Module/keyboard expansion. Need advice!

[Cold Truth]

lol... yup he was talkin about the new mo. otherwise, the mo rack makes perfect sense because you really get more sound and effect wise.

 

[afriquedeluxe]

i wonder if anyone has the es on this site, mayb ill be the first(mwuahahahaaha)

 

[Formant024]

Formant, are you recommending me VSTi's over hardware racks? If so, why? If you do not look at price (imagine they cost the same), do you think the possibilities are better with the VSTi's? and what about the Virus. I know someone who uses one, but the sounds sound very trance-like.

Duh, offcourse I'd not recommend vst's over hardware, but on the money Albino is almost just as good. I gotta Virus B to compare and the only thing it lacks are knobs to tweak with. Thru sound and quality it's equal, at some points even better ( more saturation parameters ). On the whole, the vst issue that is, I must say that there's a few vsti's I'd would recommend because the alternative is not in reach for most;

1. NI B4, oke... who's got a B3 with leslies ??? I've got one coming this year hehe.
2. AAS Lounge Lizard 2, same issue and overhere not that common as in the US. The original sound better though since it's not that slick and most adorable fender tunes from the old days were mic fed through a cabinet to get that nice mellow crunchy sound ( so that means Amplitube will do miracles on this plug )
3. Albino2, for those who want a cheap virus.
4. Ohmboyz Symptohm, this some weird filterbased synth with some sick routing options ( series/parallel in many of orders ) of the filters themselves, the osc is based on the standard waveshapes but it also osc's from audio (wav) which is interesting. For bass this is a sub killer, for dnb productions almost a musthave ( real sick Kemal/Dom&Roland ear shredding basslines ).

I can name a dozen of plugs which have been emulating a particular make/model by more than one oem ( like the SC Prophets ) but I find them non impressive and actualy slowing down my productions results. This is because I spend loads of time creating a sound that eventualy still wont appeal, so my time is wasted on these plugs. If... I wanted good vst's I could buy me a Creamware card, creamware makes hella nice quality plugs for a price, but me as a vintage collector rather spend the money on the originals, but them Creamware products are nice though ( expensive too ).

The trancelike issue, the virus contains 8 banks ( A+B are userbanks ), there are a loads of banks, presets you can download and most of em are dedicated to 4tothefloor music and out of the box it comes with the purest tiesto sounds, but it's a true va meaning there's alot of programming and routing you can do to create a whole variety on different sounds and atmospheric noise. I also dl'd some hiphop kits and D&b kits which are really, really functional and I mean... I use the virus a lot hehe. Dont underestimate it because of the crappy trancepresets, besides, most machines these days have the same intentions embedded. A motif is good for trance, Fantom is good for it, a triton is good for it and all come with similar ready to use trance presets. That doesn't mean it's not meant for other purposes, it just sells better to the targeted customer groups. Same goes for Nord Lead, all electro/techno biased machines, but I saw/heard Amp Fiddler with some really soulfull modern sound using only Nord Lead Electro's ( <- NICE! ), well only... there were 4 of em on stage hehe.

Also, I do want orchstral and vintage sounds, but I also really need some good synth leads and basses, in the genre of those you hear in some current rap and r&b. Any ideas on which module would satisfy my needs there?

This was the reason I mentioned the Virus in the first case, except from orchestral ( there are some real good but not many ) this is the VA for vintage sounds, leads and basses. Another rack I can recommend and one that you'll find with the biggest rnb, rap and pop producers is the Studio Electronics ATC-1, completly analogue racked monosynth, with loads of cc#. It works on ladderfilters from the Minimoog, Arp 2600, TB303 and Oberheim Sem which are fitted in Atari2600 kinda cartridges which you buy seperatly ( it comes with minimoog though ). Im talking basslines, impressive ones, I have one with the 303 ( everbody needs a 303 ) and the Oberheim Sem.

For orchestral I really dont know, anything like that over here we record by getting in studio musicians because no synth I heard so far can beat the real thing or even motivate me to work with them presets. If you take that in consideration you can come to the conclusion that multilayered samples are the way to go. It's what you find on the new Emu DAS sampler for example, mostly pc based solutions not really hardware because it's to much time consuming on a hardware sampler. You should try to get your fingers on a Yamaha VL1, VL7 or VL70m. This the machine for classical intruments, used to be very expensive but should come quite cheap these days, very convincing acoustic modeling and a breath controller for instrumental expression.

And dont forget that Korg OASYS board, it's the engine for the tritons, prophecy etc.
http://www.korg.com/oasyspci.htm

User reviews, since I dont have one

http://www.harmony-central.com/Synth/Data/Korg/Oasys-PCI-01.html