Looking for hardware synth/keyboard under 500

[Esperado]

Ive decided i need more time away from computer screens so im looking to buy a keyboard with which to learn more about music on without starting at my computer. Im looking to spend anywhere up to 500, maybe more if its nice enough. I cant decide between a synth thats good for sound design, and one thats good to learn to play with both hands (with more that 49 keys) 

 

some options ive found:

Waldorf blofeld ( 600 used in my local music shop)

Korg Radias (650 also used) 

Plain old Yamaha with weighted keys (200ish most places)

Novation ultranova (500 used)

 

Tldr: what hardware synths and keyboards do you guys swear by and do you have some examples of them in use?

[Garpocalypse]

Honestly the most cost effective way to do this would be to get a midi keyboard and turn it away from your computer.  MIDI keyboards would be a lot cheaper and you would get more experience learning to use the samples/synths you have. 

 

I had one of these last me around 12 years.  If you can find a used one it would be well worth it though it does use the old fashioned 6 pronged midi in/out cables and no USB compatibility. 

 

http://www.roland.com/products/a-37/

 

I now use one of these cheapos. 

 

http://www.m-audio.com/products/view/keystation-49es1

 

Which i'm not overly fond of because of how the keys feel.  Unweighted keys never feel....real...

 

Another option is to get a simple Casio that you can use for practicing away from your computer for $100 and save the rest for your studio.

 

Just to go off on a tangent, the best way to learn music is to play music.  Sitting in front of a keyboard practicing sheet music for hours on end is how I and many others learned back in the day and frankly it's a really outdated way to learn music.  I emphasize MIDI keyboards because some of the best musical experience you can get is from loading up the music you already like on your HDD and playing along with it, figuring out the chords and melodies by ear.  Do it enough and you'll recognize patterns you can use in your music which is the real key to actually learning anything.  Learning to read sheet music does help some when you learn to read music vertically but it's not 100% necessary.  It's important to remember that when music went digital people who learned music "the old ways" all had their legs kicked out from under them. Finding your own way of learning whats out there with the combination of resources available is all part of the fun of learning music today.

[APZX]

I have some hardware synths and unless you want a hardware synth for another color I cannot really say I'd recommend purchasing one. They're slower to use than most VSTs and you cannot have multiple copies of them and they can get down right expensive. That right there to me are a few disadvantages to hardware synths. Having said that I love them because they're different than using VSTs and you're really kind of forced to get creative using them.

 

Out of synths you listed I only own one, the Korg Radias. I really like the Radias because it is kind of like an Access Virus without being a Virus (though I do own a Virus B Rack too). It is a hard synth to describe because it really is one of those synths that has an extremely wide breadth of sounds it can do. A quick play with it would make you think of it more as a relatively competent and clean virtual analog synth. However, there is much more on offer than that. You can get DX style Epianos thanks to Virtual Phase Modulation or VPM. Huge giant moving pads are easy as well thanks to the multitimbrality; dual step sequencers and arp make it even easier to do. Want a good sounding vocoder? You got it. Need a drum machine in a pinch? Got it. That is only scratching the surface too because when you start designing sounds you've got all sorts of ways to make the sound dirtier and grittier without even getting into the FX section, which for included FX they're actually quite good. It is a very fast synth to program as well thanks to all the knobs. You've got 4 layers that you can program and this is where it starts getting confusing and starts to slow down a bit because if you don't pay attention you may be manipulating the wrong section of the synth. It is one of those synths that sits in a weird space of not being amazingly great at any one thing, but it also doesn't really suck at anything either. I can find a place for it on pretty much any track I do because of its ability to do most anything you'd need a synth to do. There are a ton of great demos out there and the Sound on Sound review actually does a good job of covering the synth. I can provide samples of it in concert with a few other synths to give you an idea of how it can sound in practical use (just me messing around and doing covers of some simpler VGM to see what I can do with a very limited set up of hardware) if you'd like. 

 

That description of the Radias is one of the reasons I've started digging more into hardware synths and hardware in general. Not because they're necessarily better or faster than VSTs, but because they're different and instead present a new way of approaching the same problem. If you're going for a different color or want to approach the problem from a different perspective than yeah buying a synth is something that I'd wholly recommend. If instead you want to explore your current sound palette more in depth than a MIDI controller a much better investment IMO. You're going to have ask yourself what you want to do and that is going to really determine your answer.

[Kanthos]

I just picked up a Waldorf Blofeld two days ago. It's just the module, but I've already got a Korg Kronos and Moog Sub 37, so I didn't need another keyboard. In my case, I play live, and while the Kronos does a great job of polyphonic synth sounds and my Moog will always be my first choice for leads, I wanted something that's a bit easier to program than the Kronos and that also gives me the flexibility of playing a part on the Kronos and bringing in another sound with ease. I play a lot of modern jazz, so I want, for example, to be playing a Rhodes on my Kronos and to add a pad or synth brass or stabs or whatever without being forced to build a bunch of combinations, as that makes switching a lot harder. Let's say I have 8 synth sounds I'm likely to call up on occasion. Well, do I make 8 combis (Korg's term for patches with multiple sounds, potentially on multiple MIDI channels) for playing those 8 sounds with a Rhodes, another 8 for playing those sounds with a piano, another 8 with a wurlitzer, another 8 with a clavinet? And what about playing all those sounds with a B3, where I use many different B3 patches due to the different drawbar settings, chorus/vibrato settings, percussion settings, etc?

 

So, that's why I went looking for another synth. I'd ask yourself the following questions to help narrow it down.

 

1) What is your budget?

2) Do you need a keyboard? How many keys do you need on it?

3) What kinds of sounds are you going for? Do you need something with decent polyphony? How many effects do you need?

4) How easy do you want it to be to program? Do you want one knob per function? Are you ok with a few knobs?

5) Do you actually need a hardware synth? VSTs will be cheaper than the equivalent hardware, and are typically more powerful. You can do something like buy Spectrasonics Omnisphere and a MIDI controller for roughly the cost of a decent synth module or keyboard.

6) What VSTs and other gear do you already have? Whatever you get should be unique, not just duplicate what you can already do, unless you have some other motivation for doing so (e.g. a synth that can replace your laptop for live performance)

7) Are there any other special considerations?

 

 

I tried a few other synths before settling on the Blofeld. I rejected a Virus Snow because it was too hard to program; it had too much menu diving and not even four knobs, so you couldn't do things like set your ADSR envelope from knobs all at once. I tried a MiniNova but it felt cheap (though the keybed was the best mini-size keyboard I've played); there were some issues with some of the knobs not registering all the way from 0 to 127. It has a lot of menu diving too, though you can get away from a bit of that with the knobs, which you can use to select sets of four parameters. The thing I didn't like is that, other than two sets of 4 assignable combinations for the knobs, the choices of what was on the knobs was fixed, and wasn't always sensible (e.g. not being able to control the whole envelope). The Blofeld is better in this regard because not only are the combinations more sensible but you can push a button to move between them (rather than move a switch to just the right spot) and the parameters controllable through this parameter matrix aren't usually in the menu. So, for example, you'll choose the Filter Envelope and edit the ADSR parameters through the knobs and only a few other parameters on the menu. And, pressing the Filter Envelope button jumps you to the right spot in the menu. The Novation UltraNova is similar in this regard, though it has 8 knobs instead of four and basically mirrors the menu structure. I'd guess it's roughly on par as the Blofeld in terms of ease of programming it; probably a bit more complicated for the most common parameters (as they wouldn't always be the first four knobs), but easier to get to less-common parameters (I think there were no more than two pages of 16 parameters per section, except perhaps for the modulation routings, which are going to have a lot of menu diving on any synth unless there's only a small number of routings in total.

 

Anyway, for me, my budget was under $1,000. I didn't need a lot of effects (I have a few effects pedals as part of my rig already), but I did need something with decent polyphony (otherwise I'd just use the Moog). I wanted something as small as possible to keep the overall size of my keyboard rig down, and I obviously needed hardware because I play live. The sound is also really important too, but to my ears, I didn't find any of the synths in this price range to be really superior. The Blofeld offers some features that the MiniNova and UltraNova don't, while the Novation synths have more effects. The Virus line is probably the best in terms of range of sounds and features, but as I said, I didn't like the way you program the Snow (which is admittedly not that bad; it just didn't feel that easy to me, and since I'm only really learning synth programming, I want something that does as good a job possible as supporting the way I want to work with a synth), and the larger Virus synths, which do have (mostly) one knob per function, are more expensive and larger.

 

One negative thing I'll point out about the Blofleld is that a lot of the factory patches are pretty quiet. You can adjust the volumes easily enough, so that's a minor annoyance, but it's worth mentioning at least.

 

Ultimately, you need to use your ears and go out and try a few different synths and see what works best for you. I'm happy with the Blofeld, but you may find something else just really works for you. I would recommend that if at all possible, you don't go for whatever's cheapest; if there's something a bit outside your price range, and saving up for it is feasible, I'd suggest you do that rather than settle on something that you won't enjoy as much. If you're fairly close, that is, and you have the potential to save up in a reasonable time. Waiting a few months to get the synth you want is preferable, I think, to getting a synth now that you won't be happy with. On the other hand, if your first-choice synth is something like a Virus TI 2 Keyboard which runs for over $3,000 new, and you're not going to have that kind of money for a couple years, that's the time to settle.

 

Good luck!

 

 

 

Hmm, I reread your post and noticed you were saying 'learn to play with both hands'. That narrows your options considerably. I'd steer you away from anything with less than 49 keys in that case (so no UltraNova). I find 37 keys on my Moog to be a bit small sometimes; my ideal would be a 61-key synth and my weighted 73-key Kronos (I find I don't need a full 88 for anything but the odd classical piece I still play, and even then, most of the classical music I play doesn't need a full piano's worth of keys). Anyway, you're not going to be able to develop any serious two-hand playing techniques on a 37-key keyboard. If you're playing in C (37-key keyboards are almost always C to C), you can do one-octave chords in your left hand, not going higher than a C, and have only two octaves left for melodic parts or chords or anything. That's just not enough. If your biggest concern is having something to learn to play on, I'd strongly recommend a 61-key MIDI controller, because I can't think of any decent 61-key keyboards in your price range. The Blofeld keyboard version, at 49 keys, is a bit of a compromise.

[Esperado]

 

Just to go off on a tangent, the best way to learn music is to play music.  Sitting in front of a keyboard practicing sheet music for hours on end is how I and many others learned back in the day and frankly it's a really outdated way to learn music. 

Ive heard many people advocate just noodling around to music that you like, which is probably what I will end up doing. I just want to shy away from a midi controller because it has less of a "plug and play" aspect of it. dumb as it sounds, i want to make my experience playing as hassle free as i can so as to set myself up to be as successful as possible in sticking to it regularly. v

 

 

That description of the Radias is one of the reasons I've started digging more into hardware synths and hardware in general. 

That description was exactly what i was looking for! Some examples of it in use would be fantastic!

 

 

Hmm, I reread your post and noticed you were saying 'learn to play with both hands'. That narrows your options considerably. I'd steer you away from anything with less than 49 keys in that case (so no UltraNova).

I solved that problem as my roommmate might just gonna sell me her old keyboard for dirt cheap which could make the keybed situation easier.  As for those questions , ive got them figured out, just need something reasonably powerful for under 600!  

 

Anyways! Ive narrowed it down to be between a blofeld with the keyboard (i found one cheap) because of its in-depth sound engine and aftertouch, or the radias with its tactile knobs, analog sound and modulation/fx options. still a tough choice as both copies i found are squarely at the 600$ mark, and while one has aftertouch and more versatile sound design the other is analog and has less menu diving and nice fx. At this point its going to come down to whichever seller comes through first with a synth thats in reasonable condition.

[Kanthos]

I've never had a proper Radias, but I used to own a Korg M3 workstation which had an expansion card containing the Radias (without the effects and such, since it just used the M3's effects engine). Both the Radias and Blofeld are good choices, and I'm sure you'll have fun with whatever you end up with!

[APZX]

Esperado,

I'd have no qualms about having a Blofeld. In fact I want one too. It is a great synth with a great sound to it. 

 

I'll give you some examples of the Radias in action though. Mind these are covers because I'm merely experimenting with what hardware I've got. For the most part in these there are only 4 synths in use. These were then run into a Peavey PV6 and the output of that was sent to the line level inputs of my Focusrite Saffire Pro 24. In several instances I double tracked the synths to get full coverage of the tracks. Anyway on to the examples.

 

1 - FF VIII's Ami The Radias is pretty much doing all the heavy lifting here. That main Epiano sound is the Radias and the reverb is from the synth. The soft pad is the Roland SH-201 and the little square lead is the DSI Mopho. 

 

2 - Super Mario Kart's Rainbow Road The Radias again is the main sound. Just some nice slowish saws with porta on them. The percussion sounds were provided by an E-MU Procussion. The bass is the Mopho. The little bell sound is the SH-201.

 

3 - Star Fox's Corneria The radias takes a back seat in this one and provides most of the background sounds. The opening arp? That is the Radias and is also the nicely filtered sound. The main lead is the SH-201. The bass is a double layering of the Mopho. Percussion again is courtesy of the Procussion.

 

4 - Canyon from the Window's Media Folder The Epiano and opening pluck are the Radias. The lead & pad are the SH-201. Bass and resonant sound are the Mopho. Not a surprise, but the percussion is again the Procussion.

 

5 - Earthworm Jim's New Junk City The opening pad with the arp until :09 is the Radias. As is the organ. The bass again is the Mopho. The strange synth playing the main melody is actually the Procussion (it also has quite a nice Marimba in there). The SH-201 just plays a support role doing mostly background arps with one being provided by the Mopho as well. Of course percussion is the Procussion.

 

6 - F-Zero's Big Blue This one features the Access Virus Rack as the main lead instrument with the Mopho providing the counter lead and bass. The organ is purely and squarely the Radias. Percussion is the Procussion once again and that strange synth finds its way back in here from that thing too.

 

7 - Twinbee Yahho!'s Stage 6 Theme Probably the most ambitious cover I've tried this way and doesn't do enough justice to original, but oh well it was fun to do. Basically the Radias in this case provides just pads to fill out the background and giving the high arp. Other than the Virus gives the strings and the panned sound in the breaks. Mopho delivers the bass & lead. Percussion is yet again the Procussion.

 

Sorry, about the Radias not being upfront all the time, but I hope it gives you an idea of how it can be used and how it actually sounds in some practical uses. If you want to just hear the synth doing its thing then https://soundcloud.com/apzx/guess-the-synth-3 is just the Radias. It has been awhile since I looked at this, but if I remember most of these are just patches included with the Radias itself. It is quite a lovely little synth that I quite enjoy.

 

If you want something more specific let me know and I'll see what I can do.

[Esperado]

Thanks for all the examples APZX! I guess ill have to save up for a radias someday, I really enjoy the rich timbres! I ended up getting the Blofeld because the radias ended up selling before i could get to it. I would have preferred the Radias after looking through all the various examples out there, but the Blofeld is no slouch!  I dont like all the menu diving, but admittedly I can go buy a patch editor app for my ipad and just use that whenever im in need of a better menu options. The aftertouch is a little too stiff, but im sure you can adjust it in the global settings.  with the bad stuff out of the way, I enjoy the keybed, the inbuild presets are varied and rich and the sound design engine is powerful enough to keep me busy for some time. The mod matrix is also mindblowing and complex.Best of all it integrates well enough with ableton! Looking forward to seeing what i can come up with! 

 

Edit: It does randomly buzz and generate line level noise though, which i find to be a bit annoying, but im sure a noise gate would deal with it. 

[APZX]

Esperado,

 

As I said I want a Blofeld as well. I just haven't gotten around to getting one. It really is a fantastic synth. 

 

Noise problems are kind of inevitable with synths or keyboards. I've got my fair share of them: Korg Radias & DS-8, Roland SH-201 &  D-110, DSI Mopho, Access Virus Rack, E-MU Procussion, and two Yamaha TX81z's. The quietest synths are the Radias, Mopho, and Virus. All the others produce audible hiss. If you listen to Big Blue at the very beginning you can hear the hiss from the Procussion. I've really got to purchase a couple of hardware gates. I've been looking at something like the DBX 1074 or Drawmer MX40 Pro, but those cost $$$. I mean if I multitracked the synths I could easily mitigate the noise, but where is the fun of that? I really need to build a proper desk for my mixer. 

 

Anyway, I really do hope you get a lot of use from the Blofeld. It is a great choice of a synth. Lots of sound in there if IMO slightly obtuse to program. 

[theshaggyfreak]

If you want to get into analog stuff and have a good variety to work with, I would look at the Korg Volca series. They're portable, they sound good, and you can easily hook up a MIDI controller to them if you want. I have the Volca Beats and it's a great drum machine. 

[Esperado]

If you want to get into analog stuff and have a good variety to work with, I would look at the Korg Volca series. They're portable, they sound good, and you can easily hook up a MIDI controller to them if you want. I have the Volca Beats and it's a great drum machine. 

 I didnt know they could be hooked up via midi. would you be able to hook one up through a daw and have the daw controlling it via midi?

[APZX]

It depends on which one you get as they have quite different levels of MIDI implementation. If you want some reviews Sound on Sound did a good write up. At the bottom of the review Paul Nagle did a reasonable summary of the MIDI capabilities of each module. 

[theshaggyfreak]

 I didnt know they could be hooked up via midi. would you be able to hook one up through a daw and have the daw controlling it via midi?

 

Yep. The Volca series has a ton of stuff or the price. Other analog stuff I'd recommend in that price range is the Arturia Minibrute/Microbrute, Moog Minitaur, and the Korg MS-20 mini. What's nice about those three is that you have no menu diving. Everything you get is on the control panel. All three can also be controlled via MIDI or USB.