A small update... not much new has happened in my studio by means of more synths... in fact I'm currently selling most of what I have, because I am tired of never making any music at all... always waiting for something new... it has to stop.
Thus I'm selling Microwave II, FS1R, Proteus 2000, EVS-1 and Rack Attack... Blofeld will go as soon as the Quantum is on the market.
I decided to only have what I NEED... and not what I WANT... because I will always be wanting more synths, and it paralyze my music making... So I'm gathering the synths I NEED for the Ambeint genre I'm into, which will be; V-Synth XT, E-MU E5000 Ultra, Prophet 12, Quantum and one more which I do not yet know what will be... that's it... 5 synths... I also sell my mixers, and connect everything directly to my Audio card... even external FX will go, since I'll start using plugins instead for that which gives me more flexibility.
One of my major aims has been to get rid of using editors... I'm sick and tired of SoundDivers limitations, and 3rd party ugly editors that either don't work well, or just do not like... so my aim is to ONLY have synths where I actually like and use their interfaces, which would make me non-dependent on editors.... so no more SysEx shit here to deal with... this is why I've chosen the E-MU E5000 Ultra... it's the best hardware sampler around, and has a really cool interface... same goes for V-Synth XT... and the Quantum will feature a huge color touchpanel display too, so it will fit the bill.... Prophet 12 has a very intuitive interface too... fits the bill as well.
In addition, most of these synths have some sort of built in storage capability, so I'm not hindered by a certain amount of preset locations... Quantum will have SD storage, V-Synth XT has Compact Flash storage, and I just upgraded the E-MU with an internal Compact Flash card reader/writer as well... the P12 do not have any storage means, but at least it has so many preset slots I think it will do.
I'm really happy with this setup because it has much less cable cluttering, it's more intuitive to work with, and I can focus on fewer machines instead of too many.
So currently I am sampling a lot of sounds from the machines I'm selling, to have their timbres for use in the samplers... I've ordered a new display for the E-MU as well, a white on black display, giving me more contrast than the dull one they were born with... some expansions to my RME AIO soundcard for more analog inputs is on the way too.
A lot of my future music will be done with sampling in various ways... this is also why I want the Quantum, since it has granular sampling, a synthesis type I currently do not have... a lot of live recording of sounds will be done for the music as well, using microphones.
So... there you have it... a "small" update, but one I'm certainly looking forward to