Big Keyboard Predicament!

[DAS19]

So ill start from the beginning. So I was going to get a stage piano and dish out just 600 bucks and get a yamaha p70 which has very basic sounds and a pretty good piano sound but I just got back from gtr center and feel in love with the Roland Fantom X8.

I need those electric piano sounds! I dont know if they are worth 3000 dollars though!! Should I go all out and push for my parents to get me it as a present for going away to college. (Laptops are like required now so its not even really a gift!?) I mean I am going to college for music and this keyboard will be with me for the rest of my life probably if I got it. I played wiht it for 15 min and many of my songs on my paino fit better on an ep and I am very praticlar about my ep sounds becasue they are very rarely mimicked well but the fantom x8 did it well. and it felt soooooo good. Like a real piano almost!

Maybe I should look at a nord but no store ive seen has them out on display.

HELP ME!

Thanks
Dave

Sorry if I e-yelled.

 

[DavidK]

HELP ME!

3 grand is pretty steep.

I mean I am going to college for music

Where are you going? The college I used to teach at had all kinds of toys, anything you wanted really. Softsynths are taking over, when you are finishing college there might not be any hardware synths left. 3 grand buys a used car, lots of beer or lots of drugs, all of which were crucial to my education.

If you are going to music school you wont have time for the synth. It will be classes and partying. I dont think I spent more then 15 minutes a day in my dorm room freshman year, I was always at the music school, and it was too far to go back to the dorm often. Music school takes a LOT of time, you shall see. You cant lug the synth around, you will use a piano at the school or one of their synths. In other words you dont need it. A $600 Yamaha back at the dorm will be enough, they make good stuff.

 

[Soundmind??]

David K is right, there should be plenty of good gear there to use. Don't agree with the partying too much at dad's expense. There will always be time to party, but use it wisely.

 

[DAS19]

I think its a small school so not TO much partying. Anyway its a privite school called Five Towns College idk if anyones ever heard of it but they do film/audio and bussines stuff.

Since there might not be to much to do and my dorm is actually right next to the classes I might be in my room a lot writing soo idk David if your logic applys. Maybe though.

Once again I really need some good ep sounds. I wish yamaha's ep sound on the p70 was good. The fantom 8 had some really good piano and ep samples.

Softsynths are cool but to be honest alot of softsynths really dont sound as good as some stuff Ive heard on keyboards and a lot of times you get it all right at ur finger tips instead of having to buy each instrument in a softsynth.

The fatom allows you to add roms as you probably know which is pretty cool.

 

[DavidK]

You have answered your own question: you want the Fantom.

 

[adamki]

Man, have you ever thought about getting softsynths? Im always on the go and I have a laptop, mbox, and a little controller I take with me. I like softawre, but I do also think hardware is better though. but it will save you money and lots of room even if you got an 88 key controller.
You already have a laptop right? You can download free LEGAL softsynth all day long. And they are getting better.

 

[mheffner]

I have an X8 in front of me right now. There are things I like but to be honest, I still play the T1 and soft synths more. It does have some great pianos in it, but While there are a lot of things that make it a great live controller, the majority of the sounds in it I feel are more for the techno style of music. It does have a pretty decent sampler built in though.

I guess if I had to choose again with the knowledge I have now I'd probably pass over the X8. Especially now that Roland has all but abandoned it for updates, (there are still some issues with the real time control knobs) and are supposedly working on something new.

just my .02

-mike

 

[drstawl]

You have answered your own question: you want the Fantom.

So did I.

I had a bid going on E-bay for the Fantom-XR, aleady upgraded to full sample memory for $850!!

The bid went unchallenged for three days.

90 minutes before the close someone started a bidding war that smelled fishy to me. It really didn't have to meet that criterion since I don't have the cash to get sucked into that... BUT:

My logic was along the lines of:

If this was a legit bidder, the bid would have been placed 5 minutes before close to avoid a war that would have cost THEM. Seeing as the bid was placed when it was- it looked like a scam to hoist the price so I let them have it.

 

[mixmkr]

I think going to music school will change your opinion of what gear you really want, should you stick the education out to the end.... In other words, spend your pennies when you're done with school. Your synth will be out of date by then, and like said earlier, unless you can even find time to use it professionally, you won't need it at school.... and a gig during school will only pull you away from your studies.

On an aside, put yourself into high gear in school, and you WON"T regret it when your out. In other words, now will be the time to practice 8 hrs a day and do your classes IN ADDITION. You'll morph into the player you've always wanted to be. Party like DavidK, and you'll turn into a classical geek!!!

Seriously, figure you don't know 'squat' now... and when your education is over, you'll have some solid reasons to get the best gear to fit your situation and KNOW what you want. Stop the drooling on new synths now. That's too easy to do. Heck, you may pick up the clarinet!!

 

[DavidK]

Party like DavidK, and you'll turn into a classical geek!!!

Yeah, and we all know how that turned out.

Stop the drooling on new synths now.

Sound advice from an excellent musician The opportunity to go to music school is a great one, ya gotta hit the practice room and pretty much live there. All you need is a pianny, really. All the gizmos in the world wont do squat, trust me. A solid foundation is what its all about. We didnt have no steenkin Fantoms, and we walked 20 miles to school. Hey you kids, stay off my grass.

I have played at that college BTW, its in Long Island I think? They have a nice performing arts center as I recall.

 

[anppilot]

my only reply is this:

Is a $3,000 dollar keyboard worth stealing?

Besides, I own a fantom, triton and motif es

Screw the EP's in the fantom, they suck compared to the MOTIF, Hell, the Pianos and EP's in the Motif KILL the fantom hands down.

And I say this being a proud owner of all three keyboards and about $6500 tied up in just 3 pieces.


just my 2¢

 

[earthboundrec]

Check out Electrik Piano by Native Instruments. It's software but by far some of the best electric pianos I've ever heard. And I've played and owned several Wurly's and Rhodes!

The Fantom is much more than a sound module. If you don't plan on using the sampling, sequencing and synthesis on it, it'd be quite a waste of $3000.00. Also, don't pay that much for the board. They've been out for awhile now and their value is no where near the MAP pricing of it. I used to work for GC and what I'd do with folks that wanted a Fantom X8 was throw in a pair of M Audio BX5A's, and nice set of wooden speaker stands, monster cables, a nice keyboard stand, bench, sustain pedal, and usually even a case. After all that, most of the profit was gone, but I tell ya, those customers left happy and created tons of word of mouth business for me! If you didn't need all of those extras you could easily pay $2400.00 out the door (tax included)if you go into a GC and say, hey, I have $2400.00 and want an X8. No sales guy would turn that down, and if they start trying to get more, go to the next guy or walk out. The value of these on eBay is also going down WAY below dealers cost. I've seen them go for $1600 - $1800 quite often on eBay.

Also, you could easily find an X6 on eBay for around $1000 to $1200, and then buy a Yamaha P70 to MIDI out to that, giving you a superior keybed to the Roland, and all the functionality of the Fantom, and at a price well under an X8. Don't pay more than $500 out the door for a new P70 unless you're feeling generous to your sales guy. Good luck!

 

[anppilot]

go into a GC and say, hey, I have $2400.00 and want an X8. No sales guy would turn that down, and if they start trying to get more, go to the next guy or walk out.

Ahhhhhh an honest man. A man after my own heart.

I have NEVER NEVER NEVER paid what you see on that ridiculus(SP) tag at G.C.

I just bought my motif rack ed for like $800
I tell ya man $800 CLAMS !!! YES BRAND NEW !!!

I dont care about their profit or profit margin.

Some say I'm a mean S.O.B. I dont care and heres why.

Why? Cause for me going in there and ch(j)ewing some poor shlup down to nothing is not gonna hurt him. Cause for me chewing him down, there are 50 other suckers that will actually pay the crazy price of the little ticket !!!

So I dont give a flip about me saving :

$300 on my motif rackes - $1100/$800
$500 on my triton rack - $1300/$800
$400 on my fantom xr rack - $1400/$1000 + $600 trade in credit = $400
$50 off rack cab
$50 off workstation desk
$50 off unitor8
$Free wavelab 3.0 - Dont Ask, and YES it was a legit deal.
$400 off yamaha mg32 32 channel mixing console
$100 off alesis qsr
$100 off hart dynamics 7pc drum kit
******
$1950 and I can go on and on with other stuff I bought in the past

So let me me a cheap wad, but there are at least 50 others after me who dont know you can bagain !!!

LONG LIVE GUITAR CENTER !!!!!


LOL


Sorry if I've offended the guys who work there. You always make me smile like the joker when I leave there... cause its like I have a permanent smile for days

LOL

Bye4now

DJironsword

 

[DavidK]

Also, you could easily find an X6 on eBay for around !

You can get a Fantom Xa brand new for $899. It doesnt have all the bells and whistles but it has all the sounds.

 

[dnkygirl]

Hum... i don't know.... seems more economical to go with getting a laptop. Then all you would need is a keyboard controller.. then you could use any of the software samplers out there.. I use reason... you would then have the flexiblity to change up sounds.. I'm sure you could find the same fantom sounds and pull them into your softsynth.


Demi

 

[jpmorris]

Hum... i don't know.... seems more economical to go with getting a laptop. Then all you would need is a keyboard controller.. then you could use any of the software samplers out there.. I use reason... you would then have the flexiblity to change up sounds.. I'm sure you could find the same fantom sounds and pull them into your softsynth.

That's not exactly a switch-on-and-go solution - IMHO you'll be stuck with the burden of maintaining it, much like a tape machine only vastly more complex and even more difficult to fix if it goes wrong.

This is going to sound harsh, and obviously it's not me that's buying it, but IMHO a laptop is not really a viable way to go. A decent keyboard should still work fine in 5-10 years time, and the minimoog is pushing 40. With today's build quality in PCs, you'll be lucky if it still works by the end of the course.

What would you run on it, for instance? XP you can still just about get hold of but just you wait until Microsoft turns off the activation server so you can't reinstall it in the near future after a disk crash or OS meltdown

IIRC Vista requires itself to be reactivated with Microsoft every six months or so I've heard. That means you're going to have to be able to connect it to the internet periodically or it will self-destruct as an anti-piracy measure.
Attaching it to the internet so the OS can get its drug fix will open up a whole can of worms (literally - unless you're very careful the machine could be infected in no time flat) unless it's kept up-to-date with security patches, which means that it will have to be more-or-less permanently attached to the 'net. If my Triton demanded to connect to the internet in order to work I would have returned it immediately. And of course, this is of course assuming the software and audio hardware you need to run will both work acceptably with Vista in the first place.

If you can get a laptop to do all you need and you don't need what I would call a long-term solution, more power to you, but it's not an approach I'd touch with a stick unless I can make it work with a non-Microsoft OS and the software isn't really in place for that yet

For the laptop route, a Mac might be worth investigating. I haven't really been able to afford one until recently so I can't really compare. But using a Microsoft system for audio looks to me like a really, really bad idea compared with getting a hardware synth.

Ultimately, what you decide is up to you - I'm just making you aware of some of the potential pitfalls.

 

[adamki]

Have you even heard some of the new softsynths latley? I disagree, If a laptop was as much trouble as you are talking, I would never have gotten one. I have a dell laptop that runs great.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[DavidK]

Have you even heard some of the new softsynths latley? I disagree, If a laptop was as much trouble as you are talking, I would never have gotten one. I have a dell laptop that runs great.

Just my 2 cents.

They sound great. Personally, I dont like softsynths. They change the way I work and are slower. I suppose we all will be using them soon, hardware is on its way out. There is a creative aspect of being surrounded by keyboards that will be lost, I like to use several at one time. My best ideas come cery quickly and if I dont act on them they are gone.

I also like to just start playing the keyboard, not booting up a computer and loading softsynths. When I write, I dont usually have the computer on, I just sit at the keyboard and dabble.

 

[cortexx]

They sound great. Personally, I dont like softsynths. They change the way I work and are slower. I suppose we all will be using them soon, hardware is on its way out. There is a creative aspect of being surrounded by keyboards that will be lost, I like to use several at one time. My best ideas come cery quickly and if I dont act on them they are gone.

I also like to just start playing the keyboard, not booting up a computer and loading softsynths. When I write, I dont usually have the computer on, I just sit at the keyboard and dabble.

Well said , it's for this reason that hardware synths will always be around , I don't buy the "softsynths are taking over" bandwagon. They may gain popularity and increase their marketshare , but keyboard designers will just adapt and bring out products like the Access virus TI that has a complete VST plugin . This is the best of both worlds , you get the hardware virus doing all the Processing and soundcreation but controlled by the flexibility of the VST plugin to what ever sequencer you are used to.

I use a mix of both and i'm sure this gives you the most flexibility.

Another valid point that no one seems to realise is as follows:-

I was using the NI kore VST the other night with NI metaphysical synth layered with Absynth and NI Akkord , Halion1 processing a sample at 6 part unison and and I hit 80% CPU utilisation in cubase 4 studio without any effects or other plugins. That was effectively 4 softsynths on a P4 3.6 Ghz extreme edition chip with 3gb ram . Amazing sounds but there will come a point where you will require the external processing of a hardware keyboard to handle it all or at least a good part of it.

Compare that to a 6 layer multipart from a virus ti WITH full effects running through cubase 4 studio at 6% cpu utilization and you see my point

 

[jpmorris]

Have you even heard some of the new softsynths latley? I disagree, If a laptop was as much trouble as you are talking, I would never have gotten one. I have a dell laptop that runs great.

I have used Waldorf PPG Wave 2.V, Lounge Lizard EP-1 and Mr. Tramp. They sounded fabulous but were a total disaster in terms of actually using them, so I eventually replaced them with a Waldorf MicroWave and Korg Triton EX respectively.
I scrapped Lounge Lizard for Mr. Tramp because it insists on phoning home each time you install it. This means that should AAS ever go bust or withdraw support for EP-1 I shall be left with $200 of useless plastic disk instead of an electric piano. This is a shame as there are some things it can do which are unique, but as they say, you pays your money and you takes your choice.

I had tremendous problems with the softsynths, they simply would not remain in tune if they were synchronised with the recorder. I actually had to slow the recorder down to get the pitch to match the song on more than one recording. Now this could well have been an issue with the host software which was an ancient version of SONAR, but the additional fact that they only work in Windows is a big turn-off for me. I don't want to have to beg to be allowed to reinstall the system I paid for each time it eats itself. If and when the ReactOS people manage to make their Windows clone operate sufficiently well as to run audio processing software, I may well change my tune on this idea.

Note that while I prefer hardware I'm not averse to softsynths per se - after all, virtually every modern hardware synthesizer is effectively a computer running a softsynth anyway. But it's an embedded system, not a PC with a fragile mechanical disk and an operating system which has to be constantly fed and watered like Windows does.

Now, at the risk of drifting the thread, I'll just briefly mentioned Receptor. It's is an interesting compromise, a hardware rack which runs softsynths without the maintenance problems that Windows brings to the table. It least I hope it does - Linux isn't always zero-maintenance either, but I'm gonna be generous and assume they know what they were doing and constructed a proper turnkey system unlike this cashpoint.
However there are a couple of things which I dislike about their specific implementation of the concept: (A) the fact that it costs around $2000, (B) it's got a mechanical hard disk which can and will fail, and supposedly it can only be replaced by the manufacturer so if they fold you're screwed (C) the fact that it has some weird copy-protection - apparently the box has to phone home before you can use it (?!?). Again, if they fold, you're kind of screwed.

In summary, a laptop may be a good short-term solution, but I wouldn't count on it working 20 years from now. A hardware synth might not either, especially if it uses flash memory, but IMHO it's got a much better chance.

As I say, these are things that concern me when looking at the hardware/software issue. If they don't concern you, that's fine. In the end the decision is yours anyhow.