I have several of the better freeware softsynths and a couple of commercial ones, including the Yamaha SYXG-50 and the Sound canvas stuff, but never thought of them as much more than nice toys, and in the case of the SYXG50, something that does a fairly good job of allowing me to play the Yamaha styles in OMB without a lot of tweaking.

Today, that has changed. After demoing a few of the latest releases, I plan on purchasing at least 3 of the ones I demoed, and more may follow. The one that blows me away is Arturia's CS80v. It is a very good emulator of the classic and Yamaha CS80, which I remember seeing well over 20 yrs ago ( and falling in love with ), but like so many others I couldn't afford the steep price tag ( around 6 or 7 grand if I remember right ). Arturia also makes the Moog Modular 5, and the emulator comes complete with "cords" that plug in just like the real thing. That one is joining the lineup too. It sounds great as well. The Other one I will purchase is the Novation "V" station, an emulation of the "K" station.

I have the AN150 analog modeling board for my Motif ES. It does a good job and has done a creditable job of replacing the Poly 6 I had missed so much. One has to work on the presets, as the effects are dry in the board, but they really come to life when they are tweaked. Still, the sounds it puts out and the synth sounds from the ES itself ( not to mention my PA80 synth sounds ) pale in comparison to the CS80v and Moog Modular V on my system. I can easily tell, because the Motif ES6, PA80 and softsynths all get routed to the same sound system.

I'm thinking of getting a laptop now too. Not only for storage and use with an arranger for live play, but also as a host for the above softsynths, so I can play them away from the studio. I'd want an "add on" soundcard ( better quality and low latency are key ) to enhance the sound if possible. Now that I have the SQ01 sequencing software that came bundled with the Motif ES, I use the VSTi versions. They load up and work well without a hitch in the SQ01. DXi versions of sofsynths that I have tried also work well in Sonar, but the SQ01 is easier to use for loading sofsynths.

I use the Motif ES to control them, and with my Midiman Audiophile 2496, latencty is about 8 ms, and not noticeable at all. I have already tried layering the softsynth sounds with those on the ES, with excellent results ( they both come through the same soundsystem simultaneously. )

My thanks to Frank Rosenthal and a few others for opening my eyes to this stuff. I can now own 3 emulations of some outstanding analog synths for a fraction of the cost of one of the original ones. They all sound incredible, and I don't miss my Poly6 any more. In fact the Poly6, good as it was for the price, could never approach some of the sounds these things do. Good deal.

AJ

[This message has been edited by Bluezplayer (edited 01-03-2004).]