>>89
After looking over your arsenal, I have to say that I am quite impressed.

Despite the fact I do not have the best equipment compare to yours, I can breakdown what I have.

>E-mu SP1200
The iconic drum machine from 1987, mostly used by hip-hop producers. A versatile machine due to being one of the first digital drum machines in the market, so I can buy floppies of samples or get a box of blank floppies then rip samples from there. It also has some effects like decay, pitch-bending, etc. Expensive unit, but it is a hand-me-down. I'll need to read the manual to understand its capabilities.

>Oberheim OB8
The latest of Oberheim's OB series. Only around 3000 of them were produced, and the synth was used for the chords for Van Halen's Jump. I really think this synth should be incredibly easy for me to adapt due to messing around with this kind of technologies before. However, I love the sound of it from watching some demos of it being played.

>Yamaha PSR-500
An old Yamaha keyboard/synthesizer that uses PCM samples, and they are really good. I used it as a MIDI controller at one point until I got a new one for cheap(Novation Launchkey 61).

>Yamaha PF-1000
My first ever legitimate keyboard I have ever own. Had it for the past 10 years, and still works although the D-4 key gets stuck. 81 weighted keys, can't get better than that. It also has loads of instruments and rhythm sets to select from.

In terms of software, I only use two extensively but I get recommended to use others.

>0CC-FamiTracker
A fork of the official program made by HertzDevil. It allows you to use multiple expansion chips, includes the Sunsoft 5B expansion chip(used in Gimmick!), and adds in more effects and groove settings. It really helped understand how PSG, FM Synthesis, and Wavetable work.

>Ignite
A cheap DAW made by ex-Pro Tools employees which formed AIR Technologies Inc. Despite its limited features, I would say it is a great starting point to learn how to compose and mix (albeit rather less freedom to so). Has decent amount of instruments and lets you add effects on them.

In the future, I need to get a real DAW to use some plug-ins I got online. Do you have a recommendation for that?

Also, I am currently looking for an analog drum machine and a FM Synthesizer. What is the best place to get it for a good price? I had my eyes on the Roland AIRA TR-8S and the Yamaha DX Reface. Is that a good start?

>>89
>Do you like playing with synthesis, or making music?
I do, been making music as a hobby for almost 15 years, primarly with a DAW and plugins, but picked up some hardware over the years.

In terms of hardware, I've got:
>Yocto2
A DIY fully analog 808 clone, built it myself over a two month period. Sounds absolutely incredible, but the sequencer firmware side of things is buggy and broken in places, so I can't recommend it. Behringer have their own analog 808 clone out now, unfortunately it wasn't announced when I built my Yocto2, otherwise I'd have just bought that, and at a third of the total Yocto2 cost to boot.
>Behringer Neutron
Easily the best semimodular analog monosynth for the money, outclasses many synths double it's price. If it didn't say "Behringer" on it you'd swear someone else made it, excellent build quality and just sounds brilliant.
>Yamaha TX81Z
Got it free from a friend years ago, I barely use it because it's just a pain in the arse to deal with.
>Alesis Midiverb II
Not a synth per se, but it sounds great if you want that late 80s - early 90s digital reverb sound. Mine's just rack filler now because I made a set of accurate impulse responses of all the reverb and "special FX" presets.
Consider this a gift from me: https://anonfile.com/r8z8J345nc/MIDIVERB_II_zip . Should work in any decent convolution reverb plugin that takes ordinary stereo .wav files, I use Fruity Convolver myself. For full accuracy, set the input's stereo width to mono, as the real machine sums the L and R inputs together somewhere after the dry signal but before the actual processing, the stereo you hear in the reverb itself is entirely artificial. Enjoy.

I mainly use plugins though, got a shit ton of them, all totally legit I swear alright they're mostly pirated, fuck the police. Some of my favourites include:
>Charlatan
A free monosynth that I recommend to anyone that just wants a "no bullshit" synth, no horrible aliasing or anything like a lot of shitty free VSTs have
>Addictive Drums
I've yet to hear a better acoustic drums plugin.
>Roland's "Cloud" VSTs
I love the D-50, JV-1080, SRX series, and Sound Canvas VSTs, I use at least one of them on almost every track. I don't really use the rest though, and their 808 and 909 emulators are a bit shit.
>Pianoteq
Actually bought this one, an extremely realistic physically modelled piano (and other instruments) VST. I have the rhodes and wurly add-on for it too. It's got some really cool tuning options if you're into microtuning, best implementation I've ever seen.
>TAL Sampler
Great old school sampler plugin, great for getting gritty lo-fi 80s sampler sounds. It works well as an ordinary "clean" sampler as well.
>ABL3
Very convincing 303 emulator, I've recreated tons of classic acid basslines and got them sounding virtually identical. Gets the squelch just right.

>>91
>DAW
If you want value for money, you can't go wrong with FL Studio, free lifetime updates means you pay once and that's it, whereas almost any other DAW will make you pay to upgrade to the next major version. Only catch is that FL is very unconventional, it works differently to just about every other DAW out there. For people like me that's a good thing, but some people just don't gel with it. It has more of a focus on plugin sequencing than it does recording audio, so if you're more interested in recording then you'd be better off with something like Pro Tools, Reaper, etc. Really you just need to try them out, see what works for you, and what you're willing to pay.

>analog drum machine
All the Roland AIRA gear is digital, but a lot of people like them, and digital usually gives you a lot more flexibility. If you truly want analog though, and all the upsides and downsides that comes with that, then there's Behringer's RD-8 808 clone. Might be hard to find in stock right now though, they're in high demand and they've not long hit the shelves.

>FM Synthesizer
Personally, I think plugins make more sense for FM synthesis. FM in hardware form was always a real pain in the arse historically, but to be fair I haven't used any newer FM gear. I like Arturia's DX7 plugin, it's a lot more accurate to the original than Dexed (a free DX7 plugin), it's about 95% the way there. Native Instrument's FM8 doesn't sound anything like the classic FM synths of the 80s, it's far too "clean" and "hi-fi", but as it's own thing it's not bad.

>>98
Really appreciate the recommendations for plugins. Do you have some torrent links, perhaps?

>>99
I'm stuck between FL Studio and Reason, and I tried out FL Studio but I get lost because how it looks. However, I'll have to download both demos again to see if I am more comfortable with one or the other.

I know that analog instruments are really expensive which is why I tried to find them for the best price or I be at the right place, at the right time. I'll need to actually see some demos of the items that I am interested in. The main thing I need to focus on for now is which DAW I want to get, and I appreciate your advice on that.

The next project, after I am done with my current one, is to make an album only using the SP1200 and the OB-8 to make an authentic House/Techno album.

>>100
>Do you have some torrent links, perhaps?
One site I've been using a lot in recent years is https://audiotools.club/ , most of the text is in spanish or some shit, but all you need to know is that "Buscar" means search, and it's located on the right-hand side. It's all torrents and magnet links, no DDL cancer like all the other sites out there.

>I know that analog instruments are really expensive
Well they were, until Behringer entered the fray and undercut the entire synth market, the absolute madmen. The Neutron, Model D (Minimoog), RD-8 (808), and MS-1 (SH-101), are all about £270 each, the Odssey is £400, the Deepmind12D about £550. They're gonna be bringing out a complete eurorack modular range at some point as well, based on Roland's System 100m series, which they claim is gonna be about £80 per module. And the mad thing is, none of the gear is crap, like most old Behringer hardware used to be. The build quality on my Neutron is top notch, all metal chassis, metal shaft pots that don't wobble at all, it feels like something that would be 3 or 4 times the price if it were made by anyone else. Can't say enough good things about it, I definitely want to get more of their gear when I've got some money aside, maybe the 909 they're working on.

>The next project, after I am done with my current one, is to make an album only using the SP1200 and the OB-8 to make an authentic House/Techno album
Sweet, I'd be interested to hear it, old school chicago house music and early detroit techno are right up my alley.

>Yamaha TX802
Rack version of the DX7II. I don't use it all that often anymore and might sell it when it's worth more. It's a great synthesizer, but it's a bit too glossy for what I usually need. Even then, there's Dexed for this sort of thing if your love for convenience outweighs your hardware fetishism.
>Yamaha FB-01
I love this one. It's a cheap four-operator FM synthesizer in a half-rack unit. The chip is based on hardware that was used in arcade machines, and it definitely has that gritty sound to it. They distort a lot, though.
>Casio FZ-10M
A nice 16-bit sampler from the late '80s. I think it might have been among the first, at least among the first that didn't cost an arm and a leg. The prices have gone up since I bought mine, and I'll probably end up selling mine and replacing it with a Microgranny if I can find a buyer. There are some pretty fancy features to it, but I just use mine in a really basic way.
>Oberheim Matrix-1000
A DCO-based analog synth that I'm not that crazy about. It seems to have also gone out of tune. I'm just holding onto mine while the value goes up so I can earn all the money back (since I'd have to take several hundred off the price due to its problem).

I plan on replacing it with a DSI Rev2.
>Roland JV-1080
While analog snobs like to crap all over these synths, these '90s ROMplers were great digital pad machines.

Here's a factory pad sound I'm in love with:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FNQoH8RDFo

A lot of the sounds might be cheesy, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. They add a lot of that '90s and early 2000s soundtrack flavor, as these were some of the most used racks for that back then. Presets from these are all over in video games and TV shows from that era.
>Twisted Electrons AY-3
This one's a little square wave and noise generator. I barely ever use it, but it can come in handy for doing bloopy chiptune arpeggios and sound effects.
>>91
I think Van Halen only used the OB-8 when playing live. I've heard "Jump" was recorded on either an OB-X or OB-Xa.

Nice equipment, though.
>>98
>Got it free from a friend years ago, I barely use it because it's just a pain in the arse to deal with.
I have an iPad with Patch Base laying around I use to make most of my synths usable. Apple sucks, but it was worth the money for me.
>>99
>I like Arturia's DX7 plugin, it's a lot more accurate to the original than Dexed (a free DX7 plugin), it's about 95% the way there.
I think I remember reading a claim that Dexed was about the same in terms of accuracy (or even better) if you fiddle around with the settings. That might have been a reference to how it's set to a more modern sound by default.

>>120
>While analog snobs like to crap all over these synths, these '90s ROMplers were great digital pad machines
I don't care what anyone says, late 80s and 90s ROMplers (plus "LA synthesis" machines like the D-50) are what it's all about. Something about them just sounds fantastic, whether it's pads, pianos, organs, strings, brass; it all sounds lovely.

>Presets from these are all over in video games and TV shows from that era
Yep, one of note that I know of is the original Tomb Raider trilogy, Nathan McCree used a couple of JV-1080s with the Orchestral I and II expansions for almost all the sounds. You can get a lot of the same patches, or ones that at least use the same base samples, in Roland's SRX ORCHESTRA plugin. Everything from the iconic oboe, the harp, the strings, the choir, even the vibes sound used for the "you found a secret" chime.

>I think I remember reading a claim that Dexed was about the same in terms of accuracy (or even better) if you fiddle around with the settings. That might have been a reference to how it's set to a more modern sound by default
There's an "Engine Resolution" setting to switch between "Mark I" and "Modern (24-bit)", and I'm pretty sure it used to work and everything sounded great on "Mark I" when I first started using it, but I must have updated something somewhere at some point, and now it always sounds like "Modern" no matter what I pick. I've tried rolling back to older versions, deleting registry entries and so on, but the problem remains. Might just be my setup is fucked, but I can't say for sure.

You can tell by the default patch "Say Again.", the final hit isn't supposed to sound like a horrible loud broken noise, it's supposed to sound similar to the classic TX81Z "Lately Bass" patch. I'm sure it used to sound right on the "Mark I" setting, it sounds close on "Modern" if you turn "Feedback" down to about 4, and it sounds about right in Arturia DX7 V if you load the patch onto there (minus a slight envelope timing inconsistency on OP6 for some reason), but for me it currently just sounds broken in Dexed no matter what unless you modify it.

>>121
>I don't care what anyone says, late 80s and 90s ROMplers (plus "LA synthesis" machines like the D-50) are what it's all about. Something about them just sounds fantastic, whether it's pads, pianos, organs, strings, brass; it all sounds lovely.
I think a lot of the sounds are corny, but they're often a charming kind of corny. I especially love the harp and string sounds.

And considering how much hatred the get for being preset machines, it's not like they don't have highly capable synthesis engines. The pad sound I posted is actually made up of fairly simple sounds from what I remember from examining it. They might lack the "warmth" of analogs, but they're far more versatile than most of the classic analogs and have their own character.
>Yep, one of note that I know of is the original Tomb Raider trilogy, Nathan McCree used a couple of JV-1080s with the Orchestral I and II expansions for almost all the sounds. You can get a lot of the same patches, or ones that at least use the same base samples, in Roland's SRX ORCHESTRA plugin. Everything from the iconic oboe, the harp, the strings, the choir, even the vibes sound used for the "you found a secret" chime.
Several of the Command & Conquer games are what come to mind for me. That "Dawn 2 Dusk" sound was actually used prominently in the menu music in Tiberian Sun. Red Alert was the first one to use it (the first game used a JD-990, which is often considered the better synth). There's even a track called "Terminate" that uses a preset of the same name.

I know that both factory and original sounds were used. I'd eventually love to figure out how to make a pad like the one 17 seconds into this track:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V64X-aiwGuc

It's seriously one of the best pad sounds I can recall hearing, and it doesn't seem to be a preset.

This steel guitar sound in StarCraft's Terran music was also a preset:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD4GbGmvNRc

Funnily enough, when I was a kid I just assumed the music in WarCraft II and StarCraft was made using "real" instruments. In reality they were just made using an SC-88 for the former and a JV-1080 for the latter.

These synths don't get enough love.
>There's an "Engine Resolution" setting to switch between "Mark I" and "Modern (24-bit)", and I'm pretty sure it used to work and everything sounded great on "Mark I" when I first started using it, but I must have updated something somewhere at some point, and now it always sounds like "Modern" no matter what I pick. I've tried rolling back to older versions, deleting registry entries and so on, but the problem remains. Might just be my setup is fucked, but I can't say for sure.
You could be right. I never tested it that much but noticed in the past that a patch I made actually sounded better in Dexed than on my hardware. I forgot to make sure my patches were set to Mark I to sound more vintage, but after listening to the patch in question just now it sounds like I remember the hardware sounding when set to Mark I.

I don't think my hearing is good enough to recognize a lot of the differences people note when comparing synths, but I always did notice how bad the "Say Again" patch sounds.

>>120
I mean they belong in the same family.
>Twisted Electrons AY-3
I hope you didn't pay the full price for that, you were better off getting ymVST unless it is for live performance

To be honest, the reason why I have not been posting here is because I have been learning how to use FL Studio via reading the Help section and manual, and messing around with two VSTs (Charlatan and JuceOPLVSTi) for the past week.

You could be fine with just a two-operator FM Synth just fine. I have been working on that for the past two years, easy to pick up yet there is a lot you can do with it. In fact, the OPL is quite capable thanks to its selection of waveforms. I don't know, maybe I like the simple synths more since I do not have to invest so much time on even understanding how I want a certain sound. I know how ASDR, filters, etc. work, but it takes time just fully realize what sound you want on a 4/6 operator FM Synth. It is why most artists use the presets, even the more famous ones.

I have been searching for VSTs this past week also, and I am still digging through them. I haven't even scratched the surface with acoustic instruments.

I would say the last time I actually messed around in an environment like FL Studio was GarageBand and that was seven or eight years ago, but it is fun getting to have the freedom on all aspects of sound design compared to something like Ignite.

>>121
>I hope you didn't pay the full price for that, you were better off getting ymVST unless it is for live performance
I did. I'm kind of OCD about having real hardware in most cases, even if nobody will be able to tell the difference.
>To be honest, the reason why I have not been posting here is because I have been learning how to use FL Studio via reading the Help section and manual, and messing around with two VSTs (Charlatan and JuceOPLVSTi) for the past week.
Nice. I've been using it for maybe ten years but don't have much to show for it other than a lot of half-finished or poorly mixed tracks (although it took me years to actually start using a MIDI controller and still can't really play anything). I love the program, though. and couldn't imagine using anything else.
>You could be fine with just a two-operator FM Synth just fine. I have been working on that for the past two years, easy to pick up yet there is a lot you can do with it. In fact, the OPL is quite capable thanks to its selection of waveforms. I don't know, maybe I like the simple synths more since I do not have to invest so much time on even understanding how I want a certain sound. I know how ASDR, filters, etc. work, but it takes time just fully realize what sound you want on a 4/6 operator FM Synth. It is why most artists use the presets, even the more famous ones.
Four operators for me are the sweet spot. Six are nice if you're going for that '80s pop sound or something, but I actually prefer the cheapo ones that you heard in video games back in the late '80s and early '90s.

As for VSTS, there's one I like called C700 that emulates the Super Nintendo sound chip. You can use sounds from actual games, but you can also use .wav files if they've got extremely low bit rates. Other than that I mainly use effects VSTs. TAL-Chorus-LX is a good free emulation of Roland's Juno-60 chorus sound, but I just use my chorus pedal if I'm actually recording something.