The word "sorry" snuck in there. ~Just Phone Thingz~

I still keep a couple sample-based 80's beasts around because I find I'm not good enough with the the computer stuff to get sounds mangled in quite the right way, I often sample into an ensoniq mirage and then re-sample from that. In theory this is dumb, I should be able to just go straight to computer, my broken brain really likes the output of this method.

@love Thats perfect, as an artist u just need to find your sound / method. Whatever u like / whatever works for u.. Also imo limitations can be really helpful for art, help u focus..
Can I hear some of your music please?

uploaded 2 mirage-heavy tracks, most of my recent stuff has been DAW plugin based since all my shit has been in storage for months, for very long-storied reasons, but will have my full setup back by EOY.

https://soundcloud.com/the-shats

the "found sound" playlist

The Shats, is the band name what I think it means..

Fun stuff, the first two bands that came to mind were Human League and B-Movie.

On Muffins, my supermarket's checkout sounds just like that, I think we have IBM terminals.

Nice! I have a little po-33 sampler and of course my pc would be a great tool for that but for some reason only hardware really stimulates my desire to create.

Finding out what motivates you and what your ideal workflow should be are two of the most important things.

I find myself making tons of patches and presets, but composition is a challenge to me. I get the most complete sounding tracks when I can use a groovebox of some kind so I can mute certain tracks and do performance type stuff.

I keep hearing great stuff about ensoniq gear but they're mostly rack mount right? For some reason I find the "lab PSU" aesthetic hard to get inspired by, but the sounds I've heard are pretty phenomenal.

the keyboards are actually more common, the racks are more sought after and pricier.

I had a large collection of ensoniqs because I'm totally queer for US made synths and you used used to be able to get them for nothing.

- The EPS 12-bit is interesting but ultimately not worth it, load times are painful even with SCSI and the poly-aftertouch is cool but the keybeds are trash
- EPS 16 and ASR models are all dreamy and deep as fuck
- Mirage is just perfect, yes it's floppy-based but with 8 bit load times are nothing and the analog filters just make everything sound great
-SQ-80 is overhyped and often over-priced
- The ensoniq ESQ-1 is probably the most undervalued synth out there, insane mod matrix, gorgeously dark analog filters, and the metal ones are frigging tanks. The keyboard version has a much better sound design flow than the rack (I have one as a backup) if you look at the ASM Hydrasynth you can see that they borrowed heavily from the ESQ-1 for sound editing (and improved on it quite a bit)

what I'm saying is, buy the cheapest working esq-1 you can, they are amazing.