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Originally posted by cryophonik I don't have room for an Andromeda. And, if I did buy one, the wife would probably make me sleep in the box that it came in.

not if u sell everything else?

pfhahaha

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Originally posted by palm not if u sell everything else?

Yeah, my (soon to be) wifey doesn't mind when I get new gear if I sell another piece. Me selling the Pulse was to pay for some homebrewing equipment (I brew beer, too). The ATC-1 is to maybe buy an Access Virus at some point whenever I find a good enough deal.

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Originally posted by aNYthing EMS may be a pipe dream - I think Jupiter and Synthex will be as impractical as I'll get, in terms of overpaying for something. As far as Neuron goes, my understanding was that inside it was nothing more than a PC running a ported version of Linux and "Neuron" app on a hard drive, connected to front panel controllers + keyboard. How hard would it be to fix a PC? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartmann_Neuron

It is basically just a PC inside, but unfortunately, as with most things involving expensive synths, it's not quite that simple.

From what I know, the most common issues (besides the controls on the front panel, mainly the orange joysticks, breaking off), are failed hard drives and dead BIOS batteries. The second issue is easy enough, but the hard drives, as far as I know, must be replaced by the same model, rather than any hard drive with equal or greater specs. This means ordering directly from Hartmann's ex hardware support partner, where you get charged a typical OEM part for repair "fee"

Other things that people I know have had to replace include displays (also hard to source for the neuron), and various pieces of the interface (pots, encoders, etc).

If you're set on the Neuron, and are willing to to dedicate a PC to running it, you could always try to find the Neuron VS package. Pretty much the same thing, without the expensive to fix custom hardware. Seems to pop up on eBay here and there for around $300-500.

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Originally posted by hexadecimal It is basically just a PC inside, but unfortunately, as with most things involving expensive synths, it's not quite that simple. From what I know, the most common issues (besides the controls on the front panel, mainly the orange joysticks, breaking off), are failed hard drives and dead BIOS batteries. The second issue is easy enough, but the hard drives, as far as I know, must be replaced by the same model, rather than any hard drive with equal or greater specs. This means ordering directly from Hartmann's ex hardware support partner, where you get charged a typical OEM part for repair "fee" Other things that people I know have had to replace include displays (also hard to source for the neuron), and various pieces of the interface (pots, encoders, etc). If you're set on the Neuron, and are willing to to dedicate a PC to running it, you could always try to find the Neuron VS package. Pretty much the same thing, without the expensive to fix custom hardware. Seems to pop up on eBay here and there for around $300-500.

there are plenty of... SOFTWARE-based work-arounds to the Nuke. I think it also has 2 resynators, as opposed to 3 that ship with the real deal. but if broken encoders is the main concerns - I don't have to worry, as I don't gig and I baby the crap out of my gear. Interesting enough - Korg Z1 employs similar type of concept - e.g. modeling unrealistic instruments - e.g. what would happen if you had an 18 foot tuba or 30 foot aperture on a bell - things like that. But I played around with Z1 and it just didn't inspire any ideas.

You trully know you have a special synth when synth itself makes the melody for you. I spent about 30 minutes today, recording just filters and just messing with simple tweaks like LFO speed, modulation, resonance, etc - using one sound and it sounded great.

When you can take one sound and make it sing all by itself and it sounds original you know you have something special.

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Originally posted by cryophonik And, if I did buy one, the wife would probably make me sleep in the box that it came in.

You totally could, too! It's quite giant. I wanted to hang on to mine since it was shipped in the original box but it was just way too huge.

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Originally posted by cryophonik You guys and your tens of thousands of dollars in synths make me feel so pathetic. My biggest dillema of the last few months is whether or not to spend a few hundred bucks replacing my Prophet 08 with an SE ATC-Xi Quad or SE-1X.

Replacing a polysynth with a monosynth?

The Andromeda is a decent synth, but I wouldn't never really tell anyone to go out and buy one. There are a lot out there with manufacturing problems that will ultimately kill them, and nobody has been able to completely figure out the serial number range, or even manufacturing date range for the bad ones. Kind of makes picking up a second hand A6 like playing the lottery, and hoping you don't end up with an expensive decoration at some point.

It has lots of modulation routings, easily accessible controls on the front panel for most important functions, and sounds "ok". Most of the people I've encountered who talk about it like it's the best synth ever made, have never owned another analog synth (or any synth) to be able to compare.

oops - double post.

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Last edited by cryophonik on Dec-14-2009 at 16:21

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Originally posted by hexadecimal Replacing a polysynth with a monosynth?

Yes. I have plenty of polysynths already and I pretty much use the P08 as a monosynth anyway.

As far as the Andromeda goes, it looks nice, but it doesn't interest me enough to drop $1800+ (about the minimum going rate for a used one).

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Originally posted by hexadecimal Max/MSP never intimidated me much, but that's probably because I've been coding most of my life, and it just kind of made sense and forced my computer nerd and synth nerd sides to mesh and become one. I think the max for live idea was idiotic, though. There are going to be a lot of Ableton users scratching their heads after buying it, thinking it's just another instant gratification plugin. Kyma is a great system. It would be a waste for most people, though. Lucky for the rest of us, those people usually end up selling their systems off cheap.

I think max4live is great and is going to revolutionise the way that dance music is played live. It probably will for me anyway. I think its a bit overpriced for what will be a preset player for a lot of users though. I think they should distribute a runtime at a cheaper price.

Where would I get a cheap kyma BTW? I've always wanted one...

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quote:

Originally posted by hexadecimal Replacing a polysynth with a monosynth? The Andromeda is a decent synth, but I wouldn't never really tell anyone to go out and buy one. There are a lot out there with manufacturing problems that will ultimately kill them, and nobody has been able to completely figure out the serial number range, or even manufacturing date range for the bad ones. Kind of makes picking up a second hand A6 like playing the lottery, and hoping you don't end up with an expensive decoration at some point. It has lots of modulation routings, easily accessible controls on the front panel for most important functions, and sounds "ok". Most of the people I've encountered who talk about it like it's the best synth ever made, have never owned another analog synth (or any synth) to be able to compare.

I believe you're talking about the tuning issues with one of the batches made in Asia. It was just a single batch of the Andromedas that had this issue. Probably less than 10% out of every Andromeda out there. All you need to do is ask the person you're buying it from to run "Auto Tune" after letting it warm up for 15 minutes. If the person can't get every voice to tune (have a "T" under it), then it's a bad unit. All you need to do is disable the bad voices and offer the person 1/2 the average price.

I've owned a Prophet '08, Moog Voyager, Waldorf Pulse, and ATC-1 all at the same time as my Andromeda. The 24db filter on the Andromeda sounds A LOT like the Voyager's filter but the OSCs are much more modern and easy to work with (which I like). The Andromeda beat the crap out of the Prophet '08. The Prophet either sounded just as good or significantly worse. The Pulse and Andormeda are quite different beasts, but let's just say I sold my Pulse but still have the Andromeda. Compared to the ATC-1, I found the Andromeda to be quite similar. The only difference the ATC-1 could make is if you were using the 2600 filter. And now, with the sale of my ATC-1, the Andromeda is the only analog I own.

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I still own one of the first Andromedas made (some of my patches were in the preset banks for quite a few of the A6s that shipped between 2003-present)... so I am familiar with them

I was actually talking about power supply issues, voice boards dying, etc.