Soft or Hard ??

Calm down, nothing X-rated here, sorry to say !

Since I got into Korg’s Legacy collection of VST instruments, recreating the classic Wavestation, Polysix and MS-20, I have gone soft synth crazy, downloading demo’s of all major synths and digging out discarded old VSTi’s that I hadn’t bothered installing on my old PC due to it’s inability to cope with their hardware demands.

Now that I have an AMD Athlon64 3000+, with 1GB of RAM, I finally have a machine capable of running these things.

But I still believe that hardware is by far the best option when it comes to music making.

Why ? Because hardware is instant, tactile and doesn’t require a particular spec of computer to run. You can press the On button and away you go. Hardware doesn’t run out of memory or CPU time. Everything is there, in your face, awaiting your input. Unlike software, which is the exact opposite. I still hate having to stare at small windows on my monitor, mousing all over the place.

But, I cannot deny the range and quality of sounds these things produce and at incredible prices too. I have debated the pros and cons of hardware and software amongst fellow musicians and sound developers, even had stuff published in the music press, yet still the debate goes on.

Where do I think it will all end ? Well, the Muse Receptor (pictured above) seems a step in the right direction. An AMD based machine that is designed to purely run VST’s, the Receptor is the first in what I believe is a long step towards the new breed of instruments that blend the best of both worlds.

Until that time, and until the time my bank balance can cope with it, we will have to patiently wait and see what unfolds. In the meantime, I will use a combination of the two, but not at the expense of losing the creative streak that is usually disrupted by having to allow for the usual crashes and reboots etc that us electronic musicians are more than used to.

Feel free to leave your comments below.