In a live setup, I just don't need a lot of sounds. A good organ, a good piano, a good EP or two, a sax emulation, a good guitar emulation or two. Maybe a flute or harmonica here or there. The rest if any are analog synth sounds.

Depends on what type of show I am doing too and whether I'm solo or not. If I'm not solo, I tend to just use the organ, and a few synth sounds, and occasionally a piano. Also the VL150 plug in sax emulation usually turns a few heads when I use my breathe controller with it, and it sounds great to boot.

In the studio, I use more sounds than I care to count. That isn't the problem. Trying to chain 2, 3, or even 4 apps together, like One man Band, Jammer, Sonar, and FL studio.. That is the problem. It completely stifles creativity.... So, I have taken more to recording more stuff in real time in either FL or or Adobe Audition, and just using the laptop as a soundmodule. My drum tracks suffer. I'm ok on basic beats but my fills can be bad at times, but the rest I can play pretty well. Later I usually redo the drums anyway. My guitar work is getting a little better, so I would rather record my real guitar too, when I am up to it.

The sounds on the plug ins are different. I would say that nothing on the ES internally can match a few of the VL150 sounds. I like the VL, because the presets are very good, so it is immediately playable. The AN150 definitely sounds more analogue then the sample based internal sounds of the ES. It should as it is physically modeled after a real analogue synth and is not sample based. That said, some of the presets aren't very impressive. It takes some editing to get lush analogue sounds, but they are in there. You can do basic editing inide of the ES, but many parameters are accessible only via an external editor ( software ). What's worse, even the AN presets are dry in the ES, so I have to save edit and then save each one to a user voice in order to have effects applied.

It is sooo much easier to just link to the NI Pro53 software, which like the AN, is modeled on the old Sequential Circuits Prophet 5. The Pro 53 presets are awesome, and the editing interface is right there in front of me. The AN can be every bit as good, but it takes more work than I want to do.

AJ

[This message has been edited by Bluezplayer (edited 03-17-2005).]