So I’m finding a need for more analog poly action in my studio. I’m going to grab the Behringer Pro800 since it’s so cheap and from the demos sounds pretty damn good.
But I have the Minilouge XD and I like it a lot, one of my favorite synths it sound great and although it’s pretty limited with the second envelope only being an AD Env and having only 1 LFO (although the modulation lanes do give you more) I still like it a lot and I love the SDK on the third OSC, I plan on adding a lot of the user made stuff (sinevibes’ and dirtbox’s stuff) btw does anyone have any recommendations for either free or paid user made SDK stuff other than the two people I mentioned? What are your favorites?
Anyways yea I’m thinking of picking up a second Monologue XD so I can poly chain that way it’ll be an 8 voice poly…for about $400-500 it seems like a good investment but I haven’t actually seen how it works in person only demos, I was wondering if anyone here has tried it and what they thought, if it was worth the upgrade.
I definitely find myself waiting for a few more voices when I play the XD, it would be nice to like the pads ring out.
What do you guys think, both about the idea of poly chaining two XDs and on SDK suggestions?
I’m sure you’ve already considered a prologue - it would be considerably less hassle to have more voices but at the cost of the sequencer and some fx usage (I think with the prologue you can only use delay or reverb but not both simultaneously). The prologue can be bitimbral though which is awesome
If you pick up a prologue 8 and like it as much as the xd, you can sell the minilogue and it would be pretty much the equivalent of buying two xds for the poly chain
The lack of the sequencer and multiple FX at once kills it for me with the prologue unfortunately because it would be a hell of a lot easier and also the prologue’s envelopes are both full ADSR as opposed to the minilouge XD’s one ADSR and one AD. Very strange to me that Korg decided that less features on the flagship synth was a good idea.
Many people have no idea what they like, but you just listed several reasons why you do like this synth. That’s a wonderful thing to be aware of! Read this again for your own benefit and cherish the knowledge.
As far as adding another Minilogue XD to take advantage of increased polyphony, you wouldn’t be the first person who came to that conclusion.
I like the Hammond Eggs stuff, and I have a couple of Shoebridge’s oscillators (there’s a nice DW and VS waveform user oscillator I like from him). I prefer more simple user oscs because of how fiddly the UI ends up being. I especially recommend the Grit delay from Hammondeggs - you can “play” it like an analog BBD only it is gain compensated and won’t blow our your ears when it goes into a gnarly feedback loop. Various oscs and effects from Sinevibes are good, but you know those already.
Re: polychain: The only people I know of that have done it liked it. It strikes me as a lot of faffing about (and a lot of mixer channels) for 8 voices. Then again, I nearly always use voice depth (so, two voices per note) on my Prologue 16, so 8 would never be enough with how I use it, and that feature was essentially useless on my XD with how few voices it had.
I guess I was never that impressed with the sequencer when I had an XD - but if you’re using that extensively, how badly do you need 4 more voices?
I’d let the XD be the XD and pick up something else that complimented it if you wanted multi-note chords, and sequence what you’ve already got.