I almost got scammed on FarceBook by a fake ad for a synth...

[tinkersmell]

I've been wanting nice, simple sampling keyboard, looper/sequencer/etc (but can't actually afford one) for a while now, and stumbled across a sponsored ad in my feed, for one that seems to absolutely fit exactly what I would want. When I went to their website, it was available for about $30 Holy crap that's a good deal (should have been my first clue) For that price, I was absolutely ready to buy, but thought... hmm maybe I should check Youtube for some reviews, to see if this was really as good of an instrument as it seemed...

And well, yeah, according to the youtube video, it seems to be a really nice, super simple, effect unit that I would totally love, if I happen to have around $500 to spend..

that website offering it for $30 though? nah that's totally fake. Just some scammers pretending to sell a product that they have no real connection to for a price that would be frankly impossible.

Here's the manufacturers' video (which also appears on the scam site)

and here's the actual legit (NOT scam)website: https://chompiclub.com/

[feralfreak]

ive seen things like that for dewalt power tools, i think it was 300 for what would be thousands of dollars worth of tools an obvious ripoff, but they came close to making me think an offer they had was real, it was for laser carver/engravers, but i dont know what those are suppose to cost so that is how i came close to being fooled

[Little BabyDoll Christine]

I am just about out of hardware music creation and headed for virtual. Though I do have the Arturia V Collection. You can get some good freeware synthes, effects and DAW's at vstplanet and a couple of other sites, and YouTube can put you in touch with the best free synths and effects to start out with and there are tons of free instrument samples and loops Traction, now under a different name, now distributes the t7 which was once a paid DAW Audacity and Linus MultiMedia System, (about the longest-serving upkept DAW and instrument setup: Sinc '99) can work together and cakewalk is now freeware distributed by BandLab. The user manual is 1200 pages in PDFAudacity and Wavosaur are good sampling systems. Companies like GTG and U-He put out free synths. You can arm yourself to the teeth at mid level and Tokyo Dawn has some really nice free effects like compressors, EQ's and limiters that can be upgraded from freeware to premiums. SlickEQ can be convered from a parametric to a graphic equalizer and these are sharp looking with UI's that look like a piece of hardware. Then there is the .sfz player Sforzando by Plogue of Canada that can be either a plugin or a standalone player. SFZ is like a soundfont except that the program and samples are in different locations whereas sf2 the samples are part of the program. SFZ lets you use the same samples with differen programs so you can get more mileage from your sampes. Eastern One is a set of vst plugs of Asian, Arabic and Greek instruments. Like I said. you can arm yourself to the teeth was mid-level stuff if you have the computer for it. The only hardware thing s I have are a CZ-1000, a Casio wk3500, a Moog MG-1, an SC Pro-One and a Moog Opus 3, all of which I intend to sample the hell out of on Aucacity. There is also a well respected DX-7 clone called Dexed. SFZ programs are easy to write since they are written in language familiar to synth programmers. you can write them as txt and rename to sfz or download SFZedit. The Arturia V Collection and IK Syntronik (which also comes with effects and Sample Tank samples) can be used as MIDI-controlled standalone players for live action. And you do not have to break the bank with Native Instruments

[tinkersmell]

20 hours ago, Little BabyDoll Christine said:

I am just about out of hardware music creation and headed for virtual.

I have a pretty decent desktop puter: AMD Ryzen 5, with 32gb RAM running Lubuntu OS (because it is simple and I like it) No way I would be carting it out to a live show though.

Desktop music creation is okay, and I have spent many hours messing around with stuff in Audacity, mixing and layering and layering and effecting, and otherwise manipulating sounds. (I mostly do experimental noise stuff) Most of what I have done on the puter is manipulating stuff that I have recorded outside of the puter. As far as live performances, I'm mostly doing stuff with effects pedals, some of which I've built or modified myself. I really have no desire to sit behind a laptop at a show. For that I want real, tactile knobs, buttons, and switches. I have certainly tried a few synth programs on the puter, and even have a simple midi keyboard controller. The soft-synth progs that I have found were all overly complex, and confusing to me.

Basically what I want is a butt simple box that will do sampling and sequencing. Really that chompi seems like the absolute perfect machine for what I want, but of course I can't afford it.

[Little BabyDoll Christine]

Well these days, ALL recorded music is computer music because it is mixed and mastered in the digital realm, often on laptips. You can get a decent free version of any part of the prodiction train; instruments, mixers (or "trackers) samplers, effects, and mastering.. Just  YouTube up "best free [whatever]". there are also sites that distribute these such asvsdplanet, myvist and others. Also some companies distribute older items as freeware sucn as U-he's Surge and Traction's Traction 5 to 7. Linux MultiMedia System is about the oldest DAW, going back some 35 years and kept up to date. However it does not take audio input just as Audacity does not take digital instruments. At this point, you probably want a unit that exists ans both VST and Standalone. That is where Arturia, IK Multimedia Syntronik and Plogue Sforzando; or any ARIA sfz player, shines.. both .sfz and sf2 are "Soundfonts" the basic difference being that sf2 have the samples built into the "instrument" while sfz points the folder where the samples are, which aloows sveral sfz files to use the same samples. Also   the sfz language is written in musical terms. I am not aware of any sort os skins for Sforzando that allow the UI to resemble an instrument control panel and the sfz file would be improved if you had 4 envelopes and 4 LFO's like the Polymoog had (FM sawtooth, FM pulse, Pulsewidth mod and Filter mod)

I do not know much about the AMD Ryzen line. I have not heard of any of the major company products being compatible with Ubuntu

Also, thanks to the partnership of Aruturia and Fatar we l ive in the world of hybrid systems, hardware units that control software via USB MIDI, which means you have live sliders, knobs and switches. M-Audio has the same. Many modern hardware mixers are equipped with USB and can be used as audo interfaces

As to monitors, the day of the two-say monitor speakers may be coming to an end since much of the audio is now played on sub/satellite, aka x:1 aka triflex systems, with the sats being arrays of tiny speakers

Right now, I am hors de combat. I picked up an Acer Predator Orion 5000 640 12 i7 dodecacore with Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 1 TB SSD 16 GB RAM with an Acer VT270 touchscreen monitor. However the USB is faulty. I got bothe from an Acer Recertified Refurbisher, which is the same as "factory refurbished". I can't reliably move anything to external storage Apache Racoon runs a music producers' club