Source is digital and only one oscillator. And no effects.
So it sounds a bit thin
and can sound super glitchy.
I like its engine very much though, but the keybed is just weird indeed.
What about nord lead 1 or 2 for some Swedish festivities?
Or virus A / B?
Both reliable, great sound and affordable
A4 was my first synth and I was a complete novice, was certainly difficult to get into but there are lots of good presets and preset packs available so that you can start making noise and enjoying it immediately. once you go a bit deeper than that it can be menu divey but every time I use it i learn something new and my music gets better so nothing but good things to say about it.
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By the way, what is the difference between Novation Peak and Summit? I am guessing the Summit is its successor but are there any substantial differences between the two?
Previously on Elektronauts:
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The Deepmind is awesome, the lack of oscillator shapes is a bit odd at first but once you get to know the synth it’s really not a big deal. However you’re right in that Omni can already do everything Deepmind can do plus a thousand other things.
If you’re thinking about it from the viewpoint of getting something that your soft synths CAN’T do, I would vote for the Hydrasynth. All the crazy wavemorphing stuff and the mutants among other things are really unique. Sure you might be able to pull of similar stuff with Serum or Omni, but it would probably take way longer and not be nearly as fun.
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Hydrasynth indeed looks fun. I might get the desktop version along with a midi keyboard so as to make the best of both worlds. Some people think that it sounds a bit digital and cold. Do you agree with this? The demos I have listened to indeed sound a bit sterile, perhaps the creators agreed and implemented a warm mode.
…with a little patience, u gonna love it big time…promise…
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If you know how to “think” synthesis there is no diffrence between a virtual synth and a4, the menu is not that deep and everything is quite clear. One of the pros of the a4 as a 1st synth is that it “growing” with you.
Btw, overbridge makes your future A4 to a lovely and intresting “vst”.
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100% agree with this:
and this:
I’d recommend the Rev2 to any hardware synth beginner (with the budget for it). and to pretty much anyone else interested in synths. it’s great value for money, super flexible, easy to understand, and deep enough to be rewarding but you don’t HAVE to go deep in order for it be rewarding (a key difference versus the A4). for ambient music, you may want to go for the 16 voice model if you can (though you can also upgrade to it later). that way if you’re sequencing two sounds at once, you have 8 voices for each.
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A4 was my first synth for many years since I bought some old analogue non-programmable synths. A steep learning curve, but with a bit of love and devotion it’s my synth of choice now and it’ll stay with me. Super tweak-able…just take your time. Lots of great video tutorials out there for free e.g True Cuckoo and many more.
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To add onto my first point about the difficulty of getting to grips with A4 as a new user, I have to say the OB app makes the layout of things 100% better. So, if it’s being used alongside VSTs, it’s well worth digging into Overbridge at least while learning the ways of A4.
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Who is saying that? My understanding is that it is capable of sounding cold, harsh, but also capable of sounding warm, lush, organic, complex. all of the above, basically. Thanks to all those filters and depth of modulation.
That’s great to hear. From what I have gathered, wavetable synths need a bit more effort to feel warm and hydrasynth looks to be one of them but I am glad that it can go both ways easily.
Honestly, to be blunt, that’s the same rhetoric I hear for pretty much every digital synth and I’m starting to think it’s a misleading statement that people put too much importance on. As long as you have basic knowledge of subtractive synthesis and the bare minimum experience of programming decent sounding patches, you’ll be able to make it sound warm, cold, thin, fat, weak, strong, whatever. These are deep complex synths we’re talking about here, the HS has something like 200 different waveforms and many different filters- how can someone make a blanket statement about it’s warmth when it has that many sonic capabilities?
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This! It’s the classic analog versus digital argument that only really made sense back in the day. Nowadays, digital can do everything an analog can do. Just look at how organic the Nord’s can sound or how people have made gorgeously warm patches for DN.
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It’s not solely a wavetable synth which helps it wear the other hats as well.
Blofeld is similar in this regard, as evidenced by Don Solaris’ Analog Voltage patch library.
In researching the Hydrasynth (which I have not bought… yet) I was strongly tempted by the keyboard version. People seem to really like that keybed.
I completely agree with you but for certain synths you have to try really hard to make it sound more lively or organic, so it’s beyond that useless digital vs analog debate but more related to how much time and effort you need to spend for a basic saw osc to really sit well in a mix, which of course depends on your sound. Sounding warm is more than filtering out the high frequencies IMO.
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After many years of a hardware ROMpler keyboard, software VSTs and grooveboxes I got an A4. It was my first analog synth and first Elektron. I love it and spend time every day getting strange new sounds out of it. I don’t find it menu divey or difficult to get around in. The biggest limitation in getting sounds out of it is my lack of experience with subtractive synthesis, but I am quickly learning. I am a guitar player first and not much of a keyboard player.
Am trying to decide whether I will complement it with a Digitakt or Octatrack to fill it out. If you love your Digitakt, don’t want Digitone, the A4 seems like a no-brainer.
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