routing, combined with comb filters and the nice Wavetable set. Pretty deep modulation capabilities too.

We warned if you go second hand to thoroughly check the state off the encoders. Mines an older model and a lot of them are glitchy/less responsive. Kinda sucks a lot of the fun out of it.

I've got a few synths but I don't use them what I do use is every module in my modular rig every addition gets used on a regular basis,something about the immediacy of many usable options,so in my experience if I wanted to always use my new additions modular is well worth a thought.