Ive suddenly joined a post punk band, with the intention of going as synth heavy as possible without turning into a minimal wave band. I’m supposed to be in charge of synths and programming, but I’m missing a key element: an FM synth for those icy cold leads and pads.
Now I could get a dx7 for fairly cheap, but due to the small size of my home studio I would rather get a module sized synth instead. Also, as always, i would like to get it for as cheap as possible, as I have an iPad and there’s plenty of VST’s for free.
What options do I have, hardware wise? Lets day tue budget is 300 euros. no volca fm because i want more polyphony.
Sonicware Liven XFM would be my suggestion if you can get hold of one (looks like June, but a second hand ELZ-1 with the same engine might be in budget) - there’s also the Volca FM but unless you want to port DX7 patches over I think the XFM is less fiddly.
There’s also the Yamaha Reface DX which is a high quality bit of kit but a bit more expensive. Korg Opsix or Digitone would be well out of budget.
I’d like to have at least 4 voice polyphony for simple chords, so the Volca FM is out.
I’m also like to keep the budget relatively low as ive just joined and don’t know how far it will go. And I can manage with my iPad for now.
What about those 80s and 90s synth modules? I know theyre probably really annoying to program, but I would be quite happy with patches downloaded from somewhere.
