Caltrops - No Stairway to Heaven





	[quote name="Fullofkittens"][quote name="Ice Cream Jonsey"] Would you not recommend Cubase? I downloaded Reaper over the weekend and was not able to figure out on my own how to get it working with my MIDI In. I was pretty cranky coming into the weekend and, having gotten everything talking to each other in Abelton, I know I have to resist the thoughts that come through my head like, "They know what we want to do, why the fuck is it so difficult to make it do this thing?" [/quote] I would recommend Cubase, sure. It's just more expensive. I have often idly thought of going back to it myself. But I got locked into Ableton by purchasing their hardware. [quote]What blew my mind, and I may have this wrong, is that a hardware synth can make anything from a snare drum to a cow bell to a trumpet to a bass guitar. Unless I have that wrong? Blows my mind! ICJ[/quote] Well, there's multiple ways to make a sound, the hardware boxes are all different. A couple of popular ways: <ul><li>Analog synthesis, where you have electric oscillators that make bright simple sounds (sawtooth waves, square waves, white noise) and then filters shape the sound. This is classic "synth sound."</li> <li>FM synthesis, where you take a sine wave and modulate it at very high speeds with multiple other sine waves. This is the classic 80s keyboard and bass sound.</li> <li>Wavetable synthesis, where you have lots of available digital wavetables and you combine them to make a sound.</li> <li>PCM synthesis, where they just have a disk that plays back sampled waveforms and shapes them using envelopes and filters. The big workstationy synths usually do this.</li> <li>Straight sampling, where you play back sampled sounds using whatever sound shaping you want.</li></ul> So to say a hardware synth can play all those sounds, yes, you could do any of those sounds using any type of synthesis, the difference would be in the closeness of the approximation to the real sound. An 808 analog drum machine has a kick drum and a cowbell, neither of which sound anything like real physical instruments (but they are classic sounds). An MPC plays back samples and it sounds like the real instruments (because it's playing a recording). Generally there isn't much advantage to using a hardware sampler when your computer already has a disk and a sound card. (Except that gadgets are cool and fun.) Most hardware synths are going to do more than just play samples, though. Is there a particular sound you're hoping to make? [/quote]