Keys for me slowly followed by Bass. Havent tried the others though.
Sadly my volcas never see use anymore, they just sit in a draw. I found them fun at first but the limitations made me get over them.
Compact flash, I can deal with since you can still find them… tho, I have an mpc500 that only eats cf cards up to 2 Go and these are already a bit of a pain to get for cheap. Older medias, I can’t cop with…
Regarding the volca sample, it’s not just the lofi factor… it has a fatness, a punch that is quite surprising. But yeah, no direct inputs, super limited filtering options, soooo…
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Similar situation here, have the Keys, Bass, Sample and FM. I found them overall to noisy to use and just started to sell them now, before they loose too much value. Biggest pain of parting is on the FM though…and the Sample…and well, I should not start to create too close feelings again for them.
For a while I was trying to run the FM into the Monomachine’s external inputs but it sounded pretty bad - needed tons of gain, sounded flat and distorted very easily. I nearly got rid of it. But for some reason, running it straight into the Aira MX-1 it sounds fine.
With “chorus” on? Depends probably on the impedance of outgoing device. I always had some hiss with some lower impedance headphones…
It’s definitely to do with the input / output impedance - I tried with and without chorus, mono cable to mono in, stereo to splitter cable, all sorts. I think the MnM inputs are just a lot less forgiving of stuff that isn’t typical line level & impedance. I am guessing the MX-1 has some kind of allowance for people plugging phones / iPads / all sorts into it, but I don’t know what the technical differences are.
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My faves are volca keys and sample. Keeprs both IMO, and both can complement an elektron setup.
MnM never forgives…I wonder, if the noisiness is correlated to cross-talk on the boards. For sure someone in the forum will enlighten us.
It wasn’t really noisy, just quiet and dynamically flat, and boosting the level in the MnM made it distort quite easily. I think it was discussed here a while back. The root cause is the impedance on the headphone output on the Volca. It works fine with some gear but the MM inputs didn’t seem to like it (whereas I’ve fed lots of other line level gear in to them with no problem).
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Wish I had not sold my keys. Might pick up another one soon-ish. Makes a nice dub chord, imo.
(not my vids)
and ambient…
The Beats has nice character in kick and toms. If they released a mkII with a better snare I’d get one again.
I still have my monotron delay and zoom cdr70 so I am tempted to get one of these little micro-sized jam stations going again.
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I use my MIDI-out modded Volca Bass a lot - it sits right next to my keyboard so is available for jamming at a moment’s notice, usually with the MIDI out controlling a Pittsburg Modular SV-1 Blackbox, with out without the sound). There’s something about the sequencer - especially the slides and active step editing - that is just so much fun to play about with, as is the control ribbon. The three oscillators sound great, especially when set to wildly different pitches (with each one able to switch control at any point to the external MIDI source).
I almost wish there was a Volca Seq with MIDI and CV/gate i/o.
Has anyone got or tried the Volca Mix?
Loved that demo back in the day - still love it!
Listening to his Volca Bass cover of Roygbiv - also great!
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Sq1?
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Sort of, yeah. The SQ-1 is rather handy.
To me, because of when it was released I’ll always associate it with the volcas. Early marketing often linked the sq1 to the volca keys. I always hoped that the beatstep pro would get the korg to update the sq1.
I have the Volca Sample, Kick & FM. The Kick is my favorite, which I did not think would be the case. I’ve thought about getting the whole family. I think Volcas are AMAZING for the price.
I love running the Kick thru Analog Heat :o) I actually ran it thru the AH & stuck it on the po-33 K.O. - Analog kick plus Analog Heat plus the 8bit flavor, it sounds SOOO good.
Too be honest I just started making beats 3 years ago & the Volca Sample was my first piece of gear. I wasn’t sure if I would like making beats, so I bought something cheap. I fell in love with beat making at first touch! I ended up buying a ton of gear the past 3 years, every month 1 - 3 new things, so the Volca Sample didn’t get love for awhile. About a year after buying it, at a point where I had a lot more knowledge & skill, I played with the Sample & found a ton of new tricks. The Sample is pretty amazing & I think it sounds really good…but now I have 6 other samplers, so it’s back to not getting a lot of love. I play with it here & there, but last time I tried putting new samples on it, it just wasn’t working, sometimes caustic editor can be finicky, sometimes it works perfect, I don’t know. Probably user error. If it could sample I would use it all the time.
I like the FM & it’s amazing what it can do, but so far I’m not getting a lot of sounds out of it I really like. My sounds are thin. & I’m realizing it just doesn’t fit my style very well. I thought it was going to be the one I would never sell, but lately I’ve been thinking about selling it. I’m going to play with it some more, with the Analog Heat & some guitar pedals. I want to give it a fighting chance.
By the way I love Dub Cousteau, he’s really talented, I love his style. The vid you posted where he uses the Beats with Monotron Delay made me want Volca Beats (I already have the Monotron Delay).
I just love small, portable, limited gear. They’re fun & challenging. I’ve made some of my best beats chillin on the couch with a few pieces of gear on my coffee table, just playing & having fun.
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An SQ-1 Plus or similar would be nice. Then again, I have an Urzwerg Pro for that… what the SQ-1 lacks and a Volca Seq could maybe offer is patch memory, difficult as that might be for CV/gate.
I like them all except the Kick which I don’t have, I never heard any sounds from it that I liked in demos, it always seems to sound - dare I say it - a bit like the worst of the Rytm kicks, that hard swept, a bit naff gabba-esque kind of kick, I realise that it can do other types of sound, but again none of what I heard from it sounded very useful to me.
I think my least favourite one that I own is the bass, the filter doesn’t do it for me, specifically the resonance and input level to the filter, it sounds a bit strained and not really that great, just ok.
I think my favourite must be the sample, I have 3 of those, the voysr app makes the best of the sample management. I like them for quickly setting up with other portable gear for just making little jams, they are inexpensive enough to take in the garden or whatever. I also like the Pocket Operators but the Volcas are much less fiddly and more hands on, not to mention they have midi so using them as sound modules is a nice bonus too.
The battery life is pretty good, and they work nice with my gameboy setup as well, syncing to nanoloop or lsdj.
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The Keys, mainly because I’ve worked with it the most. Love the Flux function for realtime sequence recording - allows me to enter sequences with just the right amount of swing, with my limitations as a player of course.
The FM I haven’t worked with as much, but I still plan to work it into my music. I want to try the Suzanne Ciani DX7 patches on it. I want to see what kind of pads I could get with it and the Keys combined.
The Kick is off and on my radar. After listening to this “any sound one can find EXCEPT kicks” video, it’s definitely back on.
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