Pre-release & Ordering Hype Megathread (archive)

clwilla · 2024-04-09T01:45:36.420Z

Just write your own. It’s not difficult at all.

I still write and edit all of my patches by hand in a text editor.

OhWell · 2024-04-09T18:59:06.012Z

Arturia AstroLab release. It’s deeply not for me. But I’m curious to see what discussions this sparks about instrument UI. The hard commitment to presets is quite striking.

https://www.arturia.com/products/hardware-synths/astrolab-61/overview

squarepeig · 2024-04-09T20:18:28.416Z

Hmmmmmmm … probably in the next year or two I’ll be in the market for a home piano as my kid gets old enough to start learning. The idea had always been to get a Rhodes / Wurli for the living room but it’s pretty hard to find one around here in decent nick for any kind of sane price, I’ve been idly scanning various Crumars and maybe a Nord at a push.

Need to see more but this could tick a few boxes if the keys are nice. Probably if it was about €300-400 less expensive I’d definitely be looking closely. I do like a lot of the Arturia models, especially the CZ, but I’m just not sure overall they’re at the absolute premium level.

marcus_fischer · 2024-04-09T20:28:53.367Z

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It also lets you control the heating and cooling of your home!

unicity · 2024-04-09T20:30:42.472Z

If you’re after something for kiddo to learn on (that also has some great e piano and other sounds) you might also want to look at the recently released Roland RD-08. PHA-4 keybed ( I love that keybed but it’s not for everyone), Supernatural and Zen Core stuff on board…and built-in speakers with front panel button to disable them.

https://www.roland.com/us/products/rd-08/

The Astrolab is curious to me. Maybe it’s a new market niche (“stage keyboards” that pay as much or more attention to synth sounds as they do bread and butter stuff), maybe it will be a curious page in the historybook of stage keyboards (I like Arturia synth plugins, but not any of their piano or e piano plugins and having them built-in to a keyboard won’t change that).

hermbot · 2024-04-09T20:40:54.000Z

I would suggest taking a look at the Casio Privia. I can’t keep up with which model or trim level does what, but I’ve had one for years and it’s a great feeling piano with a clean interface, good speakers, and wurli / rhodes / organ sounds. Perfect for learning and practicing.

If you want drop some coin, this version is a looker, (and like $2500) but they also have some sub-$700 that still have a clean interface and sound / feel great.

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ParanormalPatroler · 2024-04-09T22:26:29.206Z

Wow! This looks impressively elegant. I’d love to have a Rhodes / Piano / Organ in my living room and this would look magnificent.

squarepeig · 2024-04-10T00:16:20.167Z

Glad I threw this out there - digital pianos are pretty far outside my comfort zone, but I feel like it’s important to have an instrument somewhere around the house that’s open for exploration if that’s where their interests go, or not as the case may be.

Current weapon of choice is a Casio SA-50 that I don’t see being outgrown any time soon, if anything there’s more in interest in my guitars but will need a couple of years yet before it’s a reasonable prospect. And hammering away at my Sub 37 as the mood strikes.

I guess for this particular scenario aesthetic is important - I don’t hate the Arturia, the white and wood is … fine. And the dial thing really doesn’t bother me, especially when it’s got a more familiar set of sound engines, although no built-in speakers. But the Casio is a much more appealing proposition and if you include the legs for the Arturia is a similar price. I really like the Zen Core engine as well and this would probably have been my choice but I can’t see other household stakeholders going for the black plastic and “pro” stylings on an x frame.

Still plenty of time to figure it out but good to have some solid leads to go on.

noctambulance · 2024-04-10T00:25:13.054Z

+1 on the Privia line. I bought one for my daughter for piano lessons. Nice weighted keys, sounds great. Much more convenient than our old out of tune upright.

ears · 2024-04-10T00:57:02.593Z

I have a much older, cheaper Privia that I love and have fought hard not to GAS on buying this one in mustard yellow.

Durdee · 2024-04-10T01:25:40.352Z

Another vote for the Privia, it’s a good, dynamic engine with some nice variations, mine has a few different kinds of organs and electric pianos, and the weighted keys are pretty nice. I think I paid somewhere around $450 for mine about a decade ago, new.

notester · 2024-04-10T01:53:24.510Z

plus one on old privia. i like mine so much i serviced it and replaced the main board AFTER upgrading to a more advanced yamaha when it died.

unicity · 2024-04-10T02:31:28.106Z

squarepeig:

I guess for this particular scenario aesthetic is important

Oooh yeah definitely other options to put before the RD-08 then! I just really like that keybed - it’s in the DP-90e we got for our place maybe 10 years ago now when our daughter was younger and we were in a similar position. It’s nowhere near as nice looking as those Privias you can find today.

…and I’m absolutely thrilled to report that kiddo is still playing all these years later.

pulsewidth · 2024-04-10T03:28:34.466Z

i had the same thought when i saw it, then it was reinforced the demo guy rotated the outer ring…

jkbrogan · 2024-04-10T04:28:03.253Z

+1 here as well; I don’t have space for an acoustic piano, and the Privia satisfies the need

n9n9n9 · 2024-04-11T02:40:54.226Z

I have an 8 year old Privia and stand (they can be had for cheap) connected to an old ipad with a cracked screen running Pianoteq, connected to some speakers. The sound is very, very good, the action is very good and I leave the whole rig on all time so my son and I can just sit down and play. My son’s piano teacher loved the setup so much that he replaced his console piano with a similar rig at home because of the better sound… an emulated Steinway grand is a lot easier on the ears than a console piano.

mdoudoroff · 2024-04-11T11:50:11.430Z

I’m probably not the first—even in this thread—to ask the question, but I wonder what percentage of keyboard owners ever create sounds from scratch or significantly customize onboard sounds (disregarding one or two “low-hanging” playable parameters that might be exposed by knobs by default)?

Presets seem to go back pretty close to the beginning of electronic keyboards, and a lot of those weren’t customizable in any meaningful way. Today—maybe since at least the 1980s Yamaha DX series, really—we’ve got a lot of highly hype-able synths that offer amazingly deep parametric models that you can (in theory) learn to program. The Osmose is an obvious, perhaps glaring, example: I’ll bet well under 1% of Osmose buyers ever get their hands dirty in the EaganMatrix.

Even though a device like the Osmose covers a sprawling range of timbres and sound design, it still has something of an identity. Does AstroLab even have an identity?

eblomquist · 2024-04-11T12:48:40.008Z

I would be surprised if I didn’t have over ten thousand presets, spread across the various softsynths in my library. Probably more like one hundred thousand, although honestly I have never even thought of actually quantifying them

The psychological effect that this has on me is that I virtually never program anything on these synths. I figure that if I try to make anything original, believing for whatever reason that originality in this field is somehow a worthy goal, whatever I come up with will be essentially identical to some preset or other that I already don’t have time to preview all of, so, yeah, fuck it, use the presets…

I never, ever have that feeling with my eurorack, or my MS-20, or my MicroBrute. And those are the ones I usually reach for. Except when I am working in the Ableton “box,” in which case I really love the Arturia V Collection and other plugins (especially Madrona Labs ones, of course).

For whatever that’s worth…

fuzboxz · 2024-04-11T13:14:13.842Z

Same. I use all the Arturia synths (and most of my other complex synths) as preset machines, so sticking to Analog Lab presets would probably work for me. The synths that I tweak are the built-in Live devices like Operator, Wavetable, Meld plus u-he Bazille and Madrona Labs Aalto, because I enjoy working with them.

Higaru · 2024-04-11T13:59:47.573Z

new (re)synth (vsti) from Dawesome - will be out in 18.04!