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Comment by busterarm | Hacker News Reader

Hardware synths, in particular the varieties that Moog makes, are at peak relevance again and who knows if that will remain the case. The brand was certainly sucking wind for a good 30 years of its history previously. Cashing out that equity now is a shrewd move...especially as consumer spending has gone to who knows where.

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I don't think hardware analogy synthesizers are going anywhere anytime soon. Moog is probably facing a lot of competition though, and they aren't very active in the Eurorack modular space where a lot of the interesting new stuff is happening. (In particular, a lot of their popular synths, including recently released ones, are being cloned by Behringer.)

It would be interesting to know if they were doing great but sold because the offer was too good to turn down, or if they were in a financially precarious position and looking for an exit.

Not sure what the situation is for the employee's union. If a company gets acquired, does the union remain?

I think the recent clones of the moog studio3 devices must have been part of it. The clones are less than half the price of the originals, and are arguably better.

Behringer clones modular synth modules too. https://www.gearnews.com/behringer-abacus-lets-do-the-maths/

Compared to how original looked that's fucking improvement, original have indecipherable panel if you don't already know how it works.

But yeah, I wish that they at least tried to improve upon original instead of blatant copy

I suspect Moog saturated their own market. There are only so many people who want to pay $5000 for a new Minimoog, and most of them already had a reissue. Even fewer who want to pay $10k for an analog poly with mixed reviews and software issues.

We'll see what happens next. Given IM's history I would guess the Moog brand will be stuck on some generic mediocre products, and most of the US workers will be let go.

But I'd love to be proven wrong.

Especially when you can buy a Behringer Model-D with the 'same' circuitry for £225.

You have to be passionate about the specific sounds a synth offers to buy any synth at a $5k or $10k price tag. The OB-X8 from Sequential sounds fantastic but it still only gives you the palette of an analog polysynth for $5k. You have to be passionate about the Oberheim sound in order to pay that kind of money. Same with Moog or Gibson, you need some kind of passion for the brand in order to spend the money that they’re asking.

I would love it if they made some Eurorack modules. I have a DFAM and love it, but for most equipment I only consider Eurorack. The DFAM has to sit outside my case. The ergonomics of that are weird, and there’s only so much room for desktop equipment.

Couldn't you pull the DFAM and put it in a case? My Mother, at least, is Eurorack.

Yep, 8 screws and you'll need to supply the power cable (for anyone that doesn't know eurorack they're just a few dollars)

https://moogmusicsupport.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/36000...

Isn't the DFAM eurorack compatable? I seem to recall being able to take it out of its case and plug a 12pin into it and it just works.

Yeah, but compared to their modules, it’s enormous. It would be a huge part of my case. And for the functionality it provides, it doesn’t really need to be that big. It has a great interface and it’s beautiful, but eurorack modules tend to pack their functionality into a tighter package. And I could imagine that if they put their minds to it, they could create smaller, more tightly focused modules than the semi-modular instruments that they tend to create.

It's kind of unfortunate that eurorack cases and power supplies tend to be so expensive. My approach is to use cheap Meanwell supplies (a pair of RS-35-12s wired in bipolar configuration rather than the more common RT-65b) and laser cut more racks out of birch ply when I need more space, but if I was paying full retail price for rack space I would probably be using much smaller modules, and fewer of them.

(This is my most recent design: http://jsnow.bootlegether.net/84hp-rack-2row-slantback.svg -- the parts are made by running two jobs on the same file, always cutting red and alternating between cutting purple and blue. Turns out 3mm screws work fine in plywood if you can get the hole size just right.)

I think the answer is no. They may be more prevalent and widely adopted, but there's essentially no point in owning a hardware synth. It's been heading this way for a while, but the 5 years or so has really seen software modelling synths become almost free from drawbacks compared to soft synths.

I say this as someone that loathes soft synths, and loves playing with the hard synths. I absolutely despise the mouse interface outside of certain specific contexts, even outside of music.

There are a couple reasons. First, the fact is that you can create any sound from a hard synth on a soft synth given enough time. The sound quality will be better, or at least the same as a hard synth. Software can expand up until you run out of resources, so there's no limit on ENV, LFO... entire instances of the synth. There's probably use cases for getting two identical synths with different settings. Of course you can sample and layer, but even that is easier in DAW, either way.

So why even bother with the hardware synths in 2023? If you have a large amount of money, for a hobbyist, go ahead and get in the game. Be prepared to pay $1,000-20,000 or more, vs. $300-2000 for a good software setup.

It does feels more natural and like playing an instrument, and more fun to explore than a GUI. I can also move two knobs at once among a number of tricks in hard synths. This is a pain with software, even if you create macros, because you might not always want the same proportional adjustment in settings... ie. you can simultaneously turn on knob up and down (I imagine this is "possible" with DAW, but not natural and seamless).

There's another reason to use hardware. When you want a very specific sound, that you just know you can get easily from a specific synth. You could probably make a similar one with a generic synth, but don't want to. On the other hand, this is only necessary if a high quality plugin doesn't exist for your synth, which is unlikely unless it's an obscure one.

So, yes we're seeing a really interesting renaissance of hardware synths. This will continue for some time, and may not truly "end". However, right now they can't compete with hardware for easy control.

I can't help but think the control issue can be figured out, although it requires cooperation of a ton of different businesses, to support some number of controllers. Maybe this is truly impossible, but it seems do-able to have an array of knobs, and sliders... it's just that all the plugin companies would have to play around. I think NI has been doing this.

I think it's possible that we see more merging of DAW, controller, and plug-in. This is already occurring to a limited extent. DAWless machines are being loaded with single board computers that can run plug-ins. Your synth will also be a PC.

Anyway, what a rant, I'm sure no one will ever see this. Perhaps you can get by with just the learn button, but this has been a nightmare to me.

> DAWless machines are being loaded with single board computers that can run plug-ins.

Like the newest Ableton Push.

I think maschine did it first, and APC is now too... I did not know about the push, thanks, that's cool.

> but there's essentially no point in owning a hardware synth.

Not exactly. Some hardware synths are performance instruments in their own right. Something like the Expressive E Osmose, Roli Seaboard or Continuum Fingerboard are useful for their input capabilities, not for their synthesis methodology.

Also music is still often performed live and you're not going to get an organ's featureset out of software and a generic midi controller. The sounds, yes, but not the way you play it. There are ergonomic features to those kinds of hardware synths that are hard to replicate or even inferior when done with MIDI.

Yeah, I somewhat covered this, but that's a good point. I talked about the utility of being able to touch and interact with music.

I just wasn't think about the innovative control surfaces. There's no point from a audio engineering / sound design perspective. It's purely about UI.

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