Keep in mind that the entire soundbank is stored on a 8MB rom so they had to compromise a little. This, however, didn’t stop musicians to produce numerous records with it. One example is Terrence Dixon who used the MC-303 extensively, both live and in the studio. He used to tour the World with four MC-303. His music is not exactly my cup of tea but he’s considered one of the most innovative Detroit producer.
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MIDIMan 2x2
A fairly small, non musical bit of gear, but I got one, it wouldn’t werk with my Mac. But what really made me hate this thing was, when I called support, they said “sorry we can’t help, dev for Mac is an afterthought”
That really shoulda been a bullet point on the box
- 2 midi in / 2 midi out
- Mac OS an afterthought.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound argumentative. To be clear, I am not at all trying to question your judgement. People have different approaches is all I’m saying I guess. Dropping it…
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didn’t mean to be mean either, different approaches is a real thing.
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Yeah, I’m sure many good records were made with it and I’m not a hater of it at all. I have good memories of late nights jamming with that thing. It just didn’t have the type of sound I was looking for in my music at that time. I was listening to Orbital, Leftfield, Underworld, Chemical Brothers etc., and their beats sounded a lot more lush. I had a lot more joy with samplers in this respect than with the MC-303. Also, I was just a young kid starting out with electronic music, so I didn’t really have the maturity to think outside of the box as I would with any piece of gear now. If I came across one now I would be quite interested to see what I’d come up with.
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Will do. I actually just purchased a Digitakt to integrate to the system. Hoping I’ve found the right machine.
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A couple that come to mind
Strymon Bluesky
Didn’t really like the way the modulation sounded and I hated the shimmer. Traded it for a Flint and never looked back.
Microkorg
This was the first synth I got, basically to try out if the synth thing was something for me. Hated the small keys, how the editing worked and it just didn’t feel like a machine that made me wanna learn synthesis. Sold it within a couple of months and it took a while for me to give another synth a try.
Sunn 4x10 cab
Picked it up used and it sounded great but smelled horrible. Couldn’t keep it inside the house because of the smell so I literally had it on the balcony. Would have been cool for touring / rehearsing with a band, but I wasn’t playing in one back then so I sold it to the first dude who offered what I payed.
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How could I forget this one:
Arturia keystep: bought it because of all the raving reviews, feature set, size and price point. Yet so much about it is cheap and more importantly: really poorly designed.
A small selection:
- It lacks a power button which besides being unpractical wears out the flimsy micro-usb connector.
- The miniature small white switches on the back, to set the clock sync/source, are a really retarded decision, both their size and their location on the device boggle the mind.
- But the real evil is the “software” arturia ships with the device which you need in order to access the many, many features you can’t access on the device itself. Including things like fixed velocity, which I toggle all the time. Now that design choice by itself would have been annoying enough, but to add frustration to the annoyance, the beautiful minds of Arturia decided to design the keystep in such a way that the software interfaces over midi meaning that software can’t access the keystep if it’s midi interface is used by another application. This results in having to first “unhook” it from whatever you were using it for, before being able to change some settings, after which you have to close the arturia software again and connect it back up to what you were using it for.
And then I haven’t even mentioned the fact that, up until recently, there was a persistent bug in the midi control software that added a unexplainable delay on some systems (including mine), between starting the program and it actually appearing, of up to 5 or 6 minutes. And if you forgot this was the case, because you avoided it as the plague, because you had already resorted to using python to filter the midi and toggle fixed velocity that way, and, god forbid, you clicked the executable more than once because it didn’t show up, the delay increased and many minutes later you were suddenly greeted by multiple/many instances of “software” you didn’t want to use in the first place. 
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What did you end up replacing it with?
Nothing so far, so I’m also open to suggestions, I remember being drawn to the QuNexus, both for its size, features and because I’m a sucker for controllers on which the black keys are at the same height physically as the white keys. For some reason I got the keystep instead and never actually gotten around to following my initial intuition 
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I hated the qunexus, I gave it away. But then again, I love the keystep so maybe we just have different taste. I got the qunexus for poly aftertouch but got an XKey instead which is better for poly AT though it takes some getting used to as it’s more like an Apple keyboard than a midi keyboard.
The only thing I liked about the qunexus was the size, it’s very small.
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Yeah that makes perfect sense 
You are not the first I hear complaining about this. I don’t really care about the AT, I just need something small with decent cv aside from midi 
mostly for note input as apposed to playing/performing
Ms2000 ftw. That said mixcrokorg is cool if you need a versatile polysynth to play some chords with
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Roland System-1 
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Any and all modern Roland stuff looks gross to me to be honest, the neon green on black just isn’t inviting
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True dat
Couple of weeks ago I had to decide between a Medusa or a Microfreak. My dumbass got the MF. I returned it the next day. It wasn’t any fun to play with given the limited controls, and I realized most of the sounds could be made from my current gear.
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„Had to“??? 
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Well, yeah! I can only buy one synth at a time!
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I ended up also not liking the Qu because of the feel of the keys and ended up with the Xkey… which i’m still getting used to.
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