I’m looking for a synth that has both sample pads and piano sounds in it. I need to be able to craft basic synth sounds using sign waves, saw waves, square waves ect. and I also need to have piano sounds, as well as pads I can load samples into. I’m not really sure where to start looking. It seems like maybe I would need to have two keyboards to accomplish all of this, but for live shows, traveling and budgeting, it would be ideal if it could all just be on one keyboard/synth. Any suggestions?
Nord Wave 2. Piano patches aren’t multi samples so will sound OK but not super realistic. Nord Electro 6D will give you great pianos but the synth section is a sample player (although surprisingly capable) so you’d need to load up synth sounds you wanted rather than create them on the fly.
Otherwise, check out workstations from Roland, Yamaha and Korg. Big and expensive but they are designed to cover all bases.
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Sequential prophet x
One possibility is the Akai 61 keyboard but it can be a bit slow changing sounds. Consider a regular ROMpler and adding an Akai MPC1+ to it for pads and sampling.
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mpc live or mpc one if you don’t need keys, mpc key 37 if you do need keys. not sure what more you could want in this situation.
FWIW mpc keys with the 61 keys is a bit overpriced and large, I’d probably consider a midi controller and a standalone mpc unit if you need more than 37 keys. Much better value and not much more to transport: controller in a carrying case, mpc in a backpack.
Modx, montage ?
Mc-101 / 707
pretty much any rompler, there’s so many affordable rackmount romplers.
And as mentioned most workstations.
U just need a synth that can either sample or load samples or has built in samples.
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Not just any workstation, but nearly any workstation in the last 20 years.
In the '90s, the Yamaha EX5 had a great subtractive synth engine in addition to romples and a good physical modeling engine. No sampler that I recall, but you would want a modern sampler like the Volca Sample or Aira P6.
If you go deeper into the '90s, Yamaha made a wide variety of synths with PLG plugin boards. You could put a piano board into a CS-6x or an AN board into one of the workstations.
A Roland VSynth (2.0 or GT) could be interesting, possibly in combination with a MC-101.
Keep in mind that you don’t need to have two keyboards. Synths are often available in more compact rack or desktop modules. You can control multiple such modules with a single keyboard, which doesn’t have to be a synth itself.
There are a lot of options depending on your exact needs, budget and availability. If you want to make music or perform right now, then a Fantom 06 or Korg’s or Yamaha’s entry level workstation will do the job well.
