Instead of a bunch of interfaces I just use a patch bay. It’s not like I’m ever recording more than 8 inputs at a time, and routing with a patch bay only takes a few seconds. Might be another way to go (especially if you are a converter snob and can’t afford enough high end converters lol)
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This is quite timely for me as I’ve actually been (increasingly) limiting what gear I use when making music - partly so I don’t get too bogged down in the process or managing too many moving parts.
It’s been a good excuse to dig into my 'takt and 'tone and I’ve been enjoying the limitations tbh. I’ve also been missing stuff (mostly from my OT) but having a focus with a slightly more limited palette has been helpful.
I don’t think it has any real impact on the quality of what I make, but it’s definitely helped me get more done.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how to maintain a rich palette whilst maintaining this new-found freedom, but ironically it’s resulted in me ordering more gear 
My hope though is that I may be selling some stuff soon and I think what I’ll be left with is more conducive to me making the music I want to make with as few barriers as possible.
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Over the years, I found that the “Digi” line was in my Goldilocks zone and ended up ditching most of my other equipment, or if not sold, it’s mostly boxed up and out of the way for a rainy day. Too much gear in front of me and I start getting choice paralysis.
I’m also stingy with what I want cluttering my brain, so I like to expend the minimum in learning new workflows and developing muscle memory, which is why the three Digis together seem to give me great flexibility with the least amount of learning new stuff.
I keep a couple of other things I like out and handy, like a MicroMonsta2 and a Circuit Mono Station.
But day to day, it’s the three Digis and I can just jump in and start making music any time, in a variety of configurations and stylistic focus with those boxes alone.
But I’m also wired to be a minimalist, especially hauling stuff around for live performances. YMMV
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the problem is excess of choice, not gear.
but having more gear does not mean using it all at once, or using all of its bells & whistles at once.
i have some templates (empty or almost empty projects) with my to-go timbres and always start a new track with one of them. experiments with gear begin when i have a skeletal arrangement. problem solved.
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For me, the paralysis comes from too many options. Not from having stuff set up or not.
Say I’m making a rad melody on a Digitone, and I want some complex drums to go with it. Do I use a track on the Digitone for the drums? Do I use a Digitakt or Octatrack, OP-1, an iPad App or Ableton?
All of those are great tools (I don’t own them all—just as examples). But all of them will take the drums in a different direction. I always end up getting lost in planning, rather than doing. And that would happen even with everything pre-connected in a studio.
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A simple way to approach this is:
If you wanna be productive and release stuff fast use your DAW
If you wanna meditate, evolve, have a nice session for yourself use your hardware
Approach your hardware like it’s a Nintendo switch or ps4.
And when you finally know your gear enough, it will be easier to without any further issues transfer hardware sketches to daw.
I feel you thou, but it can be nice to separate things, your inner internet muscician vs your inner contemplative muscician.
My inner contemplative guy is the better producer but he’s way to lazy to record for the net, so the stuff I share are mostly that daw productive jerk. 
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Really? Soundwise I would agree, but is this true for the composition as well? I mean for rhythm and groove?
Why not working like a drummer in a band. Have you ever seen someone on stage having a couple of tuned kick-drums, many snares with different textures, and playing each song on very different sub-sets? … I haven’t.
Most of the drummers I have seen worked on a well curated set of instruments, which matched playing stile and genre.
Why not doing this in electronic music as well? Listen to the sounds of the groove boxes, try the workflow, decide which is most to your liking, and stay with it for a while … 
Added: My experience is that with drums rhythm and groove are much more important than the sounds. If the groove is great, better sounds can be used or improved later … but if the groove sucks, even the best sounds won’t save us
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Right now I have a Digitakt and Digitone on a standing “desk” (plank on crates) with headphones, and I’m having a great time. I can hook up my iPad to grab samples when needed.
I agree with you about drummers etc having a set of gear that they use. I feel the same way I have a small set of basic samples (drums). The rest I create or sample from life as I go. I also play guitar, so I totally get how you can use a single instrument for every track without it getting dull.
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Sample-based boxes such as TR8S and DT actually push you towards this approach, I feel. But if you don’t have the self-discipline, it’s hard to settle for a single kit! 
100% agree. And, different machines will encourage different experimentation to reach that groove. The Syntakt invited me to p-lock and create more crazy loops. The MPC invites me to do a lot of ratcheting. The SP invites me to reconsider why I’m doing it in the first place. And so on. 
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On a positive note if a person has a lot of gear and they feel like it is not leading them to greater productivity and have some amount of guilt over it–discussing it in this thread could in fact present an opportunity to take the pressure off of those feelings and misdirect them to their post to productivity ratio.
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Too much overlap kills my productivity. I used to be most productive with early versions of Reason (up to 3.0) or with Renoise and one synth (Synth1).
Currently I’m most productive with using just MC-707 or just Digitakt. MC feels a bit like Reason, nice for melodic/polyphonic stuff, and Digitakt is more like Renoise, for sample mangling and experimenting with sequencer. Most of my other stuff is turned off 90% of the time.
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It’s a little more akin to owning blues and reds and purples and buying a tin of fuchsia because you like the specific mix/match
Synths can do a lot wider sound than people are often willing to take the time to master, people want a specific sound based on an artist’s use of that synth over approximating the patches on anything else.
I’ve got into some terrible habits and I go round and round with the same ones which is the definition of stupidity I believe. I keep buying too much software and then feeling overwhelmed with choice and just browsing presets instead of making tunes. I also seem to have found myself with multiple MIDI controllers which I can’t possibly use all at once.
20 years ago I had a tiny bit of software and nothing else and I actually enjoyed it. At the moment I feel like I’m desperately trying to find something and not even enjoying the process.
I’m tempted to get rid of almost all of it and try to get back to enjoying it for what it is. It was never more than a hobby and I’ve finished maybe a handful of tracks my whole life but at least I used to actually enjoy it! I seem to be stuck in a weird mindset.
I’m short - I was never productive but it’s low even by my own poor standards. Too many options kills it for me.
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Right now my only synth is the Digitone, and I can get all kinds of sounds out of it. It can be an analog subtractive synth, a west-coast wavefolder, and of course FM, and a drum machine. All at the same time.
I enjoy the challenge of puzzling out how to make a sound much more than I enjoy shopping for a new synth I will want to sell after a few months.
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I very much understand this feeling.
And this one.
I don’t think you can always go back, though. It’s a nostalgia trap…
When you first start exploring digital music/DAW &etc., it is mindblowing. You learn about the insane number of methods we’ve developed for manipulating chunks of audio. You figure out how that sound and that sound are made. You’ve cracked it, you’re in the Enchanted Castle of audio production. It feels fresh and exciting, you learn something new every day, and when you make a track it often has a kind of beginner’s freshness, the spice of ignorance.
But that thrill can’t really be reproduced, except by going deeper and deeper into sound design and esoteric synthesis &etc. Which can be fun and rewarding but usually does not produce music, per se. And when you’re a beginner, every track is better than the last, there’s a rapid upward curve. Whereas when you’re getting better at tweaking the pre-delay on the reverb you have patched in to the vocoder BVs on track 12 of your never-finished dub techno opus – it’s undeniable that no one really cares. Everything that matters is in the first 90% of technical knowledge and gear acquisition, and you can spend decades of your life and millions of dollars chasing the last 10% and have little to show for it.
So what to do?
I think: accept that there is a time when gear is inspirational, but that may be behind you. You have been dispossessed of a simple joy – the joy of ignorance is gone. You cannot get it back. You can never again be excited by learning what filter modulation is.
You are not empty-handed, though, because you have gained knowledge. But this is the part where gear can’t help you, because you already know how it works. You need an instinct, a theory, a meditative practise, a demand placed upon you by external forces, a task upon which to exercise the skills you have learnt. But the gear will no longer provide you with creative momentum, whether it’s a roomful of modular or the proverbial laptop with Ableton.
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Feel this too.
Who really wants to know how the sausage is made. 
Once you master the tools, then you have to master yourself. Perhaps that’s the bit I’m stuck on.
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Sometimes I do lust after the fuchsia, sometimes I do give into the gear, but I’m realistic with myself about what it’ll mean for my work versus chasing a specfic aesthetic.
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True, but any synthesis has it’s limitations. Getting a gnarly Waldorf wavetable sound from a Minimoog Model D might be even impossible.
Also true. To create signature sound patches takes time and committment to listen, to analyse, to learn more than some sound design basics, and how to apply this knowledge to the instruments in your arsenal
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