Yoozer

Go buy this book. That'll give you a far better idea of what to do than to pick up buzzwords like sidechaining or loudness or mastering without having any idea what you want to do in the first place. http://www.samplemagic.com/products/prod_b1_secretshousemusic.html

EQ, EQ, EQ. If you haven't been cutting away anything to make things fit, no amount of compression is going to help you out. Get rid of that mud first - mercilessly. Cut narrow, boost wide - cut first, boost later.

When you experiment, do so consistently. Start with a single oscillator. The default/init patch in Massive is actually not that good; it should use one filter. I'll post a good one when I get back. Go through the wavetables and scroll through the contents of each; then, route an envelope or LFO to it. Apply a simple effect - temposynced delay or reverb - and play a slowly evolving sequence with an arpeggiator. If you use a simple sequence, you'll notice how much of an effect that evolving character can have already. Then, engage the second oscillator and learn all variations - how does saw at 0 and square at +12 semitones sound? And like that for lots of combinations; an awful lot of sounds in electronic dance music are ridiculously simple: it's what's happening around them what makes it work.

DiscoDSP Phantom or the Yamaha TX81z are very capable for Genesis sounds. The Moog Voyager would be the last choice for sounds like that.

http://www.midi-store.com/Fatar-Studiologic-SL-990-Pro-midi-keyboard-p-16960.html is as basic as it gets. Fatar is the company that makes the keybeds for a lot of other manufacturers.

Yes. NI Battery, FXPansion Guru - but what are you looking for? Acoustic or electric, pre-loaded or for your own samples?

Electro != electro-house. http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/

No idea. What OS are you using? Which applications are running while you're busy with Live? What does the Task Manager say? Have you updated to the latest version? Tried to reinstall it? Sample name contains weird characters?

Ableton is the name of the company, Live is the name of the software . It's just that "Ableton" is a more unique word, but otherwise it'd be like saying "yeah I made some fat tracks in Digidesign / Steinberg / Image-Line last night" instead of ProTools, Cubase or FL Studio.

Ableton's got a pretty nice fully functional trial version that'll give you 2 weeks with no strings attached. Big fan of Live here; but pick a DAW that suits you, not because it's popular or something.

Consider increasing your RAM so your software sampler can pre-load more stuff in there. RAID? Don't get the poor man's RAID; get a dedicated controller card and don't skimp on the number of drives. When one fails, you shouldn't be lost.

Samples are pretty much subtractive synthesizers too; it's just that you don't get oscillators that can interact with eachother or have waveshaping options (so what you see in Synth1 with pulsewidth or FM is not available in Kontakt).

Yes. What you even use as MIDI keyboard doesn't matter; a $30 USB MIDI cable (E-mu Xmidi 1x1) will turn any MIDI keyboard into a controller for your computer. You play a note on the controller. The controller yells out of its MIDI port: "Hey, this guy just hit F#4!" The cable dutifully transmits the signal to the computer. The computer listens and passes it on to your host - software like Cubase, Ableton Live, Reaper, Sonar, FL Studio, whatever. You're going to need something like that. The host has a MIDI track with Kontakt loaded on it, and yells to Kontakt "Yo, I'm getting an F#4 here! Move your ass!" Kontakt receives it and does what it has to do - e.g. play something. The sound goes to the host. The host passes it on to the soundcard. The soundcard translates it to a voltage, and the voltage hits the speakers. Then, you hear whatever sound was assigned to that note in Kontakt. It basically does not care what it has to play - Kontakt is a sampler, which means that you can record yourself playing a vuvuzela or making disgusting bathroom noises, and it'll do it. Alternatively, it also comes with a crapton of really nice and usable sounds. Virtual analog synthesizers can be had for free, as in beer - easily enough. Kontakt's library, not so much; so it makes sense that if you're starting out and want a wide range of realistic (instead of synthetic) sounds - to choose that. To get a teaser, get yourself http://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/producer/kore-player/ for free.

http://www.sweetwater.com/expert-center/glossary/ You're welcome.

I don't own Omnisphere yet but I think mr. Persing is a cool guy and doesn't afraid of anybody. So, eventually, I'm going to get it.

Have a $2000 synth, like only 10 presets, and have no idea what the knobs do. Congratulations; you've just bought 10 very expensive presets at $200 apiece. Have a $2000 synth, like only 10 presets, but know how to program 190 of 'm. Congratulations; you've just bought a lot of future possibilities and your sounds cost (right now) $10 a piece. Use 3 of 'm, get paid more than $30, profit. Plus the joy of actually knowing how the thing works, and all that. See my point? Noiiice! Yes, it is. Though you might sort-of-agree if you give Absynth to someone with a preference for symphonic sounds

There's no reason to learn synthesis other than to spare your wallet. If you got Omnisphere and Komplete and only knew what the Next/Previous sound buttons did, the only thing you're doing a disservice is your wallet - since you're going to be out of sounds after you've listened to 'm all (and only a few are useful). Since this is cheap, it's not a loss if you only learn the next/previous buttons and nothing else. It's got a full modulation matrix too, so that actually helps in understanding synthesis.

Use http://flstudio.image-line.com/help/html/plugins/Edison_2.htm

Yes and no. Yes: samples have a horizontal resolution (sample rate) and a vertical resolution (bit depth) - just imagine it's a picture. A bitcrusher can reduce either - it "pixelates" the sound, so to say. This has as an effect that the sound loses fidelity, kind of how speech samples in toys are always sounding so peculiar. Since old computers have a small memory, they have to store a reduced version of the sample. No: Just putting something through a bitcrusher doesn't make it sound like vintage console music. See for a (not so accurate) demonstration, or try http://kunz.corrupt.ch/?Products:VST_TAL-Bitcrusher

So http://www.alesis.com/content216908 is Vista only? Bummer .

Pitch1 is probably just the pitch of oscillator 1 alone; you'll want all three at the same time. "Routing" (most other synthesizers call it a modulation matrix) works with a source, a target, and an amount. Basically, just imagine that the volume envelope is also a connection in the router - from an envelope to the amplifier, at maximum intensity/amount. Congratulations on the first step to truly understanding synthesizers - by getting away from the idea that you have "a pitch envelope" but rather a connection of anything to a parameter changing (modulating) it, you'll find new creative ways to work with sounds.

Three things that have been omitted from the previous replies, informative though they were: - the shape of the envelope. FM allows exponential (positive or negative) slopes; exponential negative gets you plucky blips. Absynth allows you to modify the curve of the envelope; it becomes immensely obvious once you experiment with that. - the shortest attack is no attack at all. Sample your instrument and cut off the first bit so you always have the waveform starting at the zero crossing (cutting the waveform at the start when it does not cross zero gets you clicks) - use a compressor. I used to have an Alesis Ion which had one on board; even though VAs don't generally suffer from sluggish envelopes, the compressor added the extra punch.

Buy them at Loopmasters.com or something. It's not rocket science to roll your own, though.

I'd start looking for a replacement for that X-stand though - think of something like http://stands.pl/?strona=produkt&id=181&grupa=1〈=en (or equivalent, I'm sure Quiklok or Ultimate or whatever has something similar). It won't wobble and it won't collapse either, something X-stands might do eventually.

We're obviously not doing something right if this question is asked over and over again in the same way.