hi boetsch1
I have a better idea now of what you want to do. I mentioned poly before. This may be a critical area for you depending on how you will create the tracks. poly is short for polyphony which means the number of voice elements the synth can produce at any given point in time. If you are going to create several midi tracks in you PC sequencer, then play them back from the PC and at the same time plan to record the audio produced by the synth you may run out of polyphony. If you plan to create several audio tracks individually, polyphony may not be an issue but then you'll need to make sure you PC is fast enough to handle several audio tracks at once.

I do not record audio with a PC because it's just too much for me. I use a Yamaha AW16G which is a stand-alone hard disk recorder. I can't be dealing with interfaces and memory and latency and all that stuff. but that is just a personel choice. Just about every other recording musician I know of uses PC's (macs really) and Protools and digidesign's stuff. I just don't have the knack for that.

Any way back to poly. Lets say you have a "64 voice" synth. Usually many patches are made up of two or three, sometimes one or four voice elements. And generally the best sounds use 4 voices. Let's say your best piano sound is using 4 voice elements. when you hit just one key, while your playing that note, your using 4 voices of polyphony. Hit a three not chord and all of a sudden you're using 12 voices of polyphony. Try a three note bass chord and a four note chord with your right hand (7 notes total) and your now using 28 voices of polyphony. Generall 64 voice synth is fine if your playing in patch mode or voice mode... (just one sound at a time). But if you want to layer two patches (sounds) like the best piano and strings patches. if both use 4 voices, once you layer them, now one key uses 8 notes of polyphony. So now a 7 note chord is using 56 voices of polyphony. Again. not too bad. Some older synths are like 32 voices or 28 voices and older analog synths may be as low as 6 or 8 total.

But with all that said. If you have a Midi sequence using several sounds, some layered, some playing long sustained chords, your midi sequence will eat up all the synths polyphony and you'll hear notes just drop out.

But as I said also, if you'll be recording to audio, polyphony is not a concern but disk space and processor speed is.

Today's professional workstations almost all have at least 128 polyphony now.

So there's more for you to consider. Ya know a few years back the Roland XP-30 was maybe the best bang for the buck. It has a huge library of sounds. Is a 61 key keyboard. Is not really expensive. The sounds may not be as fresh as the sounds in today's synths but still it's engine (the JV engine is a good one). 64 voice poly i believe. That may be the cheapest way to get a large libray of sounds. Also there are sound modules that have huge libraries.

You may find with experience though even if you have a synth with a 1000 patches (sounds) you may really only tend to use less than 50 or so. It's fun to have a-ga-zillion sounds though, but it's not easy to use them all.


As far as software to strip mp3s , I have no experience with that. sounds cool though.

I know a Motif Es6 isn't cheap, but it would handle your application well.

It also sounds as though you might want to be able to produce drum patterns/loops. Not all synths can do this. The Motif ES's can. Something you might want to keep in mind when shopping and hunting around.

I would just like to say to you to be patient too,. The more you learn the more equipt you'll be to make the right decision. Hopefully you but the right board the first time and not have to go through a few boards before you finally get what you need.

Peace
Best wishes
Bob
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