4 replies to this topic

[ajay]

Anyone using one?

Im spewin I let my Virus Rack go a few months ago, but paying bills took priority unfortunately.

So been looking around at some VA synths and I remember the MS2000 being pretty cool, but cant really remember a whole about them - now they seem to be going for under 500 (the rack version) and seems like a pretty viable way back into the hardware VA synth game... but being superseeded its dificult to get a play on one.

Thoughts on them?

[Luka]

i wasn't overly impressed by the engine in the microkorg, which is the same i think
ms2000 has more tweakage which may help

you could probably find an alesis micron for 500

[Megatroid]

I got the rack version. Yes the engine is meant to be the same as a mico korg, but the micro korg is stripped back a bit.

I love it. If you have any specific question just ask cause I know the unit pretty well. I just remebered a post I made on another forum when discussing the advantages of an ms2000 over a soft synth, might be handy for you:

Quote

First of all I'll say that I agree that alot of what you can do on the ms2k you can do in alot of VSTs. Especially if you don't plan on getting too deep into it and just wanna play with the presets.

You got a few of your facts wrong. Its not 'duophonic'. It has 4 voices. Its also multi-timbral, meaning you can have in effect 2 whole programs either layered or split across the keyboard (this might be where you were confused). But you can play 4 keys at once, not 2.

You may prefer visual editing, but I prefer having hands-on tweakability. I don't really like programming a softsynth from scratch, cause its hard to 'audition' ideas, but with all the knobs and buttons on the 2k make it fast and easy.

It is digital, and yes you can get similar sounds from softsynths (I'm not going to get into a analog vs digital argument here). But there are many features on the ms that you want easily find in softsynths.

-Virtual patch: it has more extensive patching capabilites than most softsynths

-Mod sequencer: lets you do some really crazy stuff, complex arppegios, step modulation of any parameter, use the ms like a drum machine etc...

-Vocoder: yes you could get a software one, but maybe not as fully featured, and it will be a cpu hog, aswell as a delay if you tyry to run it in realtime.

-Audio in: use the filter section on the audio input, can also mix the audio in with the synth section. Aswell as crazy sound bending options, this allows me to use oscillators from a simple analog synth I have, and use the filters and modulation on the 2k... no need to worry about it being too 'digital'.

Another thing I thought of is that in addition to the standard analog style oscillators it has a set of 64 digital osciallators off one of kprgs famous digital synths, things like epiano, bell style sound, other waveforms good for pads etc. So thats pretty handy.

Also check this http://insidesynthes...um-machine.html for a bit of a demo, and some interesting use of some of the features.

[ajay]

^^ thanks heaps megatroid - very informative post!

[Captain Terrific]

+1 for the Mod Sequencer... awesome.

used to use one of them writing hardhouse with a mate cupla years back.

just wish i knew what i do now back then, coulda really got into it and had some fun!!