Korg Triton

Triton is like a Porche without an engine. It has been built with many luxury specs. like giant touch-screen, lots of knobs, ribbon pad, lots of EFX processors, good sequencer, etc.... But it can't seriosly synthesize a sound. It is more like a tone player. It supports only a lo-pass type filter with resonance and its character is quite artifical and unpretty. At high reso settings, it can self-oscilate, theorically. But it sounds more like a second sinus oscilator that fakes self oscilation and there is no resonance that can be heard at high cutoff settings. Quite dull and dark! And what drives me crazy that it only have two oscilators on each program! You can't even create two oscilator + a sub oscilator sounds without layering programs. It has no exciting synth resources like Ring Mod, Cross Mod, etc, like the Roland JV line has. IMO, Triton even can't synthesize good pad sounds, it just plays some good pad samples.

Beside this Triton is quite good in more Rock, Jazz and R&B type sounds. You can create very satisfying guitars, epianos, brasses, basses, organs etc with it. And the luxury EFX processor adds much to the sound. But I prefer a real sampler for this type of work. Probably Triton is better for the stage than it is in the studio.

Anyway, if you look for a synth for creating your own warm, evolving, bold, rough, etc. sounds don't make the mistake I'd done... Even having the Vintage Archive and Studio Essentials boards didn't help.

Korg Z1

A unique sound from a slow interface. What I like about the Z1 was the dynamic metalic bells, evolving spectrum-like noises/pads and funky clavi/guitar like sounds that it could synthesize. Its analog modeling sounds have a bit cold metallic feeling with them, which I didn't like much.

Anyway, I would keep the Z1 as it could synthesize sounds that no other synth could, its user interface was very slow and too much complicated with lots of menus and submenus.... It would be nice to get lost in it while creating good sounds, but it is not easy to create goods sounds with it as there are too many parameters. It is not fun to use! And it is so slow that when you change a program, you have to wait about 2 seconds to have Z1 ready for the next program.

You wonder the acoustic modelling sounds? The brasses and guitars can be very expressive if you learn to play them the correct way. The winds are OK and the bowed strings oscilators are a joke!

Anyway, Z1 has one of the most powerful synthesizer engines coming in a single box, as well as the monophonic Prophecy from Korg. It is a bit shame that both didn't evolve into something new and both are discontinued but they still live in MOSS board for Triton. MOSS still has great sound creation potential for future.

Roland JV1080

Almost everybody knows what JV can do... I'll tell why I sold it. Definitely JV's synthesizing capabilities are much better than Triton, it is not as good as a JD when it comes to the filter character. And just one reverb, one chorus and one insert EFX is not enough on a workhorse synth! The small LCD screen is too unpractical to work with when you got used to the bigger ones on the JD and Z1. And JD has individal 3 band EQs on each patch, and you don't lose them in multi-mode which means you have 8 EQs on multi mode. Which is very important, IMO. You can dramatically change and polish a sound with an EQ. JV is not as good as a Triton when it comes to acoustic simulations, though (without help from the Expansion Board).

Perhaps I'd keep the JV if it was a 2080. My main reason to sell it was the small LCD that makes it two to three times longer to program it.

Roland JV80

I had used it as a controller and a sound source until 1998. And that funny mouse controller was made of two knobs plugged directly into the two pedal inputs of the JV. It really worked! :)

Roland PC200 Controller

Midi controller of emergency times. Very handy to have one in every studio.

 

Yamaha QY100

Fun toy. Battery eater.