Recent content by fierywater

You've got a decent selection of romplers in that catagory. The Roland Juno-D and the Yamaha S03 are the best ones you'll find new for that; however, I'd suggest finding a used Roland XP-30, which despite being older has superior sounds to the Juno-D.

Being the dissenter that I am, I would suggest the Ion over the Micron for a person without synth knowledge, because the Micron's setup is awful for a first-time synthist (lol) trying to figure out what all the settings do. Get something with knobs, you won't regret it. Knobs encourage...

49 keys, not 61, I think?

The Micron, if I recall correctly, has a better arpeggiator and a few different features that the Ion lacks. The sound is identical. I thought the vocoder was identical as well, but I guess not. I still would take the Ion over it just for the knobs, though.

Depends on how far you want to go with this thing. FL Studio (FruityLoops) is largely seen as sort of an amateur's tool, if you know what I'm saying. Like a lesser Reason. The Electribe is more of a valid synth; however, you won't be able to create whole songs with it as easily as you would with...

Portamento seems to be what you're talking about, glide being just another name for it. Basically, if you turn the feature on with any given synth, notes will slide into eachother. For example, if you hit middle C, then a C one octave lower, the synthesizer will smoothly slide from the first...

I love my Novation X-Station 49.

is that even a question? HELL YEAH.

would you use a radio shack keyboard for anything else?

Though I haven't had the opportunity to try it, the Kurzweil PC1XL looks extremely good in the price range you specified. Kurzweil has great piano sounds and key actions on their digital pianos, the first of which I have witnessed many times first-hand...

I was just thinking that when I saw a MIDI-capable keyboard in RS for 50 bucks. Music production can be very cheap these days. though i still like my novation x-station 49.

I got the keyboard, and I love the sucker to death. So awesome.

I ripped all mine to lossless WMA. that doesn't really help you in space economy, though.

Heh, I probably should've said a budget. I was thinking under $600 as "inexpensive." Thanks for the replies. Someone responded in the other thread that the M-Audio ProKeys' action was like that of another controller M-Audio makes, which is to say, awful. I had my hopes up on that, sadly.

As the title says, I need an inexpensive synth with 88 weighted keys. Preferably, I'd like to have a pitch bend wheel or ribbon controller as well. Good piano sounds are a plus, but I only need them passable. Suggestions? :)