Nobody buys cheap analog synth’s to try to make a transformer ultimate workstation groovebox though…
I don’t get why move is being compared to cheap synth’s when they seem like totally different things?
And Appleton with always have a faithful following just like Akai and Roland do too…
A golden age of synth production, yes. A whole bunch of people had time and money and too much YouTube on their hands, and realised that synths are really fun. I think that bubble was always going to pop, to some extent.
I don’t see that there have been any incredible breakthroughs in synthesis in recent years, but instead tweaks and reiterations and products at different price points. I don’t think there’s been the kind of conceptual breakthrough that I think people crave deep down, which is: I want all this incredible digital versatility, but I also want a dedicated and comprehensible device that feels as much like an instrument as playing a drum kit or violin (while having the limitless flexibility of MAX or whatever). I think people are still kinda hoping in a vague way that someone solves that dilemma for them. I haven’t solved it, so like an idiot I’ve decided it’s insoluble, and decided to give up on digital limitlessness in favour of directness by abandoning sequencing in favour of playing. But maybe someone will thread that needle with a genius design one day.
We are definitely living through golden age of reissuing the past and nostalgia driven consumerism.
Just a thought and observation i have for years i would say we live in, beside hard core consumerism, opulence and decadence in almost every aspect of our current civilization.
Don’t wanna be a doomer but we can look throughout history and see what happened with other great civilization when they have reached this stage.
I dont get the feeling that people want new drums/violins level of dedication requiring instruments tbh. More like the opposite. People seem to want convenience, ease of use and something that sounds great just pressing down a button. Then they can feel good about their new toy, and order annother one once the dopamine starts to wear off. From making music to buying gear, they have de-evolved, cuz buying is easy, and learning to play/program is hard
Point being, if you’re not happy now with the variety available at any price point you can and can not afford, looking for things to complain about isn’t going to get better over time. That emptiness is just going to grow alongside the hunger.
I think what they meant, or at least how I took it, is that musicians want to play electronic instruments that feel like they’re playing an instrument, rather than programming a piece of hardware.
Of course, there’s a lot of people who think they should be able to just pick up a guitar or drums and play it immediately. People who refuse to practice or rehearse their instruments have been around for as long musical instruments have.
I more or less agree, but I was trying to put it in a less harsh way 
There’s a seductive promise to new technology, that this will be the thing that unlocks your creative potential. And sometimes it is! Some people are Aphex Twin. So we don’t wanna say that new tech is never inspiring.
But it often isn’t, it’s a brief dopamine hit before another plateau of frustration. But I get the sense that people are reaching for the right thing; they sense that they lack the kind of connection to music that they want, that’s there’s an experience they’re not getting that they crave. So they’ll buy an MPE controller or an MPC or a Push or whatever else promises a hands-on experience. Alternatively, they try out algorithmic sequencers, hoping that they can harvest inspiration from randomness. But this doesn’t work; it’s all too scattered, it’s still not using the right parts of the brain. Which isn’t to say that nothing that sounds good will be produced; that’s part of the problem, that it’s so easy to make something that sounds good now, that passes as music, without experiencing an actual musical flow state.
There are people who are wired so that they can do exciting things with new devices, sound design possibilities, et cetera. A particular personality type, maybe, for whom this kind of programming/data manipulation can be a spontaneous musical experience. But maybe a lot of us aren’t actually that – but are sucked in by the infinite promise of the technology, technology we’re not actually wired to use to its potential. I’ve reached that conclusion about myself. I am endlessly attracted to the playground of synthesis, but the ‘adult’ part of my brain knows that it will never help me write better music, which is my ultimate goal.
Many people expect more from technology than from each other. This is the challenge of our times IMHO
Sorry, I forgot to respond to this. The kind of synths I was thinking of were simple monosynths from the seventies like the Korg MS-10, Yamaha CS-5 or Roland SH-09. They could be purchased for $100 (or less if you were patient), while a Kawai K-1 or Casio CZ-1000 was still around 3-400 (iirc)
For me, the romplers of the time (like the Roland Sound Canvas etc) symbolized the death of synthesizers designed for creating new sounds. It felt like the focus was to achieve the best imitation of existing instruments. This is all a bit dramatic and exaggerated, but you get the point, from a teenager’s view 
And are so fixed on magic and “manifesting” to avoid existing in the reality the rest of us live in.
I get it, it is quite depressing to be alive sometimes in this shit world of shit humans, but hunkering down in a supposedly “safe” delusion only worsens those persons’ existence.
ROMplers pretty soon after included a lot of synthesis options, even if they had some predefined building blocks in sample capacity/choice.
Honestly the terrible sliders or up/down button UIs that Roland still hasn’t fucking gotten far enough away from are worse to me than the shift from analog to digital.
2010-2020 was pretty wild for synthesizers/music hardware in general
OT Mk1, A4, AR, TE OP-1, all the moog modular re-releases/new synths, flurry of eurorack, buchla, korg volcas, roland boutiques, new MPCs, Arturia as well with all their affordable micros and minis, MPE… i think it’s been pretty awesome
i think the natural progression is to hybridize with digital/software better over time as computers become more powerful and cheaper. if you told me a sub <1000$ mac mini would smack a 10k Mac pro from 10 years ago i would call you crazy, but here we are 
There is a risk that deglobalization and more countries acting increasingly isolatistic could limit access to chips. That could fulfill this unwilling prophecy but I thrink it’s more likely there may be a platteau or a slump. Perhaps 3d printing some parts locally might help.